Texas has become the first state to pass a law state-wide authorizing counties to establish "prostitution prevention" programs, reporting to the state government and patterned after the "successful" programs in the Dallas area.
S.B. No. 484 was passed last September amending Ch 169A of the Texas Health and Safety Code.
The law REQUIRES the 22 counties with populations over 200,000 to establish these programs. The other areas are authorized to do so.
With Federal and State $$$ available for those, you can bet it won't be long before McLennan County (Waco), Bell County (Killeen) and Brazos County (BCS) copy the Dallas county handbook and apply for the cash. (I could not find out if Brazos was on the list of 22, but Bell and McLennan are for sure. The population for Brazos county is just below or just above 200,000 depending on where you pull the data).
Remember the "John School" sting in Waco last year that I reported on? That was based on Texas HB 1994. Waco PD set up a fake BP account and busted men that answered the ad. The city got funding for that. Extra money for the cops and to hire one of their family members to "school" the first time "Johns".
Seems to me that once the counties get the funding, they will have a financial incentive to pick up more providers. It is no secret that "prostitution" has gone online.
Should be interesting to see how this one pans out. Don't misunderstand. I am all in favor of any program that truly helps people out.
The approach in the Dallas program is to once a month, round up all of the providers that they can and give them the choice of jail or help.
Here is the link to the actual verbiage of the bill:
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs...l/SB00484I.htm
There are also several news articles online regarding this topic. This being a good summary
http://www.policymic.com/articles/46...-and-it-should
I would welcome any thoughts, concerns, comments or insights into this.
Respectfully,
OldSarge