police chief wants DNA database of men who use prostitutes

[ISNT]

Great idea [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bradford-west-yorkshire-12201907 here]

In theory this seems like a good idea, I'm not sure how it would work in practice though. Prostitutes are at huge risk of all sorts of violent assault and murder, and I'll bet that the men who abuse prostitutes abuse other people in their lives too. This would make finding them and linking cases a lot quicker.

Men who use prostitutes are obviously quite happy to exploit and inflict sexual (and other) violence on under privileged women. IMO their behaviour is quite clearly criminal - the fact that they are let off scot free is outrageous and hugely misogynistic.

Some studies have shown that men who use prostitutes are more likely to spout rape myths, coerce women for sex and engage in 'hostile masculinity'.

(from the Scottish report)

"One-fourth to one-third of the men we interviewed endorsed rape-tolerant attitudes. A third of the punters stated that rape happens because men get sexually carried away (32%) or their sex drive gets ?out of control? (34%). 12% told us that the rape of a prostitute or call girl was not possible. 10% asserted that the concept of rape simply does not apply to women in prostitution."

"Prostitution affects not only how men think about women, it also influences their actual
behaviour toward women, including sexual aggression against non-prostituting women."

Thanks for the links beachcomber.

Just reading that first report now. It's a small study obviously, and the people who decided to take part have self selected.

But I am slightly staggered at the fact 1/3 of them report themselves as left wing but that ties in with the horrors of the guardian comments page I guess.

Just going to cut and paste a few bits as I read it.

"22% of our interviewees explained that once he pays for it, the customer is entitled to do
whatever he wants to the woman he buys. These attitudes are what make prostitution so
dangerous for the women. One of the men we interviewed stated, ?They?ll basically do
anything for money.? The belief that the money they paid cancelled out the harm or exonerated
the punter was a recurring theme in our interviews."

Yes it certainly does ISNT.

I think that's where we see the total and complete failure of the political left, to genuinely engage with women's issues tbh.

They've been shit.

Not as shit as the right, but then, I expect the right to be shit.

Oh btw, the race tangent was introduced in order to be a red herring and get people off the subject of the disgusting men who use prostituted women and try to deflect us all onto racism etc., which obviously is infinitely more important than sexism or prostitution, because sexism and prostitution is only about women.

This part is pertinent to the question at hand I think:

"We used a scale developed by Koss and Oros (1982) that assessed sexually coercive behaviours
such as verbally or physically threatening a partner or using physical force in order to obtain
sexual intercourse. 54% of the men who frequently used women in prostitution had committed
sexually aggressive acts against non-prostitute partners compared to 30% of the less frequent
users. The more frequently a punter used women in prostitution, the more likely he was to have
committed sexually coercive acts against non-prostituting women (chi-square 1, 109) = 4.701, p
= .030).
10% of the men we interviewed stated that they would rape a woman if they could be assured
that they would not be caught. Acknowledging their sexually coercive behaviours with nonprostitute women, 12% told us that they had had sex with a woman partner after they had
continually verbally pressured her into sex. 43% had pressured women into having sex by lying
to them.
In similar findings,Monto and McRee (2005) compared 1672 U.S. men who had been arrested
for using women in prostitution with U.S. men who had not used women in prostitution. In the
national samples, men who were either first time or repeat users of women in prostitution were
significantly more likely to have raped a woman than non-punters."

In the article Dittany posted earlier on, it talked about that Birmingham brothel that got raided, where some of the girls were detained at Yarls Wood awaiting deportment, and the men were let go scot free.

Ignorance is not, in law, AFAIK, an acceptable plea - if you handle stolen goods, whether or not you know they are stolen, you can be prosecuted.

Why aren't men who are caught in brothels that use traffiked girls arrested and prosecuted for rape? It would be the easiest rape trial ever!

Couldn't there be some sort of campaign to get men prosecuted for rape when they pay for sex with traffiked women? Might make them think twice...?

Flamingo I think they changed the law fairly recently so that now any man who has sex with a coerced or trafficed woman can be prosecuted, even if he didn't know.

I don't think that any men have yet been charged under it though

Or at least they hadn't a while back as someone linked to an article.

Good idea

Hmmm, I'm a bit on the fence about this one.

I absolutely agree that for someone that's gone through an awful experience of physical or sexual abuse, whether they are a prostitute or not, to have more faith that the criminal will be caught and dealt with quickly must be a slight comfort.

However, I do think that in this day and age of so much information being kept ANYWHERE that are too many chances of the information being hacked into or even worse (as is natural human error), wrongly labelled. I have no idea how the information is stored, etc. but what would happen if you get a large number of samples in at once and the wrong name gets put against one? As much as I'm sure it will be resolved , that person will go through hell in the meantime and their life could be destroyed as a consequence of the error.

Similarly, the Police are under so much pressure now with targets to meet etc, is there a chance that individuals can be used as scapegoats? I would very much hope not and highly unlikely, but mistakes can be made.

So as much as it's a good idea, I would be very worried about the logistics of it and how secure a process it would be for everyone involved...

Surely those arguments apply with existing databases though...

I agree with you though that the practicalities and logistics of it are pretty horendous, and as ever you have the problem of driving things underground.

It's a tricky one but I think this police officer has raised it to provoke conversation and raise awareness, which has worked, here anyway!

I'm not opposed to a national DNA database. DNA matches are relied upon overmuch atm (due to statistical misunderstandings). Having a national sample would throw up say, half a dozen matches for a crime which could then be investigated more efficiently.

If sex workers could be persuaded to give punter details to the police, that could make a massive difference to crimes of violence against women. The fact that it'd be almost impossible to do this accurately is one of the reasons I'm in favour of legalising the trade ... but am not arguing that point again just yet!

Andrew, I'm impressed by your software but suggest it's given you a duff lead in this case!

Maybe, your worries are certainly valid but I'm afraid those things happen already. People are scapegoated (wrongly convicted) because they're "weird" and fit a psychologicl profile. At least DNA gives statistical odds. Also, of course, things like blood samples and digital records are mislabelled, lost & stolen sometimes. It's not a perfect world.

On the upside - think about how often you use a credit card for telephone & online transactions, then about how often you've suffered identity theft. The vast majority of people ARE honest; most systems DO work :)

visiting a prostitute is illegal, though, isn't it? I thought selling sex wasn't but paying for it was?

"What I'm worried about is that people would assume they were guilty before proven innocent, and this would create a society in which there was almost an encouragement to rape, as there'd be little or no additional punishment or taboo, once you paid for sex. "
Good point IMO

All terrorists are Muslims are they? What a ridiculous statement.

Sorry, all tjose comments were aimed at different people, obviously