Peoria to post photos of arrested prostitutes, 'johns' on Web site

J

Jack_Maehoffer

#1
#1
Associated Press


PEORIA, Ill. - Peoria police will soon post photos of arrested prostitutes and their customers on the department Web site, with hopes the public humiliation will curb prostitution.

Mug shots of prostitutes and those who have been caught soliciting them will begin appearing on the Peoria Police Department's Web site later in July, said City Manager Randy Oliver.

Police hope the threat of embarrassment will make potential customers, also known as "johns", think twice about soliciting a prostitute, Oliver said.

Similar prostitution deterrents have been used in other cities. The Chicago Police Department last week began displaying the names, addresses and photos of people arrested for soliciting prostitutes on its Web site.

Like Chicago, Peoria police will post the names and mug shots of those arrested. People arrested for solicitation also will have their addresses posted online. Details of the project haven't been finalized, and a launch date has not been set.

Some newspapers print the names of those arrested for soliciting sex for money and cities have tried broadcasting mug shots on community access TV channels. Also, in Oakland, Calif., officials began a "shaming campaign" this year in which they posted billboards with photos of men convicted of soliciting sex.

In Peoria last year, 47 women and three men were arrested for prostitution. Eighteen people were arrested for solicitation.

Chicago police arrested 3,204 people on prostitution charges and 950 on charges involving solicitation in 2004. Officials estimate that more than 16,000 women are involved in prostitution in Chicago over the course of a year.
 
J

Jack_Maehoffer

#6
#6
Ugly mugs no help to hookers:

Phil Luciano
NEWS COLUMNISTThursday, July 14, 2005



Too bad Peoria police have changed their minds about posting Web photos of alleged prostitutes.
Not that I intended to get my jollies by ogling mug shots of streetwalkers. No way. If you've ever seen a Peoria prostitute, you know what I mean.

In Peoria, hookers aren't lookers.

In our pop-culture society, we harbor a Hollywood view of prostitutes. We think of "Pretty Woman": a beautiful young lady with a perky, engaging personality - and who just happens to have sex with men for money. Charming.

That's not reality - at least, not the reality of Peoria's streetwalking scene.

Peoria has call girls: high-priced, attractive ladies with an exclusive clientele - and thus no need to hit the pavement. But most Peoria hookers walk the streets, where you'll find no beauty queens.

Maybe they once were eye-catchers. But drug addiction and street life takes a toll on the body. Peoria streetwalkers are the saddest, scariest women you'll ever see.

That's why police should post hookers' mug shots. If the public were more aware of the personal effects of prostitution, there would be more concern about Morton Square Park and other hooker hot spots.

At first, the city worried that if police were to post johns' photos, they'd have to post hookers' photos, too. City Manager Randy Oliver said two weeks ago, "Under the Constitution, there is equal protection."

But Peoria's corporate counsel, Randy Ray, now says that the U.S. Constitution doesn't speak to the matter of publishing photos of public record.

That new opinion - plus a newspaper quote - prompted Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard to change his mind.

A ****nal Star story had quoted a prostitute claiming the postings would help her business. If arrested, she planned to print the postings and use them like a business card: See, I'm a bona fide hooker, not a police decoy.

This week, Chief Settingsgaard decided not to put hookers' photos on the Web - at least not for now. He said, "I do not want to help their cause."

But how much help would the police really be offering?

The Web postings are modeled after a similar site in St. Paul, Minn., which runs photos of johns and hookers. In eight years of postings, police there have never heard of a hooker using the Web postings to promote their sex-for-cash deals.

Plus, I doubt Peoria prostitutes have suddenly become that business savvy.

After all, for years, this paper has run the names of arrested prostitutes. Hookers could've shown those newspaper clippings and their driver's licenses to prospective johns: "See, there's my name in the paper, and there's my driver's license photo. I'm a real, live whore."

Plus, think about the marketing downside to prostitutes' sticking their mug shots into johns' faces. Some johns are indiscriminate crackheads, but others are blue-collar out-of-towners. It's poor business sense to tell a visitor, "Look, pal, I'm a genuine hooker. In fact, I'm so genuine, police have arrested me."

Do you lure customers by saying police have been sniffing around? You'd think johns would run the other way.

While police ponder Prostitute Marketing 101, they should put the hooker mug shots on the Web and see what happens
 
J

Jack_Maehoffer

#9
#9
Oldest Profession, New Deterrent

(Page 1 of 3)

CHICAGO, July 23, 2005

(CBS)
"This is not a victimless crime. There is a victim here, and it's the women performing this. About 95 percent of these women were abused."
Patti Buffington
director of Genesis House

Anyone who's ever wondered just who the men are who cruise this city's seedier strips looking for sex can now satisfy their curiosity.

Starting last month, the Chicago Police Department has been posting the names of "johns" arrested for engaging or soliciting prostitutes; along with their photo, address, age and place of arrest. A recent sample included men from low-income Chicago neighborhoods and relatively well-to-do suburbs, of all ages and ethnicities.

It's part of a tactic more and more cities are using, cracking down on prostitution by focusing on demand, often using tactics of humiliation -- like Chicago's website or billboards in Oakland, Calif. -- to try and convince potential customers to stay home.

It's a trend that some applaud, saying the men who drive the trade have been overlooked too often while prostitutes get arrested. Others question its effectiveness, suggesting that websites and "john schools" that educate customers about the realities of prostitution accomplish little.

"The first thing you have to ask is why are people involved in prostitution. Overwhelmingly it's related to economic issues," says Juhu Thukral, director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York. Focusing on demand, Thukral says, won't reduce the amount of prostitution; rather, more resources should go toward supportive housing, job training, and legal services; "programs that teach people how to get mainstream jobs that will provide a living wage."



Still, others involved in the issue say that efforts like Chicago's are an encouraging sign that cities are both waking up to the problems around prostitution and are recognizing that customers play as important a role as the prostitutes.

In Chicago, the Web site has been up for only a month, but has gotten more than 497,000 hits, says David Bayless, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department.

"If we can get them to think twice about coming here, if they think they're at risk of being arrested and having their picture online, then the website's done its job," he says. "It's an acknowledgment that customers are contributors to the problem."

In addition to getting their photo online and having their vehicle impounded, arrested men have to attend a local "john school" run by Genesis House, an organization that helps Chicago sex workers.

The men pay $500 to attend the eight-hour class, and the money goes to support Genesis House's programs. During the day, they learn about the law, the health risks of patronizing prostitutes, and the reality of what life is like for prostitutes.

"This is not a victimless crime," says Patti Buffington, director of Genesis House. "There is a victim here, and it's the women performing this. About 95 percent of these women were abused."

For the men who attend john school, the biggest impact often comes when they learn more about the women themselves, says Norma Hotaling, a former prostitute who founded The Sage Project in San Francisco and started the nation's first john school about 10 years ago.

Midway through the class, she often reveals her own background. "You see them turn to Jell-O," Hotaling says with a laugh. "They say, 'You're smart, and you have power here, but you're' " a prostitute
She's helped numerous cities around the U.S., including Chicago, launch their own john schools, and says the programs are remarkably successful; in San Francisco, she only sees about two percent of the men a second time.

Hotaling also has sympathy for the men who come through her classes; most, she says, simply don't have all the facts to make good decisions. As a result, she's not a fan of humiliation tactics.

"You don't tear down their support system and humiliate them," she says. "Do you want them to be total outcasts?"

Advocates at the Sex Workers Outreach Project, a San Francisco organization that favors legalizing prostitution, have also been outspoken against the humiliation efforts, such as the new campaign in Oakland that has billboards springing up with customers' faces -- blurred in early versions -- saying "Don't John in Oakland." "It's not going to stop the problem," says Robyn Few, director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. "It's just going to move the problem from one place to another."

Still, many advocates of the efforts say the crackdown on customers is just one piece of an overall effort to reduce street prostitution and help sex workers move on to other jobs. In Chicago, where police estimate the number of prostitutes at anywhere between 16,000 and 25,000, Mayor Richard Daley has jumped with vigor on the new initiative. He cites not just the harm prostitution wreaks on neighborhoods and their quality of life, but also the harm done to the prostitutes themselves, a sign that politicians are starting to look at sex workers as victims rather than simply criminals.

"Once they become prostitutes, they're subject to even more violence, abuse, and possible death from their pimps and their customers," Daley said at a press conference to announce the new Internet site. "It's a terrible life, and a caring society has a responsibility to help these women turn their lives around, and to keep other young women from entering the profession."
 
M

michel

#10
#10
This makes way too much sense...

From the above article:
"The first thing you have to ask is why are people involved in prostitution. Overwhelmingly it's related to economic issues," says Juhu Thukral, director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York. Focusing on demand, Thukral says, won't reduce the amount of prostitution; rather, more resources should go toward supportive housing, job training, and legal services; "programs that teach people how to get mainstream jobs that will provide a living wage."

..to ever be enacted. If it were, then could we assume that the girls
who still prostitute did so from choice and therefore it is a victimless
crime, for Chrissake?

Man, if ya follow this logic, a guy who holds up a liquor store is the victim,
as long as he grew up poor...
 
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