• City urged to seize johns’ cars [ Toronto Star ]
• Shedding light on the matter [ Toronto Star ]
• One-cent campaign earning Miller some criticism [ Globe and Mail ]
• Spending review ‘not a vendetta’ [ National Post ]
• ‘We need to be more aware:’ Mayor [ Toronto Sun ]
• Volunteers to make parks safer [ Toronto Sun ]
photo by Rannie Turingan for Spacing
5 comments
Ugh, impound johns’ cars? Moscoe’s criticism is dead-on, but even further, prostitution in Canada is legal and we are trying to REPEAL the rule that outlaws “communication for the purposes of prostitution”, not strengthen it.
I lived for for a long time in an area that had a lot of hookers. Lets be clear, whatever you think about paying for sex, it will not go away, the only route is to make it as safe as posssible for sex workers, and to reduce its impact on communities as much as possible.
Every once in a while there is a “shame the Johns” march, or “impound the vehicles” call and after a short while everything returns to “normal”.
One has to ask, what are johns being legally charged for ? I feel that the real isssue is the impact that prostitution has on a community; and thats it. No moral judgements or crusades (or real estate values wrapped up as a moral issue), just the sheer impact in terms of traffic, safety, and the undesirables that tend to live off the unregulated sex trade culture. If people want to pay or sell for sex I don’t care as long is everybody is safe.
These periodic campaigns make people feel they are doing something but only regulation and the ceation of a red light zone will have any impact. And even then like in the well regulated Holland, there will still be sex trade workers and johns that choose to work outside of the system no matter how dangerous.
And lastly there are many many problems with the concept of seizing cars. Beware, if they do it for this, they will start doing it for parking tix!
What’s up with this presumption that johns are married, since this measure is apparently constructed to alert wives and partners? Hey, who says they *don’t* know? How moralistic.
What do you do about the John’s that aren’t married and don’t have girlfriends who don’t care being caught? Maybe many John’s are paying for sex because they are not in a relationship. What do you do about those dudes? What if you solicit in a bicycle, will they take your bike away? Or what if you do it while going for a walk? Will they take your shoes? This is so stupid. The only thing that I like about this idea is that there will be at least a tiny little fraction of cars (-0.00001%?) off the street until the John’s pick up the cars from the impound…
Alcohol: used to be more restricted, now a major revenue stream. Gambling: used to be more restricted, now a major revenue stream.
Tobacco: used to be less restricted, still a major revenue stream.
Cannabis: used to be more restricted, wasted revenue stream. Sex work: used to be even more restricted, wasted revenue stream.
They’re called ‘sin-taxes’ by some. Moral judgements aside, people are going to do these things. We don’t let people sell any grade of hooch they’d like. We have some, rather poor, oversight over gambling. We have some, rather poor, oversight over tobacco. None over drugs or sex-work; is it any surprise that organised crime dominates drugs and sex-work?
Tax them, regulate them, neither encourage nor discourage them. All of them fulfill a need; each of them is not a danger if done with due consideration of the risks.