Finland tightens prostitution laws
Finland originally had plans to ban all purchasing of sex services, but the government have agreed on a partial ban…
With a vote of 158 to 15, MPs approved a version of the bill which would only criminalize buying sexual services from prostitutes if pimps or human trafficking were involved.
The punishment for first-time offenders is six months in prison. MP’s hope the law will be implemented as quickly as possible.
How are you to know if you’re dealing with a woman who is involved in human trafficking?? If prostitution was fully legalized and licensed brothels were setup, wouldn’t this really slow down hookers involved in human trafficking?
I´m totally amazed how this law passed with such a high acceptance. Law isn’t the place for place for useless garbage. I’d be curious to know how much tax payers had to pay to have this law passed. Seems like every law is passed if it has a morally good reason behind it, no matter with how poorly written it is.
Only the people voting on moral basis are good people, huzzah!
Comment by S.Y — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 6:31 pm
I´m totally amazed
I’m not. The copyright law they passed just a bit ago is a fine example.
I like this part the best:
MPs approved a version of the bill which would only criminalize buying sexual services from prostitutes if pimps or human trafficking were involved.
“Oh, before we gets to the fuckin’ are you currently employed by pimp or a (insert your fav. baltic nation here) gang or mafia? I personally like the self-employed ladies myself…”
Comment by gopha — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 7:52 pm
“Oh, before we gets to the fuckin’ are you currently employed by pimp or a (insert your fav. baltic nation here) gang or mafia? I personally like the self-employed ladies myself…â€Â
Yeah, exactly.
And how do they plan on catching these guys? Will they have police women dressed up as hookers who are part of a human-trafficking gang? This law makes absolutely zero sense.
Comment by Phil — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
As pimping and human trafficking are already illegal it makes sense to prohibit financing them. The original government proposal (Swedish model) was totally lunatic and I am positively surprised that parliament did not accept it.
Comment by jormanen — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
I think Osmo Soininvaara had the best approach to this matter at hand, close to the one already stated above by Phil: “Set up legalized lisenced (or government controlled?) brothels”, thus it’d be so much easier to control human trafficking and such.
Luckily we did not go as far as Sweden, where the situation has only gotten worse for prostitutes. (could not find the link to this piece of news, sorry :P)
Comment by Kez0nator — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 10:13 pm
ups, wrong discussion
Comment by tim73 — Wed, Jun 21st, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
If this law sounds lunatic, it’s because it’s a compromise. In this way both supporters and opponents of the buying of sex are supposed to be happy. This law did indeed garner support from both camps and was it easy to pass. The law is neither very radical nor very effective. Yet it is both an ethical statement of the sort one camp wanted and it keeps prostitution itself legal as the other camp wanted.
The course of the events was probably influenced by the one case where a mentally handicapped Estonian woman was trafficked to Finland by a gang of criminals. In such a case, the person who buys sex, should get it that it’s not a regular prostitution situation. In other types of cases it may be more difficult to determine whether the prostitute is a victim of trafficking but there are cases where this new law will be applicable and not only become a dead letter. Sure this leaves prostitution in more of a grey zone than before but that’s exactly where many people want it, semi-legal and shady business.
As far as pimping goes, well, since pimping is illegal this does place some responsibility on the customer. Of course in some cases the customer can have no idea if a pimp is involved but in other cases the customer may do the business directly with a pimp rather than with the prostitute (and the prostitute may not get a very large part of the cash involved in the transaction) and in exactly such cases it may be more justified to talk of the prostitute as a victim compared to those prostitutes who are in control of what they’re doing and set their own prices.
Comment by Helsinkian — Thu, Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 10:29 am
I doubt, whether the law was really passed to improve the situation of the prostitutes or just to demonstrate the good intentions of the good people in parliament. Like their 2 euros to the Salvation Army before the Christmas.
Comment by antti (the redneck one) — Thu, Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
It’s going to be very easy: if she speaks Estonian or Russian, she’s probably provided by the Common Treasury (a joint operation of the Estonian and Russian mafias).
Comment by sepisp — Thu, Jun 29th, 2006 @ 2:07 am
It’s a step in the right direction.
If one of the definitions of pimping is providing accomodation and financing the girls operations, I guess the Finnish welfare system is going away for a long time..
Comment by mof — Fri, Jul 7th, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
first it was illegal to shoot the attackerbears, now one gets prison if one shoots a wolf, even if it is near the airport or eating dogs cats and cattle, Next was wedding homosexuals, Now government will use probably Russian women who dare not say no, and who will kidnap our children, the population in Finland mainly women and children are against this law, especially since the unemployment and divorse of Young poor mothers happen a lot and what if Governmentsupported workemploymentbureaus say- prostitution is a workplace go to it become a prostitute or else all financial support is taken away, it is cold in winter babies cry here too and without money house or food or husband it will be hard to stand against the government, Some women do not own or use computers - I silently wonder what will men do here because I do not believe any sane woman would sell herself if not desperate, HIV risk Moral decay - If russian people look at this and say welll lets use their women because they use ours….I have personally written protestletters to goverment people but I probably will not get heard.
Comment by A worried Finnish mother — Wed, Aug 30th, 2006 @ 10:20 pm