SubscribeResearching my piece on the business of prostitution I discovered that police are no closer to finding out who murdered four prostitutes found dumped in an Atlantic City drain.
Their story doesn’t appear to dominate the news or to have provoked a national debate. At the time of writing Google tracks 165 news items on the Americans against 2,280 news items on the Brits. Here a national newspaper offers a £250,000 (US$493,000) reward. In Atlantic City a former mayor asks people to look beyond the women’s lifestyle as a task force of 40 searches for the killer. In the UK the BBC is taken to task for defining victims by their occupation and more than 500 police work on the case.
It’s quite a contrast. But given that the number of women working Ipswich’s streets is estimated at just thirty to forty, you can’t help wonder how much we’d save if, instead of tolerating prostitution, we did whatever it takes to get them off drugs.
