If you want to pay by the hour for your Van Buren motel room, then too bad.
The city of Phoenix has finally completed its goal of running hourly motels out of the city. After long police investigations, and a clear intention to force motel-owners to give up their sexually oriented business licenses, Phoenix city government has gotten the final hourly-rate motel to cave.
The Desert Winds Motel, located at 1865 E. Van Buren St., surrendered the last hourly rate motel license in Phoenix. This follows a well-advertised, yearlong police investigation into prostitution along the Van Buren corridor of Phoenix, and in particular, the connection between prostitution and pay-by-the-hour motels in that area.
Shockingly, our law enforcement professionals determined there is a link between prostitution and seedy motels in the Van Buren area, a startling revelation that everyone already knew.
And also not so shocking, the city of Phoenix has gone about its prostitution problem in a way that continues an all too familiar trend with prohibitionist strategies: they make the problem worse, not better.
This whole scenario should leave a nasty taste in Phoenicians' mouths for a variety of reasons.
First, there is the problem of the way Phoenix used its police force.
Instead of conducting normal police business and surveying the area in the typical manner, Phoenix police engaged in a deliberate policy not aimed at directly curbing prostitution, which is a crime. Rather, Phoenix police targeted the entirely legal licenses of business that are only indirectly related to criminal activity.
This is nothing short of an abuse of power. The enormous powers that we grant to police to protect us, often at the expense of our individual liberties, should not be discriminatively applied. The expansive powers of law enforcement should not be viewed as a tool to accomplish social goals, like killing sex-related businesses.
Second, the notion that eliminating hourly-rate motels will actually lead to meaningful, legitimate change is laughable.
Police have reported a drop in crime in the area since their crack down. However, there is no reason to think that these activities have not simply been pushed to other areas of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Even further, there is absolutely no reason to think that a decrease in arrests for a particular crime actually means that the crime is being committed less often.
Earlier this year, The State Press reported that citations for drinking on campus had gone down. In this instance, as is the case with prostitution in the Phoenix area, there is no evidence that the activity in question has become less common.
Such "evidence" just as likely indicates that perpetrators have gotten better at avoiding getting caught than it does in indicating that incidents of these so-called crimes have, in reality, decreased.
But third, and most troubling, is how this witch-hunt against hourly-rate motels will exacerbate the negative effects of street prostitution. The problem with prostitution is not that it exists - it always has and it always will.
The absence of hourly rate motels will simply push street prostitutes, among the most vulnerable members of our community, further into the frightening depths of society.
Without safe havens to conduct their business, crime and abuse of prostitutes will probably increase. And by increasing the overhead costs of getting a prostitute (nightly rates are higher than hourly rates), less money is likely to end up in the pockets of the prostitutes, pushing them to seemingly anything that will make up for lost revenue.
The problem with prostitution is that it is not legal, and therefore, operates in the ugly world of black markets. And thanks to the Phoenix Police Department's misguided abuse of power, nobody is safer, while a lot of people are worse off.
Reach the reporter at: macy.hanson@asuchoice.com.
