The issue of victimless crimes has always been a subject for debate, as for the definition it stands for the violation of the law with no victims involved other than morality and the public order. As the definition of morality is sometimes varied through history, culture, it is hard to distinguish the visible boundaries of morality. This definition may refer to drug use, prostitution, and public sexual activities. In this essay the issue of one of these acts which are prostitution will be covered, such factors as who works in this business, morality, and the motives may help to understand the topic more clearly.
In the context of criminology, prostitution could fall under the public order crimes, as the act of commercial trade between the customer and the prostitute for sexual services.
There are many types of prostitution that can be classified depending on the place and the circumstances of such trade, although not changed in the context. In prostitution, such categories exist, Streetwalkers, bar girls, call girls, brothel, prostitutes, escort services, circuit travelers, and cyber prostitutes. As it seems that there might be another sub-category of this activity, but they are not significant, and also as it might be noticed that the name of categories refers to the distinguishing characteristics of the type of prostitution.
In recent decades the pursue of prostitution as a crime has been debatable and can be noticed that it switched from the search for public morality issues to concerns related such as inequity, abuse, violence, and privacy.
The circumstances in which push toward prostitution vary although mostly around social problems which include poverty in urban or rural communities, family splits, child sexual abuse and exploitations, and drug abuse.
As seen from the factors included in prostitution it is noticed that except for the poverty and family splits, the rest of the factors are criminally associated and have no doubts in its legality.
The association in the law and morality in the subject of prostitution is been a wide concern as prostitution can be considered as one of the oldest phenomena of humankind in a way of practicing trades.
The victimless factor can reveal as it was mentioned that the general causes of this phenomenon are mostly criminal in itself and can be turned into the prostitutes into victims themselves; however different opinions may occur in such context. Sherry F. Colb, J.D., Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at Rutgers Law School, wrote in a Dec. 17, 2006 e-mail to ProCon.org “Prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes are not committing an inherently harmful act. While the spread of disease and other detriments are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way of exacerbating rather than addressing such effects.
We saw this quite clearly in the time of alcohol prohibition in this country….What makes prostitution a ‘victimless crime’ in the sense that no one is necessarily harmed by it is that there are consenting adults involved.”
Where the other opinion and definition at the same time of the victim concept in the words of Andrew Arena, a special agent in FBI, “Illegal prostitution is not a victimless crime. The FBI is part of the apparatus in place to protect people, sometimes even from their own poor choices”.
No matter how this debate goes the status of prostitution in the US is illegal in all but two states of Nevada and Rhode Island, with conditions of indoor privacy and the limit of residents in the county.
The implication of the religion and the church and Christianity in particular, although emphasizes on the moral value and switches from the legality factor, their teachings sometimes and morality they use are not enough for a legal action to be taken against a moral violation.
In separating the law and the religion it was obvious that the rules of privacy are not contained in the global morality issues.
To decrease the rates of prostitution that in this context will NOT be defined as a victimless crime is to remove the factors that cause this to appear. In the Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 found that: 85 percent of their prostitute clients reported a history of sexual abuse in childhood while 70 percent reported incest.
The victims as can be seen are the prostitutes themselves, and the crimes that were reported are not crimes against public order. Therefore in stating the prostitution is a public crime in legality and immoral activity by religion, several considerations should be made in separating the legal and social actions in solving this problem. But I guess that all the religions could not totally terminate prostitution, therefore the answer in minimizing the rates of such activities and differing when it is a matter of adult choice, or exploitation resulted from excessive violent abuse along with poverty and unemployment problems.