Hiring away prostitutes is illegal, court rules (CA Sup. Ct.)

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(06-02) 16:02 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- California's Pandering Law, which forbids encouraging anyone to "become a prostitute," applies to a pimp who tries to recruit a current prostitute to work for him, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The 5-2 decision upheld a Los Angeles man's four-year prison sentence and resolved a long-standing dispute over the 1953 pandering law, which covers operators of prostitution rings and brothels. The crime is punishable by three to six years in prison.

The law was aimed at pimps who try to enlist others to work for them as prostitutes, Justice Carol Corrigan said in the majority opinion. When a pimp offers protection to a current prostitute in exchange for her income, she said, "the offer increases the likelihood that the prostitute will be able to maintain or expand her activities."

Dissenting justices countered that the law may have intended to punish pimps who recruited prostitutes, but it wasn't worded that way.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/02/BAFD1JOSEP.DTL

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Case: People v. Zambia. All the currently active California Supreme Court justices are Republican nominees.

[bloomington-lib]

1. Pimping will never be the same

[Poll_Blind]

2. It's canes at half mast for the rest of the week.

Leprechaun regalia and beard-dying will be unaffected, however.



PB

[SoapBox]

3. Here's the only PIMP that should be in jail....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1187020

[quakerboy]

5. While he should probably be in jail

saying he is the ONLY pimp deserving of jail seems a bit... wrong.

[caseymoz]

4. What an odd statement Justice Corrigan makes

If the prostitute is more likely to stay in the business if she changes employers, doesn't that imply that pimps, by and large, might be making working conditions easier for prostitutes? I'm not saying that's the case, it could be that he oppresses her more (though the fact that the prostitute is changing to that pimp probably says the opposite). It's just hard to go from there and say her changing pimps was more or less harmful to her or society than if she had stayed. Also, as I haven're read the ruling yet, does the justice base this on any evidence? Are there any studies that show that prostitutes who had more than one pimp are more likely to stay in after the switch than those who don't switch, or those who have no pimps?

What this ruling really might do is make it far harder for prostitutes to leave really abusive pimps. The pimps meanwhile, will know that their cohorts will be far less likely to take their prostitutes and will be more encouraged to be on their worst behavior toward them.

But who cares about the prostitutes anyway? They deserve worse conditions. They did it to themselves, and if we could make things horrible enough for them, they'll leave the business.

:sarcasm:

The freedom to change employers seems a basic right to me, even you're in illicit activities, but now prostitutes are being deprived of that basic right, too. To what purpose?

No, I don't like pimps, but I really don't hate this finding any excuse to stack up charges for any sex-, or even pleasure-related offense, especially when we have overloaded prisons anyway.

Pandering: I always thought, was bringing somebody into the sex business that wasn't in there before. The idea of harm here was that once the person is in the sex business it's hard to leave and the stigma is hard to get rid of, and likely the crime was aimed at younger people, who wouldn't know the lifetime trap they would be getting into. (I know the person could be under-aged, too, and that's a different degree of harm covered by other charges.)

But for somebody who's already in it? What extra harm over and above pimping calls for an additional 3-6 years?

Really, this ruling is crooked. It's made just to stick it to somebody harder despite both legal history the plain, understood definition of pandering and ignoring the harm the charge was designed to redress.

[Festivito]

6. IMO Corrigan is a fool. "likelihood .. to maintain or expand" Likelihood?!

What if she begins to charge more and reduces her work load under a new pimp, what if she goes because her previous pimp forced excessive hours.

No increased prostitution.

If possible, then this robed judge Corrigan is an idiot. And, it is possible. So there it is.