Page 4853 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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After referring to some of the books and articles relating to the failure of the Act in Victoria to control prostitution, though supposedly controlling prostitution, Dr Court said:
The picture is a dark one, whatever the state of the law. Enabling the criminal element to exploit prostitution with less interference from the law will not change the essential elements of the trade.
He quoted these comments:
The legislation that aimed to bring prostitution into the open has had the reverse effect. It is out of sight, out of mind; it is also out of control.
Dr Court continued:
Before you become deceived that prostitution is a low risk activity, I urge a reading of the cautious sociological analysis from Los Angeles of the links between AIDS, prostitution and drugs by Berk. In spite of all the IV drug use in the city, he notes that the Department of Public Health reported 612 new cases by June 1990, of which only 10% were linked to IV drug use, and 60% with homosexual/bisexual contacts. The links are clearly with homosexual practices and multiple partner activity, with prostitutes a major group at risk themselves and a risk to others.
I have deliberately linked the existence of prostitution to the world of drugs and crime, because that is the reality. I link it to the physical and sexual abuse of women and children because that is the background.
I link it to changes in the laws on pornography, because so much of what is done, and demanded by customers, is influenced by pornography - as it becomes more exploitative and degrading, so the prostitutes experience more abuse and violence.
In a recent submission to the Criminal Justice Commission in Queensland by Professor Eileen Byrne, a professor of education at the University of Queensland - subtitled, "The case against the legalisation or the decriminalisation of prostitution" - Professor Byrne talks about four levels of activity in society and then relates them to prostitution. She writes, under the heading, "Immorality at the criminal level":
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