Florida Approves Database to Publish Details of People Who Pay for Sex
he Florida legislature passed legislation within the past week, Senate Bill 540 and House Bill 851, to establish a public database that tracks people convicted of, or who have pleaded guilty to, soliciting paid sex.
While the legislation’s bipartisan authors consider it to be a step toward ending human trafficking, critics call it a means to publicly shame clients and others associated with people who do consensual sex work.
The Soliciting for Prostitution Public Database will include anyone convicted of or pleading guilty to “soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit prostitution, lewdness, or assignation,” according to the Senate version of the bill, drafted by Democratic Senator Lauren Book.
“This isn’t creating a list of bad or dangerous clients; it’s just a list of clients who got caught by the police,” Bailey told Filter. “It’s impossible to tell the good guys from the bad if you lump them all together. Men who pay for sex aren’t predators. Predators who pose as clients are. When you make potential clients scared of giving sex workers the information they need to screen, you make it impossible to tell the difference between men who are scared and men who are scary.”
And inclusion in the Database would have ripple effects across a client’s life. “Putting them on a registry and imposing a mandatory sentence of five days for a first offense could result in lost wages and lost jobs,” wrote Andrews. “Public shaming of a consensual act could result in the breaking up of a family. A lost job could result in losing health insurance benefits. A lost job might mean they can’t pay the rent or the mortgage or buy food. They may not be able to get another job because they are on this registry. It perpetuates poverty.”
“Research does not support punitive public shaming. Our legislators need to listen to sex workers and victims of trafficking.”
Discover more from Florida Action Committee
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m surprised there is still anybody left in Florida! The insanity down there doing nothing but grow worse. And the 11th circuit Court of Appeals is made of karmic entities that once presided over the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, who denied all the appeals of the 19 women who were hanged as witches in Salem Massachusetts. 90% of the criminal legislation against all forms of sex and sexual expression involving anyone below the age of 18 is a contravention of natural law – God’s law if you happen to be an evangelist. The age of consent should be lowered to menarche for females, especially those willing to seduce older males to simply test their developing powers of attraction. I don’t understand why legislators don’t understand that they shouldn’t play around with Darwinian law. Millions of years of evolution have produced the men and women of today, and by men and women I mean anyone who has developed secondary sex characteristics as recognized by medical science.
with the pro-choice crowd yelling about and defending the right of a woman and her body, they defend the womans right to have to a choice whether she has a child in her womb or have it removed, where are they now defending the womans right if she want to have a man inside of her? the $$ exchanged is just background noise and a way to control people. the way I see it, she has sex for free with some random guy, gets pregnant, he has to PAY for child support, or she charges some random guy, either way he will be paying.
This database will INCREASE sex trafficking! It will bring more money to those who exploit! Pimps will be able to traffic more victims since they will have a database of potential customers for the women they exploit! Why not have a database of people and addresses of people who have purchased heroin? That way heroin dealers can easily market their product! Are our legislatures that dumb?
Perhaps the registry can be posted directly on “Backpage” so that it is easy for the pimps to find the customers.
so they realize this is punishment but the other registrys are not…lmao..Hypocrisy knows no boundaries .
it is an opportunity though..the more people abused by the government the more people to stand up and battle the government. and battle is what is needed.
“[D]rafted by Democratic Senator Lauren Book.” So, it’s not just Republicans…it is both parties.
I’ve stated this multiple times, but both parties get something out of sex offender registration.
For Repubs, they get their appearance of the moral high ground and their “tough on crime” stuff.
For Dems, they get “justice for victims” and give the appearance of “protecting the children.”
Unlike many other issues where the parties may have a similar goal (like balancing the budget) but have various means to achieve them, in this instance they have different goals with the same means to achieve those goals.