Presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) once proposed that Florida should offer seized money from sex workers to reward “whistleblowers” who worked with the police.
In 2006 after Rubio became speaker of the Florida House, he created a list of “100 Innovative Ideas for Flordia’s Future.” His 43rd idea involved targeting prostitution and those who made money from it:
“Whistleblower status should be afforded to everyone who reports these crimes, even if they are involved in the act,” Rubio’s book read. “As an incentive for reporting the illegal activities, whistleblowers should also receive half the proceeds from any forfeiture actions brought in the case.”
The proposal called for sex workers to report themselves, “thus assisting our women and young girls to escape prostitution.”
One huge problem was that Rubio’s proposal could be interpreted as offering everyone — the sex workers, the clients, and even the pimps — immunity and cash for snitching.
Rubio also wanted people who used websites that promote “illegal sexual activity” to be “placed into a registry.” He believed this would “discourage people from patronizing businesses and websites that promote criminal activity.”
Rubio also wanted to launch a “large-scale advertising campaign, designed to shame those who ‘promote illicit sex’” in his state. He also wanted to encourage people to come forward and provide information to the police relating to “these destructive, demeaning crimes.”
One sex worker threw cold water on Rubio’s failed plan.
“Sex workers don’t have a great deal of money to begin with, and property forfeiture is not a major feature in most prostitution cases. But if it were, the amounts would mostly be tiny to the state, but still crippling to the sex worker, thus forcing already low-income people deeper into poverty,” said “Mistress Matisse,” a columnist for the Seattle-based alternative newspaper The Stranger.
“Such a law would do nothing to decrease sex work, it would simply encourage people to accuse women of being prostitutes out of greed, which will thus make sex workers more fearful and thus more isolated.”
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