Sex, money and 5-year sentences.

By Rick Holmes/Opinion editor

The MetroWest Daily News[MA]

Posted Aug 14, 2011 @ 12:24 AM
Like so many other industries, what is euphemistically called the world's oldest profession has been profoundly changed by the Internet. Streetwalkers no longer walk the streets advertising their wares. They set their appointments with cell phones and emails. They meet their customers out of sight in motel rooms and private homes.

That's good if you're worried about property values in certain neighborhoods. But it can make it harder for police to find the minors who are real victims of the skin trade.

There are still neighborhoods where sex is for sale, in all flavors, shapes and sizes, and they are as handy as the closest computer. These online neighborhoods aren't everyone's cup of tea. I go there with purely journalistic intentions, so you readers don't have to.

They seem to be popular places. Google "escorts Boston" and you get more than 10 million hits. There are agencies, with names like "Boston Bad Girls" and "I'm Temporarily Yours" and "Orient Delight," with galleries that make clear they are offering to escort you to the opera. Other sites offer strippers to liven up bachelor - or bachelorette - parties.

There are escort listings where sex workers can purchase ads. One online guide lists 162 female escorts in Boston; another lists 77 men. Then there are the free ads. CraigsList has been pressured into dropping its "adult services" ads, but there are plenty of other sites, like backpage.com, where there are hundreds of ads.

That's where Melissa Proal posted her ad, promising "Sexy blond waiting for the call." Last month, the call came from a john who wanted to set up a midnight rendezvous at a Framingham motel. Proal, 22, drove there with her husband and alleged partner in crime, Andrew Morris, 24. He stayed in the car while she went up to the room, where she had a brief business discussion with the customer, who turned out to be a Framingham cop. He proceeded to arrest Melissa and her husband, charging them with prostitution.

I won't try to paint Melissa as a happy hooker - she sure doesn't look happy in her police mugshot. Nor does her husband sound admirable - she had a restraining order out on him, but she also posted his bail. Theirs are among the faces of prostitution, and they aren't pretty.

Prostitution has other, prettier faces as well, like the high-priced escorts ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer patronized. Maggie McNeill, a retired call girl turned blogger ("The Honest Courtesan") contends that "there are plenty of intelligent, competent and even educated women who choose sex work for its many advantages over other forms of employment."

My question here isn't whether a particular adult prostitute is a sketchy loser or a clear-sighted entrepreneur. It's this: Should the taxpayers of Massachusetts pay upwards of $250,000 to lock up anyone who facilitates sex between adults for a fee?

Under a new bill on the verge of becoming Massachusetts law, that's a distinct possibility. The bill broadens the definition of pimp to include anyone who aids, abets or profits from "commercial sexual activity" and - in the Senate version at least - sets a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for the first offense.

Now, there are far sketchier people working the online red-light districts than the couple busted in Framingham, who are now awaiting trial. There are people who lure runaway teens into the sex trade and keep them working in virtual slavery through drug addiction and physical intimidation. There are those who illegally bring immigrants here on false promises and use threats of deportation to force them into prostitution.

Prosecutors and cops say there's an epidemic of sex trafficking in underage girls, though reliable data is hard to come by. It's even hard to get supporters of this bill to say what percentage of prostitutes are underage and what percentage are adults.

When pressed, supporters of anti-trafficking legislation say even adult prostitutes probably started when they were minors, and the scars they carry mean they are forever victims, and their agents, managers or spouses are traffickers just as surely as the scum who pick up runaways and turn them into hookers.

Let me be clear: There are nasty people in the neighborhood who abuse and exploit children, and if we need a better law in order to catch and punish them, I'm all for it. There is much in the proposed new law that is worthy, especially provisions for connecting young victims of the traffickers the services they need to rebuild their lives. Much of the bill is devoted to cracking down on "forced labor," which is an entirely different discussion.

But the proposed law goes beyond ridding the neighborhood of the exploiters of children. It seems to give law enforcement the authority to burn down the neighborhood altogether.

The bill stiffens penalties not just for prostitution involving minors, but for adult prostitution as well. Its provision criminalizing "sexually-explicit performances" wouldn't shut down legally-permitted strip clubs, which are protected by federal law, but the stripper hired for the bachelorette party would be risking hard time in the slammer.

The bill calls for fines of up to $1 million for business entities that participate in or profit from "sexual servitude." Would that shut down the agencies that send strippers to the bachelorette parties? What about the websites and newspapers where escorts advertise?

Supporters of the legislation I've talked to deny this is a stealth attack on consensual transactional sex between adults. Police and prosecutors use their discretion all the time to go after worst of the offenders. They wouldn't waste resources pursuing a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the guy who accompanied the "sexy blond" to the Framingham hotel.

Maybe, but police stings like the one in Framingham don't seem to be aimed at prostitution kingpins. If a prosecutor wanted to go after everyone posting a sexy ad on the Internet, this law gives him a powerful weapon.

What I'd like to know is what will this cost? How many traffickers do they expect to arrest? What will it cost to prosecute them? It costs $45,000 a year to house a man in the state prison system, $60,000 to house a woman. It costs more to prosecute someone facing a mandatory minimum sentence, especially in a case, as in this law, where suspended sentences, probation, parole and work release are explicitly forbidden.

Massachusetts prisons are among the nation's 10 most overcrowded. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the state prison system, designed to hold 8,000 inmates, now holds 11,300.

Politics feeds prison overcrowding, and prison costs. After a paroled criminal killed a police officer last fall, Gov. Deval Patrick shook up the parole board. As could have been predicted, parole rates have dropped since then, from 58 percent of eligible inmates to 35 percent.

As in many states, mandatory minimum sentences, mostly for drug offenses, are the biggest contributor to prison overcrowding. Such sentences are politically popular, but not particularly effective at reducing crime. Some criminologists argue that research shows that tougher sentences aren't nearly as effective at deterring crime as the swiftness and certainty of punishment.

"Right now we're imprisoning a lot of people we're mad at," criminologist Mark Kleiman told Reason Magazine. "We only ought to imprison people we're afraid of."

What would the proposed new state human trafficking law cost in terms of prosecution and corrections? You'd think that's exactly why such bills go to the Ways & Means Committee for approval. But a Senate source told me Ways & Means made no effort to estimate the number of prosecutions and the impact on prisons.

There are differences between the House and Senate versions of the trafficking bill, including provisions for mandatory minimums, which would only apply to repeat offenders in the House version. These are to be reconciled by a conference committee, which has yet to hold its first meeting.

Some of the state's political leaders, including Gov. Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley, have been critical of mandatory minimum sentences now in place. But they've been silent about the ones in the trafficking bill.

It's hard to blame them. No one wants to be seen standing up for sleazy pimps. Politicians don't like to criticize popular legislation, even if all they are doing is pointing out the danger of unintended consequences.

And this is a popular bill. It passed unanimously in the House and unanimously in the Senate. Sometimes unanimity is a sign that a bill has been meticulously crafted and all the questions answered. Sometimes it means that, because no one has asked the tough questions, it hasn't been thought through.

Which is it this time?