Sleazy status quo lets pimps off hook

Only the foolish attempt to reduce street prostitution to a business transaction, a question of sex and money.

If it were that simple, there might be no need for legislation like Assembly Bill 67, being considered at the Legislature.

To say Nevada is schizophrenic on the prostitution issue is an understatement worthy of inclusion in the Guinness book. Brothels are legal in some counties. The Las Vegas phone book is jammed with ads for outcall entertainers and late-night massage parlors that serve as fronts for prostitution. Message: Have fun, but don’t do it; enjoy sex one place, but pay a penalty in another.

Meanwhile, local pimps enjoy top-shelf service at Strip nightclubs and only make the news when their disagreements turn violent and spill onto the Boulevard.

Into that surreal tradition marches state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto with AB 67, which attempts to toughen current state law and redefines the pandering statute as sex trafficking with increased criminal penalties and civil restitution, a treatment provision, and improved prosecutorial leverage during the preliminary hearing stage (when many prostitute victims are “persuaded” not to testify against their pimps).

But what it really does is force the time-crunched Legislature, with its notoriously short attention span, to at least briefly focus on an issue that should make every Nevadan’s blood boil: sexual exploitation and victimization.

Increasing the sentences sounds good, but Masto revealed a deeper strategy in a Feb. 11 presentation to legislators .

“It’s not just the penalties,” she said. “Because what you’re trying to do is keep the individual who’s trafficking the girl away from the girl, or sometimes the boy. Because the goal here is to separate them and get help for that young girl because if we aren’t able to keep them apart, they will come back together again, and she will continue the trade. And she will be turned out.

“… It affords greater safeguards for the integrity of the prosecution’s case by giving the state the right to a preliminary hearing. Often times the defendants will waive that preliminary hearing because they want an opportunity to try to get to the victim. Because what happens in the preliminary hearing is when the victim will come for the first time to testify against the pimp. If they can delay that process, the pimps can circle back and try to get the victim to recant and not testify. Or they will go to the victim’s families or friends and threaten them to try to get the victim not to testify. So, in our bill, we have for the first time in the state of Nevada given the right to prosecutors to also demand a preliminary hearing to preserve the testimony of the victim.”

Sounds more like coercion and intimidation than straightforward sex-for-money commerce, doesn’t it?

Despite dramatic personal testimony during a hearing last week, followed by a deadly pimp-linked shooting death on the Strip, Masto’s sex trafficking wish list is far from a lock to become Nevada law. Its critics say its overly broad and could have unintended consequences — as opposed to the consequences inherent in the sleazy status quo.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada notes that, while it agrees “actual sex traffickers should be punished,” its substantial legal concerns range from clogging the court system bogged-down with preliminary hearings to overcrowding prisons and jails with increased sentences.

The ACLU fears prosecution of children, parents and others supported by a “sex worker for ‘living off the earnings of a prostitute.’u2009” Without exactly opposing it, the civil liberties group recommends substantial revision of AB67. Perhaps its attorneys will present their recommendations.

Even with several changes, the timing remains right to bring Nevada law out of the shadow and into the light.

Any improvement is better than the current system that grinds prostitutes through the low end of the justice system and can’t seem to spot the pimps at all.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith