My Name Is Bill, And I Paid For Sex
Reuters reports: “People who solicit prostitutes in Oakland, California, could find their faces plastered on billboards under a new shaming program that one civil rights group calls bad public policy.”
“The city of 400,000 across the bay from San Francisco started putting up billboards on Wednesday showing men arrested for soliciting sex. Other signs invite prostitutes to quit by calling a help line.”
But not everyone thinks this is a good idea.
“It doesn’t seem to us to be appropriate for Oakland to be using shaming as an additional and extrajudicial punishment to single out this group of offenders,” said Alan Schlosser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Northern California. “We don’t think this is good public policy.”
Who knows? Maybe he’s right. In some towns, you might confuse them for advertisements of candidates running for office.
RELATED: It appears Oakland is just trying to catch up to Denver, CO which, two years ago, launched JohnsTV to combat prostitution. (Ratings are unknown at this time)
This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 10:22 pm and is filed under California, Crime, Miscellania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 4th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
[...] d and New Laws, Law — So Cal Lawyer@ 10:13 pm
California Conservative reports here that Oakland has instituted a shaming policy of publishing the names of “johns” who [...]
June 23rd, 2005 at 6:10 pm
[...] nd had no comment. That’s a first. Just a matter of time. RELATED: My Name Is Bill, And I Paid For Sex Posted @ 6:09 pm | Permalink | No Responses » [...]