seeing an escort a felony? being an escort a felony WOW!  
Is Prostitution the New Weed?

Texas considers measure to decriminalize repeat offenses for selling or buying sex.

If a few Texas politicians have their way, the Lone Star State may one day quit locking up women on felony prostitution charges. (Photo: Reuters)

Joining the slowly building multitude of state and local governments reassessing nonviolent crimes and laws that put offenders in jail, Texas may drop its felony-class charge for repeat prostitution offenders, reports say.
The new policy would be similar to statutes enacted that decriminalize possession of quantities of marijuana for individual use.
As reported in the Austin-American Statesman, prostitutes and their customers can now both be charged with a fourth-class felony after three misdemeanor convictions for buying or selling sex. Of the 350 inmates in state jails on fourth-class felony buying or selling sex charges, all are women, despite the presumption that men would seem to engage in buying sex at least as often as women engage in selling it.
Is the proposed sentence reform for repeat prostitution offenders a bend toward lenience and prison reform for the often hard-line Lone Star State? Or is the consideration all about money? A little bit of both, it seems—the locked-up prostitutes cost the states millions to house every year, and reform proponents say that rehab and reform programs outside of penitentiaries work at a fraction of the cost of incarceration.

Either way, a Democratic Senator from the state called attaching felony charges to prostitution outlandish, and the issue may now be taken up by state legislature in January, chron.com says.
Except in parts of Nevada, prostitution is generally outlawed in the U.S.—though in Rhode Island “indoor” prostitution was strangely and unwittingly legally allowed until 2009.
Also coming under scrutiny recently are online prostitution laws. Though traditional statutes cover the full range of street-level prostitution activity, laws meant to cover online sale of sex services are still pretty meager. Indeed, an academic study announced this week that almost 80 percent of the classified ads posted on the adult-services portion of the website Backpages are prostitution ads.

 
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/08/28/prostitution-new-weed?cmpid=tp-ad-outbrain-general

Proposition 35's Demands For Sex Offenders' Online Info Draws ACLU Lawsuit

Proposition 35 was a big hit with California voters Tuesday, passing with 81 percent approval.

But some of its provisions, including requiring the email addresses and user names of sex offenders convicted of such things as misdemeanor indecent exposure (which can involve, for example, having consensual sex in front of an open window), has drawn the ACLU's ire:

 

The group is suing to stop what is says are "unconstitutional provisions" of the law.  

Increases in fines (up to a million bucks) and prison sentences (up to life) for convicted sex traffickers comprised its main components.

The online-freedom group Electronic Frontier Foundation joined in the suit after opposing the user-name and email requirements.

According to an ACLU statement:

Proposition 35 requires anyone who is a registered sex offender - even people with decades-old, low-level offenses like misdemeanor indecent exposure and people whose offenses were not related to the Internet - to turn over a list of all their Internet identifiers and service providers to law enforcement. While the law is written very unclearly, this likely includes email addresses, usernames and other identifiers used for online political discussion groups, book and restaurant review sites, forums about medical conditions, and newspaper or blog comments. Under the law, more than 73,000 Californians must immediately provide this information to law enforcement ...  

Those who don't could face a year behind bars.  

The user name and email requirements hinder convicts' constitutional right to free speech online, says the ACLU.

EFF staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury:

Requiring people to give up their right to speak freely and anonymously about civic matters is unconstitutional, and restrictions like this damage robust discussion and debate on important and controversial topics. When the government starts gathering online profiles for one class of people, we all need to worry about the precedent it sets

prop 35 issues

The latest and highest-profile such proposed law is Prop 35, which appears on California's November ballot. It's a complicated measure, rife with legalese and referential to several different parts of the penal code, but essentially, Prop 35 would expand the definition of, and increase penalties for, human trafficking. On the surface, it sounds like one of those unequivocally positive ballot measures anyone can feel good about voting for — and, in fact, it's been endorsed by both of California's major political parties.

Advocates of Prop 35 — mostly law enforcement and those who work with victims of childhood sex abuse — argue that human trafficking is an epidemic in California and the laws as they currently exist don't adequately address the problem. But the ballot measure is also getting vehement criticism, much of it from within the sex industry itself: A number of victims' rights organizations have come out against it, arguing, for the most part, that a problem as complicated as trafficking deserves a more comprehensive solution, and many sex workers have raised fears about unintended consequences, specifically with regards to the fact that the proposed law would expand the definition of trafficking to anyone who benefits financially from prostitution, regardless of intent. "Prop 35 implicates a lot of adult consensual behavior," said Monet. "In my opinion, it's an erosion of sexual rights" — not a protection of human ones.

In Parton's eyes, it's not just that Prop 35 would further criminalize the kind of work she does. It's that it's predicated on the idea that that kind of work — the kind where all parties are participating by choice and no one feels exploited — is fundamentally impossible, that all sex workers are victims. And in that sense, Prop 35 isn't just an inconvenience — it's an affront to a political and social movement that's taken years to build.

Jolene Parton is a ho. She's also a Berkeley native, a comic-book fanatic, a Dolly Parton aficionado (hence the name, which is fake), an NPR listener, and a big fan of Vietnamese food. She wears big round glasses rimmed in translucent pink plastic, and, in her ears, jade-green plugs. She's redheaded and rosy-skinned and pretty in the kind of way that would be at home in a J. Crew catalog, but for the pierced septum and stylishly half-shaved head and aforementioned plugs; as is, she's probably more like American Apparel material. And she's been working in the sex industry, broadly defined, for about four years, first doing odd jobs at what she describes as the "entry-level" end of the sex-work spectrum — foot fetish stuff, artsy nude photography, one night during which she "cuddled with a guy in his apartment for money" — and then in porn and at various peepshows and strip clubs; a bit over a year ago, she started escorting. And when she says she loves her job — which she does, often and unbidden — she does so with the kind of steady-eyed enthusiasm that's hard to fake.

"It's been great, honestly," she told me a couple weeks ago at an Oakland Chinatown lunch spot, steam rising from the vermicelli bowl in front of her and fogging her lenses. She genuinely likes her clients, or at least as much as anyone can be expected to like the people they work with, and she appreciates the freedom of being able to set her own hours: "I don't have an alarm clock," she said. "I make breakfast every morning, I get to hang out with my friends whenever I want. This job affords me a lifestyle most people don't get."

Sex is one of those commodities that tends to be popular no matter how bad the economy is, and Parton said the Bay Area's booming tech industry — and its attendant cadre of young, lonely men who want an escort they're compatible with both sexually and intellectually —......................

since California is currently under court order to release some 33000 inmates and cap its prison population at 110,00 prisoners by June bc prison conditions violate the Eighth Amendment.

            And they are not going to make the deadline, despite the release of thousands. Even worse, California is getting ready to release “third strike” career criminals as long as the third strike was not a violent or serious felony. To meet the release quota, officials say they will also have to release “second strike” criminals who have committed serious or violent crimes.

       Correction officials keep moving the bar up as to who is eligible for release to have any chance to meet the cap. Is Charlie on the list? Hey, he is a “first strike” guy but it was a hell of a strike. We may be getting there if the state has to keep the sex offenders in jail longer. Surely human traffickers – which includes not only sex traffickers but nanny gate rich guys and gals – should not be locked up as long as murderers.  

     Meanwhile Gov Brown has declared victory on prison conditions and is going back to court to fight the release order – good luck, since the Supreme Court already has affirmed it and conditions although improved, are still below the constitutional floor

so long as you use the facilities of interstate commerce - like um- the internet - because this violates the federal Travel Act. Fortunately, most US attys have a policy not to prosecute "sex alone" Travel Act violations (see Elliott Spitzer, Exhibit A).

       But for those agencies and gals foolish enough not pay taxes and to launder money, you remain at great risk if enough is involved to interest the feds.

       Many states have third strike felony provisions in the prostitution area and with states like Illinois ratcheting up the penalties I don't think we can expect to see these statutes deleted soon.