Support the independent voice of Dallas and help keep the future of Dallas Observer free. There was a time, about a century ago, when prostitution was perfectly legal in Dallas at least so long as it took place in Frogtown, the city's official red-light district. It was a decidedly pragmatic way of dealing with the world's oldest profession, but it wouldn't last.
The state's Supreme Court shut it down after a few years, and the city, like pretty much everywhere else, gradually adopted a more punitive approach to the sex trade.
The pendulum now seems to be swinging back away from punishment, with Dallas County's pioneering prostitution diversion initiative attempting to funnel women into treatment rather than jail.
The program is now primed to go statewide. The program's goals and outcomes are laudable, but its success is built on a constitutionally ambiguous premise. Before they enroll in the program, women have to be arrested first, which typically happens during monthly sweeps of truck stops along the Interstate 20 corridor.
No problem there. Some of the women are taken into custody after soliciting undercover vice cops. No problem there, either. When you take money from a cop in exchange for sex, he has plenty of probable cause. The majority of the women, though, aren't actually caught performing sex acts for money, nor are they caught offering to do so.
