Villanova Law School’s Dean got a deliciously just dessert – Villanova is a Catholic university after all, so it’s no surprise that hypocrisy about sex should surface (see Senators Craig and Ensign and Governor Sanford, just to name a few other Christian moralist hypocrites).

Beyond the schadenfreude of the example, it actually points toward a real policy choice. Professor Crawford’s correct that an excellent way to crack down on prostitution is to focus on demand rather than supply. Anti-prostitution efforts until recently almost always centered on limiting supply – rounding up prostitutes and taking them off the streets or out of the brothels. This seemed like a sensible solution to male lawmakers who viewed prostitutes as responsible for their industry without regard to the economic inequality that leads many woman to engage in sex work.

Comparative law is helpful here. Sweden, for example, has a solution that focused on thinking of prostitution differently. In 1999, Sweden criminalized the buying of sex and decriminalized the selling of sex. The focus immediately switched from limiting supply to limiting demand. Unlike in the United States, where such criminal law efforts are pursued without regard to the social consequences. Enforcing a prostitution ban, whether by criminalizing the purchase or sale of sex, has serious effects on the livelihood of the people who perform sex work. Sweden, unsurprisingly for a social democracy, takes this into account by providing extensive social support systems for people who want to leave the sex work industry, including education and other support. The effect of the law has been a marked reduction in the number of prostitutes and the instances of sex trafficking into Sweden. The Swedish government’s argument for the law is as follows: “In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem… gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.”

The Swedish example and the arrest of Dean Sargent both reflect an abolitionist stance. But many sex workers, such as those in Coyote (Call off your old tired ethics)http://www.coyotela.org/what_is.html
argue that engaging in sex work is part of their exercise of control over their bodies. Many third wave feminists, whose work Professor Crawford carefully theorizeshttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=887914
, would argue that sex work is part of self expression and it is retrograde to presume that women engaged in sex work have no agency. I’m not sure how persuasive I find those specific arguments, but I do have a hard time enunciating exactly what’s wrong with prostitution in theory. Unlike rape for instance, the sale of sex conceivably could be consensual, and then what’s wrong with it? As a utilitarian matter, though, it’s quite clear that prostitution harms the lives of real people in many contexts, and that for many sex workers, the level of consent is minimal at best.