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In the United States, prostitution has long been declared illegal for moral, safety, and public health concerns. Recently, states like New Hampshire and California are challenging these laws, opening the topic for public debate. The effects of legalizing prostitution are still largely unknown because they have primarily been studied in controlled settings. Observing the effects of legalized prostitution on a society can provide evidence to either legitimize or delegitimize public concerns of health and safety. However, for empirical effects to be observed, legislators need to first relax laws banning prostitution, which is politically infeasible as long as prostitution continues to be taboo.
Recently, researchers Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Manisha Shah of the University of California, Los Angeles, estimated the real impact of decriminalizing prostitution by studying six years of legal indoor prostitution in Rhode Island, including data from massage parlors, escort agencies, and the online market. Examining local crime reports, health records from the CDC, and marketing for sex work from 2003 to 2009, they found that while the size of the indoor sex market in Rhode Island...