Sheriff: Craigslist 'largest source of prostitution' in US

[Sub Atomic]

Source: The Age

An Illinois sheriff filed a lawsuit against Craigslist on Thursday calling the popular website the largest clearing house for prostitution in the United States.

Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart sued the owners of the classified ad site in the US District Court for facilitating prostitution by failing to block blatant offers to trade sex for money.

"Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation," Dart said at a press conference in Chicago.

"Missing children, runaways, abused women and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they're being pimped on Craigslist."

Dart's lawsuit was filed four months after San Francisco-based Craigslist settled a nationwide lawsuit by promising to enact new rules to crack down on prostitution.

Dart said his officers have seen no change in the number or type of postings in the "Erotic Services" section since the website's owner promised "sweeping changes" and said "no amount of criminal activity is acceptable".

Read more: http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-technology/sheriff-craigslist-largest-source-of-prostitution-in-us-20090306-8q8s.html

[DS1]

1. that's

http://www.Craigslist.com

[Traveling_Home]

2. Thanks - saved me from typing the address ;-)

[billyoc]

8. Wow, thanks, in my excitement, I forgot the 's'.

:evilgrin:

[high density]

13. hmm

m4w = 1000 ads
w4m = 1 ad

:rofl:

Bit of a supply and demand problem there.

[KamaAina]

15. Funny, I thought it was

http://vitter.senate.gov

[tridim]

3. Well in that case it's also the largest LEAD.

Stop compaining and start arresting the pimps.

[Donnachaidh]

4. heck - they had an ad in my area, looking for people who would work in a porn flick

Other than that, I haven't seen much prostitution posting. :shrug:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Dart's the guy that suspended evictions here for a while.

He was seeing too many innocent renters getting kicked out because the landlords weren't paying the mortgages.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1849454,00.html

[olddad56]

6. All I have ever bought on Craigslist was a trumpet...

It never occurred to me to look for a frump_ette.

[Chulanowa]

7. Try "strumpet" - And good luck!

[Robb]

9. Two things struck me

...from a related CNET article:

...Sheriff Tom Dart has asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the Web publication's Erotic section. Cook County also wants $100,000 in compensation for the man hours the county has had to pay police to investigate alleged criminal services being advertised on the site.

and from both articles:

...Craigslist managers have yet to receive a copy of the complaint issued by the Cook County Sheriff.

[endarkenment]

10. So legalize adult sex services and end the problem.

There is simply no valid reason to continue to persecute adults trading for sex.

[oedura]

16. Agreed...

Legalize it, then regulate and tax the hell out of it. Marijuana, too.

[cascadiance]

18. Unfortunately, we'll probably wind up legalizing torture sooner than that...

:(

[Politicalboi]

11. Yes legalize prostitution

Tax it and open up safe brothels.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

28. oh great... that libertarian/feminist fantasy again

Lots of mindless rambing about "freedom of choice" and "consenting adults" and scant discussion of causation.
More interest in the theoretical right of a woman to prostitute herself rather than asking WHY is she prostituting herself.

[Hugabear]

31. Mindless rambling about "freedom of choice" and "consenting adults"?

WTF? Why shouldn't a woman have the right to engage in sex for money IF SHE CHOOSES? Why is sex the only legal service which is illegal to exchange money for? Because many people have a moral objection to it? Because it hurts some people?

Fuck. If you want to use that line of logic, then there are PLENTY of legal things that are harmful, that perhaps we should start making illegal. Let's start with premarital sex and adultery, bring back those laws. Let's make the only LEGAL sex between married couples. :sarcasm:


BTW - many of the problems with prostitution could be reduced by simply legalizing and regulating it.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

32. Freedom is the freedom from coercion

I guess a woman is "choosing" to be a prostitute instead of being murdered by gangsters.
I guess a woman is "choosing" to be a prostitute instead of not paying her rent.
I guess a woman is "choosing" to be a prostitute instead of not feeding her children.
I guess a woman is "choosing" to be a prostitute to feed an addiction.

Unfortunately people around here base their thoughts on the sex trade on HBO, Showtime and superficial philosophizing. However the segment of the sex trade on which people are forming their opinions is so small as to represent nothing.

Removing all other options and then saying somebody made a free choice is the ultimate in Rush logic.

Unfortunately the trafficking of women is something I have had much too close a look at in my lifetime to fall for simplistic libertarian rhetoric on the subject.

[Hugabear]

34. Once again. The ONLY legal service which is illegal to exchange money for.

You can parse it however you want, but you're still taking someone's freedom away from them.

As for the trafficking of women, I would put forth that much of that exists because prostitution is illegal. Make it legal, bring it out into the open, and it should be a lot easier to crack down on that. You can still be charged with a crime for forcing someone to do something they don't want to do. But you can't paint all prostitutes with the same broad brush. I know it might be hard for some people to accept this - and some people do not want to accept this - but there are some prostitutes who actually enjoy what they do. Some women honestly enjoy having sex! If a woman has sex with random strangers for free, we don't charge her with a crime simply for being a nymphomaniac. But the minute she decides she can earn some easy cash for doing what she likes, our society deems that she should be charged with a crime.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

36. you couldn't be looking at a smaller sliver of the picture

The traffiking of women has little to do with the legality of prostitution in a given jurisdiction, why don't you go visit a brothel in Europe and count the number western european women offering their services, unless your shopping in the same leauge as Elliot Spitzer, your choices as far as western girls go will be a couple of drug addicts and transvestites. The brothels are full of women who have been traffiked for sex - the only difference is when the police raid the brothels they are there looking for illegal immigrants and not prostitutes. The traffikers virtually always get off because their victims are promptly deported, they also won't run away because their keepers tell them that they will be executed by the police if they don't have a visa.

I completely accept there are women who freely choose to participate in the sex trade, as Bill Maher put it some girls would rather blow the colonel than work at KFC, but you are the one with the broad brush bringing virtually all prostitution under the umbrella of Belle de Jour.

[Hugabear]

37. Sorry, you're the one with the broad brush

You admit that there are some women who sell their services of their own free will. You admit that not all women are drug addicts or trafficked (the "Elliot Spitzer" league). Yet you would still treat ALL of these girls the same, force them to sell their services illegally, subject them to prosecution.

I stand by my position. Make it legal. Bring it into the light of day. Then once you've done that, then go after the traffickers. Educate women. Offer them better choices. I admit that there are plenty of women who go into prostitution because they need drug money, or are desperate to pay their bills, or many other reasons. Not everyone who is a prostitute enjoys doing it. But once you make it legal, then you can start treating the reasons why they go into prostitution.

BTW, should we make pornography illegal? If your answer to that is yes, then where do you draw the line?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

38. how what % do you actually think they are?

Of all the women, and men for that matter participating in the sex trade how many of them do you actually believe at some point in their development when their friends were talking about being vets, pilots, firefighters and rockstars decided that fucking strangers for money was the career for them and how many are pushed into it by some sort of coercive force (poverty, trafikking, addiction, organized crime etc)

I don't think pornography should be illegal and to my great shame I have scumbag family in the porn industry, they specialize in the stupid girl from Kansas getting sodomized without a condom in a motel room genre. While highly exploitive to most of its participants it isn't associated with the massive criminality associated with prostitution legal or otherwise.

[Dappleganger]

12. I am far more concerned about all the puppy mills that Craislist allows

churning out BYB puppy after puppy, then those who choose to sell themselves.

It's absolutely appalling how selling animals for profit is so easily tolerated on CL.

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. Craisgslist has- or used to have- a disclaimer about pet sales.

did not do any good.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Look at this ad on our local craigslist site. A hoot

Massage Therapist Needed

I am looking for a female Massage therapist. I am very active in weight training and other athletic events, and am searching for a person who will be willing to give full body massages. I am willing to pay for the session but given that i am a college student there is a balance. Experience is not needed. If you think you can massage for around an hour then you should be fine.

[rpannier]

19. Seems to me that this would make it easy to find the perpetrators

No more spending gas driving around the streets picking up people.

Set up a date and time and arrest them one-after-another.

[Nevernose]

21. They do that

And yet there still seems to be a never-ending supply of both hookers and johns. I wonder why that is?

[tanngrisnir3]

22. Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea the resources that would eat up?

In personnel, time, money, etc....?

Chicago has FAR greater concerns than this penny-ante bullshit.

[bemildred]

20. Why do we hate the free market? nt

[corpseratemedia]

23. Craigslist: Largest Source of Toby Mugs in US

Craigslist: Largest Source of People Who Don't Show Up After Setting Up A Time to Meet With You

[ngant17]

24. anyone can flag inappropriate postings on craigslist

and this seems to work rather well in the local craigslist that I occasionally logon to.

It's possible that craigslist could tweak the system a little, but as it's a free system and there is very little administration compared to other sites like ebay or online newspaper ads, I don't think they should be singled out to make costly and expensive upgrades. It would become unusable for the majority of users.

I have never purchased anything advertised on craigslist, nothing at at reasonable price, but I have found a lot of decent freebies there (i.e. free Washingtonian palms by a tree company going out of business).

[grondramb]

25. Consider the complaints that "justify protitution laws"

1. Pimps and other exploitation - by cutting through that Craig's list is much less exploitative.

2. Street walkers drag down neighborhoods and cause street crime - well, Craig's list is electronic and if anything, reduces street walking.

3. Prostitution is associated with STD's and drug addiction -ok, Craig's list can't fix everything. :) That's gonna take legalization, regulation and education.

[Kablooie]

26. Any Republican that fights prostitution must be a john himself. That's just how they do things.

[christx30]

27. Look at the ones that

scream the loudest against prostitution. Then remember Hamlet... "Me thinks doth protest too much"

[XemaSab]

29. A man can't walk down the street anymore without getting propositioned by

38DD-24-38 all natural blonde ladies willing to do Greek for 300 roses an hour. :cry:

[christx30]

30. Sheesh.

where are you walking? I need to take a stroll somewhere

[Taverner]

33. Someone needs to teach that copper that Prositution =/= Child Abductions

[Doremus]

35. I think Craigslist should get rid of their "Adults" section entirely.

It reflects badly on them, imo.

Even the political discussions are horrible. Racism, cursing, hatefulness everywhere.