Legalization of prostitution made rape and STD infections DROP significantly on Rhode Island

The Daily Mail reports:

Lawmakers in Rhode Island found a novel way to reduce rape and sexually transmitted diseases when they accidentally decriminalized prostitution.

Instances of rape dropped almost by one-third, and gonorrhea infection rates among women have dropped nearly 40 per cent after legislators revealed in 2003 they had effectively legalized the exchange of sex for money.

The findings are detailed in a National Bureau of Economic Research paper, and show a sharp drop in instances of those events until state once again made prostitution illegal in 2009 – and then realized a significant jump in rapes.

Researchers Scott Cunningham, of Baylor University, and Manisha Shah, of UCLA, believe their findings prove conclusively that legalizing prostitution lowers instances of rape and of STD, they told the Washington Post.

The discovery was made during a 2003 court case in which a judge ruled that laws then on the books were not sufficient enough to prosecute a suspected prostitute, according to the Post.

Lawmakers had accidentally made the change by deleting too many words from statutes back in the 1980s and only made the discovery nearly 20 years later.

The public announcement set off a wave of women being trafficked into the state to be used as sex slaves, opponents argued to the paper.

But it also resulted in a sharp decline in the number of rapes being reported. Statistics show instances of rape hitting an all-time high before dropping 31 per cent during the six-years prostitution was effectively legal.

It appears a certain "segment" of the population doesn't want "competition" so they want to make prostitution illegal.