Assembly Bill 379 is bad legislation. More on that in a bit. But it’s gained credibility thanks solely to the ineptitude of Democratic leadership in handling the bill and the fallout from the debate over it.
It’s been something to see Democratic lawmakers, who are always enthusiastic about using the force of state government against business, against taxpayers, against charter schools, suddenly reluctant to wield their powers and eager to find nuance when it comes to matters of crime and punishment.
In this case, Democrats had it half-right and half-wrong.
From the outset, AB 379, introduced by Assemblymember Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, sought to do two things: increase penalties for those who solicit 16- and 17-year-olds and criminalize loitering in public for the purposes of purchasing sex.
The first provision would do less than what both supporters and opponents said. It’s already illegal to solicit 16- and 17-year olds, but what AB 379 in its original form sought to do is make a first violation of the law a “wobbler,” meaning it can be a felony or misdemeanor, with subsequent violations being a felony. It’s already a wobbler if the 16- or 17-year-old was a victim of trafficking under Senate Bill 1414.
As noted by Reason Magazine’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, “the crime of solicitation does not require sex or any physical activity at all to take place. It doesn’t even require an actual minor to exist—many, if not most, cases charged involve stings conducted by undercover police pretending to be under age 18.”
(As an aside, Elizabeth Nolan Brown has previously written about the sketchy prosecutorial track record of Assemblymember Krell.)
Even so, is there some compelling reason not to make it a wobbler and escalate penalties for subsequent attempts to solicit minors? Not really. Soliciting of minors for sex is something that should obviously be deterred.
For those rare, hypothetical cases of teenagers making a mistake and being caught soliciting a fellow teenager, I’m pretty sure a misdemeanor charge or the threat of it would deter them from making that mistake again.
For the sort of person who gets repeatedly caught soliciting minors, I mean, what are we talking about? Is that really the sort of person Democrats want to stick their necks out for? Is it really in the interests of justice to go easy on such people?
Democrats erred in objecting to this provision because they had no compelling reason for doing so. And so they’ve looked ridiculous for the past week and even sillier when they backtracked and decided they didn’t really mean to oppose it.
But then there’s the other provision of the law, which would “make it a misdemeanor for any person to loiter in any public place with the intent to purchase commercial sex.”
What a vague and subjective law. Such a law will only waste police resources and make it harder to focus on cases that should be the focus: cases involving minors, trafficking and coercion.
Both for its vagueness and also its misallocation of resources, Democrats were right to reject the law solely on that provision.
Which is why I suggest Democrats had it half-right and half-wrong. They should have removed the second provision but kept the first provision. But they did things in reverse.
California can and should prioritize cracking down on sex trafficking of minors and people forced into sex work without their consent. That’s just common sense.
But here’s where I’ll go a step further and suggest where they also need to go and that is the decriminalization of sex work between adults. For one, it’s no business of the state what consenting adults do between themselves. And second, why waste police resources on consensual activity when there’s indisputably worse stuff going on?
What we currently have is a mess created by prohibition, an unregulated and uncontrolled market for sex subject to whatever the black market can get away with. At the same time, progressives are too skittish about enforcing seemingly any criminal law, moderate Democrats don’t want to look like progressives, and Republicans are Republicans.
Krell and the Republicans want to double-down on prohibition. That won’t work.
The hysteria over AB 379 just shows neither party has the right ideas for how to deal with this reasonably.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com
Originally Published:
