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LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

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Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#91

Post by dsfyu404ed »

>the law gave police probable cause for a traffic stop, since plenty of people at first ignored the signs. He added that such violations are especially useful for regular patrol officers, who might not have the training or experience to spot the signs of a potential sex-work transaction.

>"We used to stop cars all the time with the signs in Hollywood. The majority of the time it was residents, but now and again we’d hit someone who picked up a prostitute and catch them in the act

So basically now that LAPD goes fishing more often LAPD catches more fish.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#92

Post by partiallypro »

Won't this just become learned behavior? A lot of people that use prostitutes are repeat customers, they're just going to learn to not turn right. Seems to me that the turning right only serves to help police ticket or pull over individuals that could even be lost. It's basically like a speed trap that some neighborhoods enact to fund their towns and local police. Eventually it will move from punishing their actual target, to punishing everyone for ticket revenues.

Good luck getting it reversed. If there's one thing government is really good at, it's not reversing bad laws once their purpose has been served, especially if money becomes involved.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#93

Post by TangoTrotFox »

rifung wrote: post #15
swampthinker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile so I'll having trouble finding a source, but studies have unfortunately found that countries with legalized prostitution generally have higher trafficking rates.

Here you go: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-... "Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legaliz…

You're assuming direct causality. Think of the practically limitless number of major confounding variables here that are practically impossible to control for in a reasonable way. At the most fundamental think of the distinction between nations that legalize prostitution versus those that do not. There tends to be a very different system of ethos between these nations and this is going to trickle down to every single aspect of society.

So for instance I think it's extremely likely that you can show that legalizing certain drugs (such as marijuana) can be shown to 'cause' increases in sex trafficking. Of course it almost certainly does not but I'm making the educated assumption that nations that have legalized prostitution are going to have legalized drugs of various sorts more liberally than nations that still have criminalized prostitution. And so, lo and behold, we can show a correlation between legalizing drugs and sex trafficking if we assume that paper is correct that a link exists between sex trafficking and legalized prostitution.

Though indeed even the link itself should be called into question. For instance could the cause not be that legalization enables greater scrutiny over workers and thus the legalization itself helps to increase the detection efficiency of unlawful trafficking? Differences in what you're measuring mean nothing unless you are measuring things in the exact same way, with the exact same 'resolution'. Again you can try to control for things like this, but the controls are subject to just as many problems.

---

Maybe the most important issue here is that this is an issue that is incredibly difficult to do right even when you are 100% impartial and objective analysis is your one and only purpose. In reality people are biased, and a negative result means you basically just wasted however many months researching this topic. And this is a topic where you could, even without malice or intent, show anything to be true if you wanted by just seeking out slightly different data, or controlling for confounding issues in slightly different ways.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#94

Post by dsfyu404ed »

roenxi wrote: post #36
rifung wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-... "Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legaliz…

That study might be the best available, but it isn't very convincing - they are analysing a large number of countries and it doesn't look like they gathered the data first hand. Are all the statistics using a consistent definition of human trafficking? I have no faith that data between different countries is comparable on this issue, especially when it was apparently gathered from other sources. That is the sort of a…

>It is an extreme claim that legalising something causes crime rates to increase.

Not least because any increase also has to make up for all the crime that went away overnight when $thing became legal.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#95

Post by sokoloff »

chrisseaton wrote: post #60
blattimwind wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A, B, C and D columns are counted front to back. No magic ;) Notably the thick and angled A columns of modern cars create fairly large blind spots to the front left and right, while wide B columns are problematic for larger drivers, since the B column blocks visibility over the shoulder.

> No magic ;) Well you need to know that they refer to columns in the car's body in the first place.

Exactly. I'm a "car guy" and didn't connect "A column" to a car part. "A pillar" I'd have understood immediately.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#96

Post by sokoloff »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #66
dotancohen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homeless men with no skills sometimes find day labor jobs. They are much less often offered money or a place to stay in exchange for sex. This actually is not true. Some time ago I had opportune to speak with a homeless man about his situation, and his options. It turns out that he is offered money for sex quite often, perhaps daily. By his telling, he has never done it either. The proposals are from gay men.

I was on the street with my two adult sons. They each got such an offer once from a much older man. I had a lot more such offers. There may be the occasional statistical outlier. But, on average, you are going to see homeless women offered money for sex a great deal more often than homeless men. If you want to rebut that, please cite sources, not anecdata. I've had a class on homelessness and public policy. I spent n…

Though I don't doubt your specific claim, demanding others cite sources to rebut your own anecdata in a thread which includes complaints about double standards is...interesting.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#97

Post by learc83 »

zaroth wrote: post #27
DoreenMichele wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women frequently turn to prostitution, stripping et al because it's the only well paid work they can readily get. If career success in other fields were easier to access for women, it would be easier to make other choices.

This has become a trope. Women frequently turn to prostitution because it pays extremely well, too. Unemployment is 3.7%. Anyone remotely employable can get a job today, but especially women. Women made up ~47% of the workforce in 2017 and are on track to hold more jobs than men in a few years, even with a lower participation rate. Female unemployment rate trended significantly lower than male unemployment rate durin…

>And women hold special legal status to take leave to have children (there is no Federal paternity leave in the US, however some states offer it).

Are you talking about the FMLA? It covers fathers and mothers. It's also unpaid and only lasts 12 weeks.

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#98

Post by [deleted] »

kgwgk wrote: post #72
rv-de wrote: post #70

I'm from Germany. Maybe that is why I don't get it. Does "banning right turns at night" mean that it is banned to take a right turn at night? As in not being allowed to enter a crossing street in the right direction? ELI5, please. Thank you.

What is it that you don't get? From the article: "The idea was to discourage people from picking up a prostitute and pulling into a residential neighborhood to transact business."

[deleted]

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#99

Post by lawlessquestion »

krishicks wrote: post #84
sathackr wrote: post #7

So the signs are there so that the police have probable cause to stop someone that they otherwise wouldn't have probable cause to stop. Does anyone else see a problem with making otherwise perfectly legal and safe behavior(turning on to a side street) illegal just to legalize an otherwise unconstitutional traffic stop? Seems like another slippery slope we ought not to be sliding down.

Think of it another way: the locals overwhelmingly agreed to change the rules because they probably understood that while they could adapt to the rule, outsiders probably would not be as well-informed. Someone making a right turn after hours paints themselves as a potential outsider who doesn’t know the rules and, given the location’s history, is probably there to solicit sex. I like that the community was empowered…

The city is empowered to make the change. The court are empowered to overturn it as an unconditional restrictions on our liberty. Specificially the fourth amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things .

Re: LA Is Trying to Fix Its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night

#100

Post by EGreg »

lawlessquestion wrote: post #99
krishicks wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it another way: the locals overwhelmingly agreed to change the rules because they probably understood that while they could adapt to the rule, outsiders probably would not be as well-informed. Someone making a right turn after hours paints themselves as a potential outsider who doesn’t know the rules and, given the location’s history, is probably there to solicit sex. I like that the community was empowered…

The city is empowered to make the change. The court are empowered to overturn it as an unconditional restrictions on our liberty. Specificially the fourth amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly…

That just shows how smart the idea is of having a constitution and separating government powers.

And by the way, I guess UPS trucks can’t deliver at night now. Stuck between a rock and a hard place mwahaha

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/02/16/world/ups-trucks-no-left-...

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