Democrats Move to Make Colorado the First State to Legalize Prostitution. What Could Go Wrong?
This is performative politics again.
Colorado Democrats have filed a bill that could make it the first state to decriminalize prostitution, and critics warn that the bill would make the Centennial State the “Wild West” for purchasing sex and lead to an increase in human trafficking.
“We have a billion-dollar budget shortfall here in Colorado, and so there’s a lot of talk about budget and affordability and cost of living,” Jarvis Caldwell, the Republican minority leader in the state House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday.
“This isn’t the Republicans’ idea of making things more affordable, by making it easier to sell yourself for sex,” he quipped.
While some rural areas have legalized prostitution in Nevada, the entire state has not done so. Similarly, Maine decriminalized the selling of sex, but not the buying.
Caldwell noted that Colorado had the 10th highest rate of human trafficking in the United States (both in the raw number of cases and as a per capita rate) in 2023, according to the Colorado-based Common Sense Institute. He also cited a 2012 study from the London School of Economics, finding that foreign countries that legalized or decriminalized prostitution had higher rates of human trafficking.
Caldwell argued that legalization involves setting “rules and guidelines” to regulate a practice, while a “full-on decriminalization,” like this bill offers, “just makes it really the Wild West.”
“It’s a no-holds-barred, no one has to worry about it whatsoever, which is obviously going to drive up demand on the buyer side, and … if you don’t have enough ‘sex workers’ for the demand side, that’s where you get your human trafficking increase,” Caldwell said.
Decriminalizing Prostitution
The bill, SB26-097, requires the statewide decriminalization of “commercial sexual activity among consenting adults.” It decriminalizes both the selling and the purchasing of sex statewide and preempts cities and localities from criminalizing the world’s oldest profession.
The bill repeals state laws imposing criminal penalties for prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, and a prostitute displaying herself in public. It preserves two criminal penalties: those for using intimidation or menacing to convince someone to become a prostitute and for pimping.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for the decriminalization of prostitution, which it calls “sex work,” claiming that criminalizing prostitution makes it harder for prostitutes to access health care and other services and “feeds an out-of-control mass incarceration system.”
The Daily Signal reached out to the bill’s Democrat sponsors in the Senate—Nick Hinrichsen and Lisa Cutter—and the House—Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart—for comment, and they did not respond by publication time.
Concern for the Children
Erin Lee, the co-founder and executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, agreed with Caldwell’s concerns.
Lee sued her daughter’s Fort Collins school for allegedly violating her parental rights by encouraging her daughter to transition behind her back.
“I’ve been working really hard to fight child sex trafficking because my girl got put on the conveyor …
This is performative politics again.
Colorado Democrats have filed a bill that could make it the first state to decriminalize prostitution, and critics warn that the bill would make the Centennial State the “Wild West” for purchasing sex and lead to an increase in human trafficking.
“We have a billion-dollar budget shortfall here in Colorado, and so there’s a lot of talk about budget and affordability and cost of living,” Jarvis Caldwell, the Republican minority leader in the state House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday.
“This isn’t the Republicans’ idea of making things more affordable, by making it easier to sell yourself for sex,” he quipped.
While some rural areas have legalized prostitution in Nevada, the entire state has not done so. Similarly, Maine decriminalized the selling of sex, but not the buying.
Caldwell noted that Colorado had the 10th highest rate of human trafficking in the United States (both in the raw number of cases and as a per capita rate) in 2023, according to the Colorado-based Common Sense Institute. He also cited a 2012 study from the London School of Economics, finding that foreign countries that legalized or decriminalized prostitution had higher rates of human trafficking.
Caldwell argued that legalization involves setting “rules and guidelines” to regulate a practice, while a “full-on decriminalization,” like this bill offers, “just makes it really the Wild West.”
“It’s a no-holds-barred, no one has to worry about it whatsoever, which is obviously going to drive up demand on the buyer side, and … if you don’t have enough ‘sex workers’ for the demand side, that’s where you get your human trafficking increase,” Caldwell said.
Decriminalizing Prostitution
The bill, SB26-097, requires the statewide decriminalization of “commercial sexual activity among consenting adults.” It decriminalizes both the selling and the purchasing of sex statewide and preempts cities and localities from criminalizing the world’s oldest profession.
The bill repeals state laws imposing criminal penalties for prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, and a prostitute displaying herself in public. It preserves two criminal penalties: those for using intimidation or menacing to convince someone to become a prostitute and for pimping.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for the decriminalization of prostitution, which it calls “sex work,” claiming that criminalizing prostitution makes it harder for prostitutes to access health care and other services and “feeds an out-of-control mass incarceration system.”
The Daily Signal reached out to the bill’s Democrat sponsors in the Senate—Nick Hinrichsen and Lisa Cutter—and the House—Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart—for comment, and they did not respond by publication time.
Concern for the Children
Erin Lee, the co-founder and executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, agreed with Caldwell’s concerns.
Lee sued her daughter’s Fort Collins school for allegedly violating her parental rights by encouraging her daughter to transition behind her back.
“I’ve been working really hard to fight child sex trafficking because my girl got put on the conveyor …
Democrats Move to Make Colorado the First State to Legalize Prostitution. What Could Go Wrong?
This is performative politics again.
Colorado Democrats have filed a bill that could make it the first state to decriminalize prostitution, and critics warn that the bill would make the Centennial State the “Wild West” for purchasing sex and lead to an increase in human trafficking.
“We have a billion-dollar budget shortfall here in Colorado, and so there’s a lot of talk about budget and affordability and cost of living,” Jarvis Caldwell, the Republican minority leader in the state House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday.
“This isn’t the Republicans’ idea of making things more affordable, by making it easier to sell yourself for sex,” he quipped.
While some rural areas have legalized prostitution in Nevada, the entire state has not done so. Similarly, Maine decriminalized the selling of sex, but not the buying.
Caldwell noted that Colorado had the 10th highest rate of human trafficking in the United States (both in the raw number of cases and as a per capita rate) in 2023, according to the Colorado-based Common Sense Institute. He also cited a 2012 study from the London School of Economics, finding that foreign countries that legalized or decriminalized prostitution had higher rates of human trafficking.
Caldwell argued that legalization involves setting “rules and guidelines” to regulate a practice, while a “full-on decriminalization,” like this bill offers, “just makes it really the Wild West.”
“It’s a no-holds-barred, no one has to worry about it whatsoever, which is obviously going to drive up demand on the buyer side, and … if you don’t have enough ‘sex workers’ for the demand side, that’s where you get your human trafficking increase,” Caldwell said.
Decriminalizing Prostitution
The bill, SB26-097, requires the statewide decriminalization of “commercial sexual activity among consenting adults.” It decriminalizes both the selling and the purchasing of sex statewide and preempts cities and localities from criminalizing the world’s oldest profession.
The bill repeals state laws imposing criminal penalties for prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, and a prostitute displaying herself in public. It preserves two criminal penalties: those for using intimidation or menacing to convince someone to become a prostitute and for pimping.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for the decriminalization of prostitution, which it calls “sex work,” claiming that criminalizing prostitution makes it harder for prostitutes to access health care and other services and “feeds an out-of-control mass incarceration system.”
The Daily Signal reached out to the bill’s Democrat sponsors in the Senate—Nick Hinrichsen and Lisa Cutter—and the House—Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart—for comment, and they did not respond by publication time.
Concern for the Children
Erin Lee, the co-founder and executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, agreed with Caldwell’s concerns.
Lee sued her daughter’s Fort Collins school for allegedly violating her parental rights by encouraging her daughter to transition behind her back.
“I’ve been working really hard to fight child sex trafficking because my girl got put on the conveyor …
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