The Lakewood City Council, in an effort to curtail prostitution, unanimously approved an ordinance this week to require escorts and escort services to obtain licenses.
That seems unlikely.
The idea for the new regulation may have sprung from good intentions, but it also has the potential to create many unwanted consequences.
The law’s purpose is, specifically, to create tighter controls on Internet-advertised prostitution by requiring escorts to be photographed, fingerprinted, undergo a background check and pay a registration fee.
Lakewood police requested this regulation when the department became increasingly concerned about the shift from street-walking prostitution to Internet-fronted “escort services.”
“Because it is our experience that escort services typically are fronts for prostitution, it is important to have a way to deal with that issue,” Lakewood Police Chief Kevin Paletta explained. “This new law provides us an additional tool to work on curbing prostitution, which is often associated with other crimes such as drug use, assault and theft.”
Conceivably, the law may be useful as a tool to pre-emptively discourage prostitutes from using the phrase “escort” to advertise their services, and it may also help shut down criminal entities calling themselves escort services. But there is little evidence to suggest that government licensing of escort services will actually curb prostitution in a meaningful way.
What the law may do, however, is alter how prostitutes conduct their business. Those convicted in Lakewood Municipal Court for failing to obtain this license, for instance, would face a $1,000 fine or a year in jail, or both — which is the identical penalty for conviction of prostitution.
So what is the incentive for an escort to pay a fee and call attention to themselves and their vocation?
These kinds of escorts would only be opening themselves up to two crimes rather than one.
Moreover, we find it highly unlikely that those engaging in illicit behavior would voluntarily walk down to city hall and hand over their names and personal information, anyway.
In fact, prostitutes, more than likely, will now find a number of routes to bypass this law.
They may head to other outlying neighborhoods without such licensing laws, they may go deeper underground by adopting different language online, or they may even head back to the streets, which of course would be counterproductive.
We understand that law enforcement has difficulty enforcing laws against prostitution. So while we find the effort admirable, pushing prostitutes off the Internet and back to streets is not what Lakewood needs.
