I noticed a few people mentioning having more police. Part of the problem is people have to engage in their communities as well to ensure that they dislike that type of conduct. Otherwise it's kill a few rats(or catch and release, because prostitutes always pay their fines and most don't want any help). It always isn't the easiest solution either. When you're working with CPTED solutions, it also requires other agencies to work at it. Since I can't say what type of shit rats are actually in that area I can't even guess.

But I'll say this, from my uniquely Canadian PoV. Victimless crimes are victimless, while society frowns on it; it becomes more of an issue on the spin offs from it. Those being the ones who get hooked on the drugs, petty theft, B&E, and so on. That's the more pressing concern, because as an area continues the slide down hill, it simply picks up in pace.

Regardless of all that, the guy with the camera is an idiot. The community has serious social, economic and civil issues that have to be dealt with, and it's not a thing that's going to change over night. A near-by city took nearly 20 years to get rid of the shit rats, now that area is a fine upstanding area with houses in the 250k-500k range, with no exceptional criminal element in a middle-class section of the city. (It just shifted to a new area, and again the fight begins a anew).

1. Analogies are not literal. The Salem Witches are an appropriate comparison, because violence was used in the persecution of others. The poster was not suggesting that opening a truck door and burning someone at the stake are equivalent, but they are based on the same principle - that the ends justify the means - if someone is "immoral" per your stance, you have the okay to violently persecute them. Failing to realize this is failing to understand the concept of analogy.

2. Prostitution is a victimless crime. For a crime to have a victim, you must be able to identify a victim in all possible manifestations of that crime. If there is even one counter example, it is a victimless crime. Think to yourself for a moment, can you dream up any possible circumstance wherein one person could pay another for sex, and neither would feel victimized? To help, flip it around - put yourself in the potential-victims shoes - are there any instances in which you would have sex with someone for money, and not feel like a victim? How about $1 trillion to have sex with that one girl at your work, you know who I'm talking about. Would you feel victimized? This is as solid as 2 + 2 = 4, you cannot argue it. If there is a victim in only certain circumstances, it is another, different crime that was committed. Human trafficking is one example used here - another example would be patting someone on the back - legal after a football game, illegal if you are standing on the edge of a cliff. Prostitution is a victimless crime, end of story.

3. Videotaping in a public place is not a crime. The (legal) line was crossed when the "do-gooder" opened the truck without permission of the owner. The fact that he was videotaping them naked, having sex, makes it a sex crime. Voyeurism, peeping-tom-ism, is a sex crime in America - and rightfully so. What he did was equivalent (in principle) to kicking open a bathroom stall and videotaping someone on the toilet. The do-gooder here should justly be charged, and registered as a sex offender.

4. Intolerance is not bad, in fact its very good, its the process by which we define our entire culture. Examples of things we are rightly intolerant of in increasing order of severity: not washing your hands after the bathroom, not covering your mouth when you cough, interrupting others while they are speaking, infidelity, racism, holocaust-denial. Do you go out and burn an racist at the stake? Do you slap people when they don't wash their hands? Do you throw people out windows when they interrupt you? Do you kick open a door and videotape them? Do you beat them with a stick? No...you choose not to be their friend, or associate with them, or ignore their views - just like any other jackass on the street. That is how society and culture are defined. Imagine life without intolerance - where all societal action was open-game and nothing was (nonviolently) condemned. Life would be an unending episode of Jerry Springer.

5. Intolerance as expressed through violence, however, is not okay for the very simple reason that violence is not okay. It has nothing to do with the intolerance motivating it, because as we just realized, intolerance is a good thing. An act of violence always has a victim. Opening a truck door that is not yours is an act of violence, as much as kicking in someones front door. They are different in degree, not kind. Denying the holocaust is not kosher, and you should be very intolerant of such a person, much more so that someone who doesn't wash their hands after going to the bathroom for that matter. But what they are doing is different in degree, not kind. You have every right to nonviolently protest - to videotape them publicly denying the holocaust and put it on youtube, and forward it to their boss. However, you don't have any more right to burn a holocaust denier at the stake than you do to burn someone who doesn't wash their hands. A failure to understand this is a failure to differentiate between concepts of varying degree, and concepts of varying kind.

>> ^burdturgler:
These women are part of the the victims as far as I'm concerned. Manipulated and addicted to drugs more often than not.

So let me see if I've got this...

Prostitutes are the victims in the victimless crime of prostitution... right?

longde's point was that this guy could be a lot more effective if he just sat around in plain sight filming the hookers. He'd be a deterrent then. They'd have to move on because nobody is going to purchase the goods with a camera pointed at their face. This reality drama show he's made instead gets people arrested, sure, but not the hookers. The rest of them are unfettered while he lectures the truck driver. If you want to put them out of business, you've got to take all their business away and you can't do that by trailing one client at a time.

If you can't identify a victim in all circumstances, it is a victimless crime. If two adults agree to have sex, regardless of why (looks, money, personality, etc.) who could you possibly identify as the victim?

Try to create an example of murder where there is no victim. (or rape, or theft, etc. etc.) Those are not victimless crimes because you can always identify a victim regardless of the circumstance.

I am somewhere in between. The guy who was filming this deserves to go to jail for a while for approaching this situation the way he did. I am really opposed to these kinds of videos that a meant simply to humiliate and expose people who make mistakes. Its sites like the sift that make me happy that people can come together and have a thoughtful conversation about these kinds of things. Its really too bad that some people watch these things, and sit at home in their comfy chairs, and just sneer at this guy for doing what he did. FUCK that cameraman (i'm still pumped from watching the carlin video earlier).

That said, it is on the issue of whether prostitution is a largely victimless crime where I am finding myself on the fence. I don't know what to say about it right now, but this is a good post. I'll save it for later.

^Prostitution is very much a victimless crime. You're equating the extremes of the black market with the act of trading sex for money. Trafficking would most likely end if prostitution was legalized.

"Prostitution is a victimless crime"

I think that's not quite true blankfist. In America I think it's largely true, but there's still human trafficking going on here however it's rampant in other places. The answer is to legalize it, the same with marijuana in my view. If you legalize it, you can deal with it by regulating it.

It's not rocket surgery people, Do No Harm, work towards the preferential option for the people.

Prostitution is a victimless crime. Anytime you outlaw something it tends to create a dangerous market where victims are aplenty. Look at alcohol prohibition. Did that stop people from drinking? No. But it did create a terrible criminal market driven by violent mobsters.

Free the market and the crime will disappear. Put a stranglehold on the market and you'll manufacture crime time and time again.

^It wasn't my idea to use power plants as an example. That is the whole point of an analogy though, that you can demonstrate the concept without using exactitudes. You think the logic changes if we use banks instead of power plants?

You don't think its practical for criminals to repay their victims, but you think its practical to lock people in cages and force the victims to pay for it? Our justice system, then, is just another outlet for sadistic people who want to inflict pain on others.

You are using poor people as an example of criminals. You say that they commit crime because they don't have money, thus they can't pay their victims anyways. Okay, so how is putting them in a cage helping anything? Whatever meager wage they could have earned on the outside, now they are earning and producing nothing. They will come out angry, dehumanized, grossly overpunished, and in a worse position than when they were sent in; and nothing will be done to console the victim. Unless you are sending them to jail for life you are merely delaying the problem for another generation to deal with when they get back out. That is your plan to prevent or address crime?

Most crimes (save for sheer brutality) are not against the person, but against their property. Unless you are a psychopath, you don't steal, mug, kidnap, or kill for pleasure you do it for personal gain - monetary or otherwise. People steal because they don't want to (or can't) work. Your solution is to take people who don't want to work or can't work, and threaten them with a situation where they don't have to work and merely sit inside, get three square meals, and watch cable TV all day? And you want to enact thousands of laws designed to punish victimless crimes? Sounds like a great way to create the largest prison population in the world.

Oh wait that already happened (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/02/record.prison.population/). Your ideas have already been tested (where do you think you got them from?) and have already failed miserably.

Well, your prose is concrete and straightforward, but I've never been much for free verse. More of a haiku guy, really.

>> ^enoch:
a very unsubtle way to make a very powerful point.
sometimes it has to be done.
i don't think its neither wise nor morally sound,
to continue with the naive notion of victimless war.
bloodless wars dont exist.
waterboarding=torture....and,it does not work.
the pain and suffering is real,
and for what?
false confessions?
its evil,and i shall have no part in it.
a powerful and profound clip.
thank you.

a very unsubtle way to make a very powerful point.
sometimes it has to be done.
i don't think its neither wise nor morally sound,
to continue with the naive notion of victimless war.
bloodless wars dont exist.
waterboarding=torture....and,it does not work.
the pain and suffering is real,
and for what?
false confessions?
its evil,and i shall have no part in it.

a powerful and profound clip.
thank you.

One way to prevent abuses by police like these, is to surveil fucking everything and broadcast it to *everywhere* via the internet. The worst thing about excess surveillance by the state is that it stays in the hands of the state, amplifying an asymmetry of power and thereby enabling oppression. The second worst thing about it is that it enables the state to prosecute victimless crimes that shouldn't be illegal in the first place.

Yeah, let's fine an old pensioner an exorbitant rate for a victimless crime.

The epitome of civilization, that.

And a jolly joke for the DNC.

I concur, its impossible to regulate what people put into their own bodies and it would be wrong of the government to even try. Throwing addicts in prisons isn't going to help them, give people the facts and let them make their own decisions. If you want to shoot up heroin on your own time in your own personal space without impeaching the rights of any of your fellow citizens, that's fine. If you start to disturb the peace on your high and commit violent crimes yes THEN that's justification to throw a person in jail. But don't prosecute people for victimless crimes.

Needs to be legalised.. to quote mr. hicks.. you're out on the town, there's a bunch of people being violent and disruptive, are they drunk or stoned?

The only concern i have is what heavy long term use does to you, because i've seen some aging zombies in my time and that's a shame - but their choice, just as liver failure is a choice to heavy alcohol users.

Marijuana is a fantastic drug, i've had some great times on marijuana and never ever a bad time. It makes me feel better, it helps depression, it helps with pain, it's a natural growing plant on our planet. Who the fuck are your government to tell you what innocent and victimless things you can or can't do with your life?

The only reason anyone can say "it's not victimless" is because of criminals selling it. Criminals sell it because it's illegal. And a lot of people grow their own in non-illegal (other than breaking the marijuana law) way.

Seriously, the government should not be involved in marijuana control. It's not up to them what we do with our lives. Countries and governments exist because humans formed them to give themselves protection and a better life. Not to dominate us and keep us in bondage.

Edit: lol, gonna leave that last line even though it looks like i'm referring to S&M