Study: Decriminalized Prostitution Lead to Reduced Rape and Venereal Diseases

The Wall Street Real Times Economic blog refers to a study which sees substantial social benefits from decriminalized prostitution (italics mine)

A loophole in Rhode Island law that effectively decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 also led to significant decreases in rape and gonorrhea in the state, according to a new analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“The results suggest that decriminalization could have potentially large social benefits for the population at large – not just sex market participants,” wrote economists Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Manisha Shah of the University of California, Los Angeles, in a working paper issued this month.

Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Shah got an opportunity to study the effects of decriminalized prostitution on crime and public health because Rhode Island lawmakers made a mistake. A 1980 change to state law dealing with street solicitation also deleted the ban on prostitution itself, in effect making the act legal if it took place indoors. The loophole apparently went unnoticed until a 2003 court decision, and remained open until indoor prostitution was banned again in 2009.

The effects:

As you might expect, the economists found that decriminalizing indoor prostitution was a boon to the sex business. “Decriminalization decreased prostitute arrests, increased indoor prostitution advertising and expanded the size of the indoor prostitution market itself,” they wrote.

Rhode Island also saw “a large decrease in rapes” after 2003, while other crimes saw no such trend in the state, they wrote. There also was “a large reduction in gonorrhea incidence post-2003 for women and men,” they wrote.

The economists then used several economic models to track the decriminalization’s effects versus other possible causes. They found “robust evidence across all models that decriminalization caused rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decrease.” One model estimated a 31% decrease in per-capita rape offenses and a 39% decrease in per-capita female gonorrhea cases due to the decriminalization of indoor prostitution.

Cited reasons

In the paper, they speculated about several possible reasons for the declines. For instance, they wrote that it’s likely at least some of the decrease in rapes was “due to men substituting away from rape toward prostitution.” And the decrease in gonorrhea jibes with “other empirical evidence showing that prostitutes who work indoors practice safer sex and are less likely to contract and transmit STIs,” they wrote.

The cited reasons are unsatisfactory. Nonetheless all prohibition statutes revolve around people's incentives.

Transactions conducted illegally will not only mean exchange in services but importantly conducting exchange while avoiding detection from authorities. This implies the following:

First, the illegitimacy of such transactions engender an in imbalance in the relationship between prostitutes and their respective clients. Such imbalance has the potential to motivate some clients to abuse prostitutes. For instance, a client, for one reason or another, may threaten to snitch on the prostitute to the authorities, so the client's unilateral power over the politically repressed prostitute may serve as a trigger for rape and violence.

Thus, decriminalizing prostitution which implies the leveling of legal position between prostitutes and their clients, extrapolates to the balancing of the trade equation for both parties and so the reduced rape and violence.

Of course it is possible too for the substitution effect as cited above where prostitutes serve as an outlet to some client's sexual urges. But I think of this as a lesser or secondary factor.

Second, because of the illegitimacy of transaction which will likely be conducted in haste, there will be little concerns over repeat business or the quality of service. This entails lesser incentive by prostitutes to have regular checkups. Thus prohibitions against prostitution leads to higher rates of sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Besides, having to go medical specialists for routine monitoring may risks the latter to become informants for the authorities.

Alternatively, decriminalization of prostitution will do away with the political aspects. Prostitutes will most likely focus on repeat business by keeping themselves and their customers satisfied. Thus reduced incidences of STDs.