Unhappy over Hookers

Before setting off for the Crusades seven centuries ago, Louis IX of France ordered the kingdom's bordellos closed. Uprooted but unfazed, many French prostitutes proceeded to join the Crusaders, traipsing along to the Holy Land as camp followers. Modern rulers have not had much better luck. When the French government cracked down on prostitution three years ago, the ladies of the night took sanctuary in churches.

Other European countries have learned to live more or less equably with the oldest profession. But in such matters the New World is less tolerant and straightforward than the Old. Although prostitution is officially a crime, the U.S. supports an estimated half-million hookers, while trying to put them out of business with an incredible hodgepodge of laws. Both in letter and spirit the laws entangle the states in ambiguous moral and constitutional questions, often with confusing results.

Just this month, for instance, New York began to apply its new "anti-john" law, imposing stiffer penalties for prostitutes' clients (johns) who in the past usually got off with the equivalent of a traffic ticket. Early hauls have included a 69-year-old man from New Jersey, let off in deference to his age. Other offenders will not get off so lightly. For patronizing a prostitute under age 11, the term can run as high as seven years.

The anti-john law is only the latest effort by New York to cut off the most baneful aspect of the trade--traffic in minors --and to get prostitutes off the street. The city is still trying to enforce, with some success, the stiff, two-year-old antiloitering law (not coincidentally passed on the eve of the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City). Prostitution is somewhat less visible now. But the wording of the antiloitering law, which allows arrests for "repeated beckoning," is claimed to be unconstitutional. Once upheld by the New York State Court of Appeals, the law is being tested again by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Police trying to enforce it, at any rate, have swept up along with the hookers a 25-year-old Radcliffe graduate on the way home from the movies and a church worker counseling prostitutes. Meanwhile, pimps, the most noxious corner of the prostitution triangle, often go untouched. Convicting them is difficult because prostitutes are frequently afraid to testify against them. The Manhattan district attorney's office will use most of $200,000 it just received from the state for combating pimps to change the prostitutes' minds and lives with protection and "travel home" money.

Chicago has also been zeroing in on pimps this year. Last year the emphasis was on customers, who were picked up at the rate of 40 a night. That campaign has been taken up by local volunteers who have formed the Broadway Hookers Patrol, roaming Chicago's northeast side streets and shining flashlights in the faces of embarrassed johns and copying down their license plate numbers. Out in Joliet, Ill., the local paper hopes to cut down on the trade by printing the names of arrested johns. Included thus far on the Joliet list: a priest and a judge.

Chicago has had its loitering law against streetwalkers declared unconstitutional. Now police there, as is often the case in other cities, are forced to bring in prostitutes by charging them with disorderly conduct or traffic violations. Last week a lower court Detroit judge, William C. Hague, dismissed 84 prostitution cases. All over the country the struggle ebbs and flows: streetwalkers become brazen, the public complains, the city responds with tougher laws and arrests. The prostitutes move off the streets. The police start worrying more about muggers and murderers. The constitutionality of the law is challenged. The hookers return, like the tide. Police chiefs tend to sound like a gloomy Greek chorus about this endless cycle. The revolving door of the court system is expensive and fruitless. Prostitutes plead guilty; the judge slaps down a fine and lets them go. To pay the fine, they have to turn more tricks and soon wind up back in court.

Faced with the intractability of crime and street prostitution that the proliferation of pornography brings with it, Boston tried at least to keep it all in one place. The "combat zone," a two-block downtown area full of strip joints, peep shows and streetwalkers, was designated an Adult Entertainment District, and police tended to ignore "victimless crime." But in a few months the rate of street solicitation and crime, along with police corruption, rose alarmingly. After a Harvard football player was stabbed to death, the authorities had to crack down again.

Illicit and anonymous, afraid of the law, prostitutes are constantly driven into the underworld both as criminals and victims. Some civil libertarians believe that simply eliminating criminal sanctions against them would break the connection between prostitutes and crime. The view seems unrealistic, if only because street prostitutes, legal or illegal, acquire large amounts of tempting cash and need outside help in defending themselves as they ply their trade. A more practical solution is the one proposed by Chicago American Civil Liberties Union Attorney David Goldberger: "Prostitution is the world's oldest profession for a reason. It can't be stamped out. It at least ought to be legalized and regulated." That may be a long time coming, though not for reasons of law and law enforcement. Although he notes that legalized prostitution seems to work well in Amsterdam, Florida Prosecutor Leonard Glick warns that legalization along with necessary police protection is "not politically feasible in this country. The puritanic heritage of Americans just won't allow it."

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