The Venkatesh-Levitt paper on the economics of prostitution in Chicago shows that prostitutes are arrested about one out of every 450 tricks—but are forced to give “freebies” to police for about 3% of their tricks to avoid arrest.
On the one hand, I’m appalled at the utter corruption exhibited by law enforcement here, and wonder to what extent this illegal “perk” acts as a public-choice rationale for law enforcement to oppose legalization and regulation of brothels.
On the other hand, that 3% of labor extorted by the police is a heck of a better rate than the 30% or so tax rate various governments make me pay…
See also: Howley @ Reason; Balko @ Reason.
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In Virginia, one police agency was actually allowing its officers to “do the deed” with prostitutes as part of their sting operations. I think that if I were the judge, I would throw out cases involving that activity by police on some kind of dignity-of-the-tribunal grounds.
Still, I wonder if applications to this department went up in the wake of the publicity…
Well, the 3% is a surcharge. Presumably the women involved are as liable for income taxes as you and I are (albeit perhaps in a lower bracket), but there’s just no enforcement against them.
The thing that surprises me is that the 3% figure is so low. Corruption of law enforcement goes hand-in hand with this sort of “morals” legislation. Remember the old TV series, “The Untouchables,” where a small group of honest federal agents battled mob bootleggers during Prohibition because all the local cops were on the take? The same thing occurs with drug trafficking, only on a much larger scale. All this might be worth the price if the laws actually worked, but they don’t Prostitution and the drug trade flourish, the cops are paid off and the profits go to organized crime. What a deal!
Please keep in mind this report is far from being good data. The 3% figure is taken from the verbal estimates for the street hookers, most of whom are high on drugs. Real data would have a researcher doing observations of the hookers to determine how much money they are really making and how many so called “fee-bes” are going to police.
If the IRS offered me that deal I’d really have to think about it.
Ned, above, starts by saying how “surprised” he is by the 3% figure because it is rather low. Why is he surprised? Because he accepts the “prohibitionist” argument that government/police corruption goes hand-in-hand with “morals” laws. Yet this study clearly shows rather little corruption. Perhaps an empiril approach would show that corruption/crime are a function of something else and that, in the right context, morals laws on balance improve the public welfare.
“3%” is hardly low if it means a police officer is 15 times more likely to have sex with a prostitute than to arrest her.
So if they legalized it in Chicago, prostitution would go down by 3%. AND the cops could spend more time fighting real crime instead of sleeping with those naughty prostitutes.
I suspect that many of the “freebies” are in fact a quid-pro-quo for protection. After all, these women can’t exactly go to the police every time they are beaten up by their pimps/johns.
Perhaps the women maintain contact with these police in the event they need protection.
Of course, if this were legalized/regulated, they could approach police without risk of punishment.
The police arrest men for the same thing.the law is the law,the police are no different than us.