NCJ Number
104373
Date Published
1986
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This paper focuses on the Canadian Fraser Committee's recommendations for prostitution law reform generally and its disagreement with the Badgley Committee over the use of criminal law to control juvenile prostitution.
Abstract
The Badgley Committee views juvenile prostitutes as deviants who choose their lifestyle. The committee does not analyze the structural context of youth prostitution. The committee's recommendations would extend the state's power over juveniles generally and juvenile prostitutes in particular. The committee supports the criminalization of juvenile prostitution (adult prostitution per se is legal) without any policy focus on the alteration of the social structures which make street prostitution an attractive subsistence option for defamilied youth. In contrast, the Fraser Committee's proposals for prostitution law reform contain recommendations for social and economic initiatives that address gender-structured inequality in Canada. The criminalization of juvenile prostitution is rejected for the same reasons that status offenses in general have been purged from Canadian law. The committee recommends that laws identify locations where prostitutes and their customers can legally conduct their business. The committee's report is problematic in recommending that provincial governments be authorized to license small scale prostitution establishments, which opens the door to a system of legalization at the provincial level. The proposed 'nuisance' law for prostitution is not based on an independent standard of nuisance applicable to all public behavior, and the committee's interpretation of feminism is not sensitive to the importance of the public/private distinction in theorizing patriarchy and phallocracy.