Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/04/petition-to-make-it-illegal-fo.html
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“State sponsored rape”? No. A john isn’t necessarily a rapist, and a cop pretending to be john isn’t automatically a rapist if there’s no coercion. Is having sex with the prostitute prior to arrest scummy? Sure, but let’s not call it “rape.” It’s an insult to people that have been raped.
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A sex worker can consent to having sex with a John without consenting to sex with an undercover cop.
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Do you believe that sex workers agree with you?
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They are lying about who they are and what they are doing. If the prostitute knew who they were and what they were doing, they’d likely not sleep with them. Also, what @Brainspore said.
The cop doesn’t need to engage in sex with the prostitute to bust them.
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And if you are of the opinion that acts of prostitution are terrible crimes that must be punished then it is inexcusable for a police officer to become an accomplice to such a crime.
This is a bit like a police officer posing as a hitman, carrying out a murder on behalf of a client, then busting said client for hiring a hitman.
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Or, if you insist on making the prostitute the bad guy, like a police officer hiring a hitman (or terrorist) and then not arresting them until after they’ve followed through on the murder/attack.
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By all means, let’s make this deplorable police behavior illegal. Then the rapist cops will turn themselves in, their former buddies will corroborate their crimes and they will be hauled off to jail.
Next up: making it illegal to steal from drug dealers.
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The police shouldn’t steal from any private citizen, drug dealer or not. Of course cops are legally allowed to seize assets when the courts rule against the drug dealers, which is not theft.
This law gives women recourse who are coerced into sex under false pretenses. This is just basic entrapment: [wikipedia] “In criminal law, entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offence that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit. … It is a conduct that is generally discouraged and thus, in many jurisdictions, is a possible defence against criminal liability.”
In fact, I don’t see why existing entrapment laws don’t apply here.
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just because someone consents, doesn’t mean they were not coerced. imagine a woman who is desperately addicted to heroin. offering her money (heroin) on the condition that she sleep with you is not leaving her much of a choice. sure, she does choose, but it’s almost like blackmail. if ten years from now when she is cleaned up and looks back on it, she might think the “john” took advantage of her. yes, I think generally forcible, violent rape is worse, but it may be an issue of degree rather than kind.
note: poverty alone, without drug addiction, can be another form of desperation that one exploits to coerce someone into sex. or the threat of a pimp.
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Hard to see how an arrest somehow retroactively turns a consensual sex act into rape. The whole idea of prostitution being illegal is absurd to begin with.
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That would be an argument against making anything illegal that someone could get away with. You do realize that some criminals will get away with their criminal acts, whether they’re drug dealers, murderers, and/or police officers, right?
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It’s not the arrest. It’s the deception to get consent.
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as I understand it, normally when a police officer busts someone for prostitution, if they say “hello, would you sleep with me for $100” and she says ok, then that is entrapment, but if they say, “hey, how’s it going? you selling?” and she says “$100 for sex” then that is not entrapment. as long as you get them to propose the deal first. but I am no lawyer.
as an aside, it seems to me that in districts where it is forbidden for cops to sexually touch a suspect in any way, a quick way for a prostitute to determine whether or not a person is a cop (before making the deal) would be to get them to touch her breast or lightly kiss her- a cop would technically not be able to do that and thus be exposed.
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So lying to get someone to sleep with you - about LITERALLY WHO YOU ARE - doesn’t matter?
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Yeah, I’m sure their regular Johns never lie to them. The consent was acquired by the promise of money, which has to take place for the arrest to occur. And it’s well established law that the police can lie in performing their duties.
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It’s already illegal for a cop to use the services of a prostitute – an off duty one, or one on duty who is just in the mood. This petition is about sting operations where the cop is sleeping with the prostitute in order to catch them being a prostitute. I don’t know how it works with other crimes. Can a cop bust a drug dealer after doing lines of cocaine with them?
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Do those lies generally affect whether or not the sex worker would have had sex with the john?
If not, I fail to see how it is relevant.
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Yeah, up to a point[1] having sex with someone under false pretenses is absolutely rape. Impersonating someone, fr’instance.
[1] I say ‘up to a point’ because a certain amount of misunderstanding, omission, and deception is normal background noise in all human relationships. But ‘undercover cop’ is not even close to the ‘normality’ line. It’s monstrous, is what it is. Also, why on God’s Green Earth do you even go after prostitutes? Pimps, sure. Johns, by all means, though it really should just be legal. But prostitutes? Why? What gain for society at large is bought by their suffering, precisely?
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