Isn't your second paragraph describing "intent?"
If a provider uses a driver and doesn't pay him/her... is he still violating the law?
What if she pays him/her?
I understand this varies state to state....but generally.
If it was against the law for money, it's against the law for free.
Sex with someone with no exchange of money or other value involved isn't illegal (in most jurisdictions, anyway - we'll ignore the pinhead bible-thumper-run locales for the moment.) It's the money, or more accurately, the exchange, that makes it illegal. Your example, taken to it's logical conclusion, would make me a criminal if I gave a working girl I didn't know a ride to the grocery, just because she was known to the cops to be a prostitute. If I aid her in the commission of her crimes by driving her to her appointments knowing what she is going to do on those appts, then yes, that's illegal and whether I get paid or not isn't the issue... but your statement doesn't match up with that scenario.
The point is that the transfer of money is part of the definition of prostitution, and the offer of money is part of the definition of solicitation. That isn't true of most other crimes. When money isn't part of the crime then it generally doesn't matter whether the defendant does it for free or gets paid.
The issue is more subtle than rodmewell suggests, though, because there are different crimes of which the driver could be accused. They all presume that he knows what his passenger is doing at her destinations, so if he's a dupe and thinks she's just cleaning bathrooms he's not guilty of anything. Assuming he knows what's going on, he is an accessory (in some jurisdictions this is called aiding and abetting) and can be convicted of that regardless of whether he is paid. California recognizes a separate crime called pimping which involves receiving an income derived from a prostitute's earnings. If the driver is working for free than he isn't violating this law, but he probably is if he is on the clock. Here again, the transfer of money is part of the definition of the crime.
Isn't your second paragraph describing "intent?"
Yes. It's not possible unintentionally commit solicitation, prostitution, pimping or pandering. It's also not possible to unintentionally aid or abet someone else's crime. If you're duped into helping someone out by a story that turns out to be a cover for a crime then you're not guilty of anything, as long as you didn't keep helping after you found out what was going on.
The subject line of your message asks about both intent and motive, but motive is not part of the definition of most crimes. A motive might explain why the defendant broke the law, but his actions are a crime whether the jury figures out his motive or not. The major exception to this rule is hate crimes, where the defendant's motive converts what would have been, say, a regular assault case into something considerably more serious.
In Cali, pimping & pandering is a felony while prostitution/solicitation ia a midemeanor. The poor driver who gets say ,$30 of the $300 (10%) the provider brings in, gets shafted a whole lot more. An archaic holover from the days when pimps amd panderers were thought to control the women and the poor women were all victims. Laws do not fit today's "independent" providers who just happen to hire a driver (usually some poor muscle headed bastard happy too make the qquivilent of $8-10/hr.) for outcalls but call all the shots.
I used to drive a cab and on many occasions took a working girl to or from a client with the full knowledge I was doing so(after a while you get to know all the escorts in your area)
Does this mean I could of been arrested?
What is the likelihood of this happening? What would of been the charge?
BTW If anyone wonders whether working girls talk about their clients I can tell you yes they do...in VERY explicit detail...to a cabbie anyway(they are also for some reason among the very worst tippers you will ever haul around too(in my experience)...sheeesh)
Was it your intent to take the lady to a place where she was going to perform an illegal act? That has a lot to do with it.
I knew full well why she was going to that specific address...like I said...after a while you get to know the provider ladies in town
Besides..face it you pick up a young lady from home and take her to a hotel at 3am...you can kind of rule out a conference she might be going to at that hour...especially if an hour or two later you pick her back up at that same hotel and take her back home
You do this often enough with the same group of women weekly and you don't have to be an Einstein to know what's going on
Anyway most of them will come right out and tell you the gory details if she's especially talkative that night
You miss the general point of the post.
Most providers who use drivers have them either provided by the Agency or pay somebody to drive for them. In both cases the intent of the driver is to shuttle the lady to/from appointments, taking a cut from the fee from either the lady directly or from the Agency. In this case, they are employed directly by an Agency or by the lady herself.
In your case, you are either working for a Cab company, or and independent business, but you are not employed "directly" by either an Agency or the lady. You are either working for and paid by your company, OR you are an independent business person. Your intent is not solely to take a working lady to/from an appointment.
It may seem to be semantics, but it's not. Intent is important in the proof of the commission of ANY crime.
A good example: What if I pick up a lady walking down the street on her way home. She notices I need Gas, and pays me five bucks for gas to get her home. I discover, on the way, that she is a provider and is on the way home from an appointment.
Am I guilty? This is where intent comes into play.
I understand what you're saying but the fact is when I got the call from my dispatcher giving me the address I already knew who I was picking up and usually within a couple of minutes after picking her up I knew she was on her way to "work"
The company I worked for didn't pay the drivers...we leased the vehicle per day for a certain amount..anything we made over that was ours to keep
So theoretically we could of been prosecuted(if caught)?
NOOOO!
You didn't go into work with the sole INTENT of taking a provider to/from appointments. You worked for a cab company, not the lady/agency; your INTENT wasn't to pick up working ladies and shuttle them around. Your INTENT was to make money driving a cab.
Geez. Relax, you aren't going to go to jail or get busted for this.
I don't drive cab anymore and even if I did I didn't really believe I could be charged with a crime hauling these ladies around
Hell we did much worse...we knew where all the drug houses were and all the drug dealers too(they liked taking cabs so if by some chance we got pulled over they could dump their drugs under the seat and not be busted(no way to prove the drugs were theirs...also they didn't have to risk getting THEIR cars impounded if caught)...they were REALLY paranoid and hardly a week would go by without finding some drugs under the seats when cleaning the cab out after a shift
Even in that situation I doubt the driver is vulnerable to arrest...I was just interested in your opinion on this matter
You want to talk risky? There were times when somehow the drug dealer knew he was about to be busted and he'd call a cab...I have picked some guys up and after getting little over a block away the cops pull up to his house lights flashing and sirens blaring...other times I got the call to get him but when I got there the police were already there and he was in handcuffs...you just ease on down the road and go to your next fare when that happened
Like I said...those drug guys really love to take cabs
We all(the drivers) knew what was going on 99% of the time when we were hauling someone about to do something illegal but we didn't legally KNOW if you get my point
To be honest the only ones we'd turn in are the underage runaways(we'd get a few of those every year)
For everything else we were like Sargent Schultz from Hogan's Heroes..."I know noooothing...noooothing!"
No, because you were being paid for the same work others paid you to do. If you operate a legitimate business and sell to a customer you happen to know is a prostitute then you are OK (unless you are a landlord and you know she is seeing clients on your property). But if you are knowingly helping her do her work and are being paid for it you are in trouble. The line can be murky, but I don't see how you could have been charged.
There is no way you can be guilty while driving a cab. The reason is that you are providing a general service to the general public on exactly the same terms no matter who they are. Some of them happen to be providers. You have no control over that. Hell, some of them may be worse -- lawyers. Or politicians.
Anyone who gets in your cab, you provide exactly the same transportation no matter who they are. For example, the clothing store that sells a girl a dress is not "aiding and abetting" prostitution simply if she turns out to be a provider, even if they know it. Being an accessory has to involve more than just providing the same service to anyone at the same price no matter who they are. The store that sells her hair spray or stockings is not an accessory to prostitution.
This is related to the idea of who do you work for? If you are the prostitute's employee, that's one thing. If you are the cab company's employee, that's another.
Now, the reasoning here is important. If you aren't just providing a general service to the general public, that could change. For example, one pizza parlor around here was being used to distribute drugs. People would call in with a code word. You can use a legitimate business to conduct illegal business, but it is then clearly a separate thing being done under the cover of the real business.
So if you worked for a taxicab company but were doing something unusual -- not authorized by the company -- it could change the answer.