O’REGAN J and SACHS J [87] All of these contentions were challenged by the appellants and the amici. Counsel for the appellants and the amici agreed that trafficking in women and child prostitution ought to be prohibited, but contended that the general suppression of commercial sex makes it more rather than less difficult to single out these evils for focused attention. Similarly, they argued that the criminalisation of commercial sex exacerbates the links between prostitution and crime and disease, and that any public nuisance could be corrected by appropriate regulatory measures. They also indicated that the costs of law enforcement in this area are particularly high. Being a so-called victimless crime, evidence can usually only be obtained by egregious forms of entrapment, which fosters corruption.51 Counsel strongly criticised the proposition that the banning of prostitution was justified as a measure to reduce violence, contending that it was precisely the marginalisation of prostitutes by the law that renders them vulnerable to violence: 51 It was indeed considerations of this kind that led the Wolfenden Commission to conclude that the damage done to the administration of justice through attempts to suppress prostitution was disproportionate to the public ends served: better that the law concentrate on dealing with public nuisance dimension of prostitution than with prostitution itself. Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (Wolfenden), Cmnd No 247 (1957) London: HMSO at paras 222-97. Similar arguments are summarised in D Richards “Commercial Sex and the Rights of the Person: A Moral Argument for the Decriminalization of Prostitution” (1979) 127 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1195 on the basis of experience in the USA. 60

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