There are many ways to address prostitution through the criminal justice apparatus, and one of them involves targeting the clients. Some jurisdictions hold john schools, to varying degrees of success. And some leave notices on cars parked in areas of high-prostitution trafficking, or send them to clients' homes.
Recently, online john-shaming is the way to go. The Chron reports:
Bay Area johns have a new worry: finding their mug shots and charges posted online for all to see.
It's a cyber scarlet letter with a punch, as 11 men found out in Richmond after they encountered undercover officers who posed as prostitutes Thursday afternoon while wearing hidden microphones along busy 23rd Street.
The officers snapped the men's mug shots while booking them in the field, then posted the photos Friday to the police force's Facebook page.
. . .
"It's a way of using the embarrassment card," said police Lt. Kevin Wiley, who helped create Oakland's website. "It can attack an individual's reputation. They are engaging in crimes that are beneath the surface, off the radar, a dirty little secret, (and) we expose that secret.
"It's not an innocent act," Wiley said. "No more of that good-old-boy mind-set."
The Oakland website, inspired by a similar program in Fresno, states that individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The plan is to update it with new photos of alleged johns and pimps about every two weeks.
What do you think about john-shaming as a prostitution-combating technique?
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