Letters

Legalise prostitution and allow licensed brothels

It appears that there should be only one sensible answer to the vice problem.

1. Legalise prostitution. As a society we will never eradicate prostitution, it has been going for thousands of years. While there is a demand, there will be a supply.
2. Create brothels. The state can then register and control the prostitutes medically and so control the spread of disease. Pimps would be eliminated by 90%. Prostitutes could be charged a viable rent they in turn would charge an agreed rate for their services. You would reduce child prostitution.
3. The state could charge them with sending in a proper tax return.
4. Open a proper sex shop in the brothel where those that need that kind of service obtain it without going into a sleazy shop.
5. Properly licensed it would probably lessen the police vice squad work.
6. It would free streets of behaviour offensive to the general public.

Many of our European neighbours have similar systems without all the hassle we have.

— R. J. Norton
Loughborough Road Ruddington

Drop the moral crusade

I am so glad that the Post has started up a discussion about the sex industry in Nottingham, kicking off with Inspector Winton's opposition to sex shops.

I am a red-light area resident, and I know how energetic he has been in trying to alleviate our problems and the worst excesses of kerb crawling, street prostitution and pimping.

But unfortunately, as he himself says, there has been little progress.

Some sort of strategic initiative is clearly called for on the part of the police and the council.

My fear is that Insp Winton, and a section of Nottingham City Council have their own agenda regarding the sex industry — they are fighting a rearguard action against yesteryear's moral climate change.

I challenge Insp Winton, and those councillors opposed to the sex shop application in Hockley: are you prepared to accept, in principle, the commercial legitimacy of pornography and prostitution? Everyone is entitled to a moral opinion, but they should come clean so we can judge how objective their approach is.

The only possible way forward is for the police, council and citizens to agree on a strategy and implement it. At the moment the bulk of the police officers just drive past the throng of prostitutes at the street corners.

And council policy would appear to be to mention "paedophile" or "child prostitution" as many times as possible whenever it does make a small effort in analysing Nottingham's vice problems. It is a big and complex problem, but until the council drops its moral crusade this city doesn't have a hope of tackling it.

— Richard Bartlett
Gorsey Road Nottingham

Europe Intelligence Wire — 01/23/03