Amidst all the good elites -- myself included -- clucking at Spitzer but noting that prostitution should be decriminalized, I've sort of been hoping that some liberal would write the case for keeping prostitution illegal, in part because it had gotten hard to remember what that argument looked like, Happily, Kristof comes through today. He argues, essentially, that the experience of legalization in other countries suggests that bringing prostitution into the open does not, in fact, make for a clean and affirming sex trade, but rather swells the market for prostitution and thus creates a larger black market for exploitation, trafficking, pimps, and all the rest. The better way forward, he argues, is indeed to ratchet down penalties on prostitutes, and hike them on johns. Oddly, that's where a lot of other liberals have been coming down as well, though they've been emphasizing how that amounts to legalizing prostitution, and Kristof is emphasizing how it would go further in banning the trade. Guess it depends on the size of the penalty and the vigor of enforcement or something.
