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Crackdown

New law aims to limit prostitution in public places

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 12th, 2007 issue

Photo illustration by KURT VINION/The Prague Post
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This January, a new prostitution law may drive streetwalkers off Prague’s sidewalks.
In a push to limit prostitution within city boundaries, City Hall approved Dec. 12 an ordinance banning the “propagation and rendition of sexual services” in public areas.
Effective Jan. 1, the ban enables police officers to fine violators up to 30,000 Kč ($1,834), and authorizes them to oust prostitutes from their haunts.
“Municipalities should not have to tolerate these activities, which threaten general good manners and affect the moral upbringing of youth, in public areas,” says Prague Deputy Mayor Rudolf Blažek.
When drafting the new ordinance, city officials invoked a legal precedent set earlier this year by a ruling of city courts in Plzeň, west Bohemia, and Ústí nad Labem, north Bohemia.
The ruling, which the Constitutional Court upheld in April, overrode a previous law that allowed individual municipalities to limit public prostitution, only if they designated an area within town limits where the practice would be permitted.
“According to the court’s findings, it is no longer necessary to set local limits for such bans, and it is therefore possible to impose this ban on the town territory as a whole,” Blažek says. “We have taken advantage of this option.”
If approved at the December meeting of the town council, the new Prague ordinance will improve upon a 1993 regulation that strove to eliminate public prostitution, but was ineffective due to flawed legal formulation, says City Hall spokesman Jiří Wolf.
The previous ordinance bans public prostitution, but — as did the old laws of other city courts — requires individual Prague districts to designate an area where the activity is allowed. Since none of the districts ever did so, City Hall was unable uphold the law, Blažek says.
Prague’s sex industry is also regulated by a 2005 ordinance, which bans the advertisement of erotic services and performances through such means as posters and leaflets in all public areas except a Prague 8 road leading to the Ďáblice landfill.
“The authors initially wanted to combine the new ordinance with the 2005 ban,” says City Hall spokeswoman Eva Kubátová. “But because the Constitutional Court ruling only explicitly addresses the offering and rendering of sexual services — nonrelated activities — they were unable to do so.”
Inhouse problem
While the new ordinance significantly limits prostitutes’ ability to sell their services in public, it will have no effect on brothels, which are not explicitly banned by national law. “At present, we unfortunately don’t have any means to deal with this issue,” Blažek announced Dec. 4.
City Hall’s index currently registers 58 bordellos within Prague limits, 30 of which are located directly in the city center. “None of these establishments calls itself a brothel,” says Jitka Gjuričová, director of the Interior Ministry Department of Crime Prevention. “Mostly, they hide under the label of strip club or guesthouse.”
Since 2004, city officials have exercised their only means of regulation by performing 200 inspections in these brothels, and imposing more than 2.5 million Kč in fines for illegal propagation of sexual services and labor law violations, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported Dec. 4.
In an effort to more effectively regulate brothels, Prague city officials have drafted a bill they plan to present to the city council early next year. But, because prostitution is currently “neither legal nor illegal” here, “any law to explicitly regulate brothels would imply the legality of prostitution itself,” Blažek says. By acknowledging prostitution as a legal practice, the draft bill would conflict with a United Nations agreement against human trafficking, which the Czech Republic signed in 1958.
While it may be possible to formulate an ordinance that would not directly violate the agreement, any law on brothel regulation would force the government to renounce the international agreement, Blažek says.
Ineffective measures
City Hall’s new ordinance to limit street walking is being hailed by local law enforcement as a necessary step toward curbing the “immoral practice,” Gjuričová says.
By limiting prostitutes’ ability to sell their services, the ordinance will cut off their communication channel and effectively lessen the activity as a whole, she adds.
Yet, while Prague officials welcome the new legislation, concerns about problems such as enforcement persist.
Foreign prostitutes, who make up about 45 percent of the work force, for example, typically represent the biggest problem for local police.
“For the Slovak and Bulgarian girls, fines are completely ineffective,” Blažek says. “They almost never pay fines, they don’t show up to their court hearing, and, due to frequent changes of residence, it’s nearly impossible to subpoena them.”
In addition to problems of enforcement, some sociologists point out that increased regulation could actually worsen the problem of prostitution in general.
“If these limitations are imposed, the trade will go underground, which will create illegal sex rings and heighten the [prostitutes’] dependence on organized crime,” says Petra Hamerníková, assistant director of Rozkoš bez rizika (Bliss Without Risk), a nongovernmental organization providing health and other services to prostitutes.
By restricting the activity, the new ordinance essentially forces prostitutes to lead a life of crime, heightening the risk of abuse.
“I don’t think that any regulation will stop our clients from doing what they do,” Hamerníková says. “They will simply hide away in private bars and apartments, where we cannot save them from extortion.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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