California: Sanctuary State For Prostitutes

California SB 1322 was signed into law three months ago but it is still generating controversy. It's not exactly true that the bill legalizes child prostitution, but it does make prostitution laws "inapplicable to a child under 18 years of age." I don't think this is a wise move, but others do.

It's amazing to me how many people are pro underage kids being arrested for prostitution that they were most likely forced into

— Matt Jarbo (@mundanematt) December 31, 2016

Are most minors engaging in prostitution doing so against their will? This seems impossible to fact-check. But it does prop up this weird moral panic about sex trafficking.

What Matt Jarbo fails to concede is that if you cannot arrest a minor, then you take all prosecutorial discretion out of the toolbox. If you can't arrest, then you can't question, detain, or charge. How can the courts pressure a minor to reveal the name of their trafficker? The answer is, they can't. All police can do is take the minor into protective custody and turn them over to a social worker.

Once again, it amazes me how many people are ok with branding Child prostitutes with a Scarlet P for being a victim.

— Matt Jarbo (@mundanematt) December 31, 2016

It amazes me how many people don't realize that the arrest and conviction records of minors can be expunged.

To insist that someone wants to brand minors with a Scarlet P because they are a victim is a straw man. But I wonder how many minors who engage in prostitution are forced to? Someone as young as fourteen can win their emancipation in California. They are still under the age of consent, but they do possess plenty of agency.

When Traci Lords was fifteen years old, she posed nude in magazines like Juggs and Club. Her mother's boyfriend, "Roger Hayes," drove her to the World Modeling Talent Agency and posed as her stepfather. "Roger Hayes" almost certainly committed the crime of sex trafficking as we understand it, but he didn't force her to pose or do pornography soon after. Her young life to that point was filled with abuse and her sex work became a way for her to act out if not express her particular agency.

And I think this is how most examples of underage prostitution actually play out. Lawmakers would have you believe that girls are being packed like sardines in shipping containers and then forced to perform lurid sex acts in virtual prisons with guns at their head or that of a family member.

California as a state already operates as a sanctuary for millions of illegal immigrants. This makes California a sanctuary state for underage prostitutes, and will effectively subsidize the practice.