Italian crackdown expands to prostitutes on streets
Thu 11 Sep 2008, 11:01 GMT

By Stephen Brown

ROME, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government opened a new front in its battle against crime on Thursday with tough new laws aimed at clearing prostitutes from the streets of Italy and punishing their clients and pimps.

Brothels and "red light" districts have been illegal since 1958, but prostitutes ply their trade by the roadside in broad daylight in many Italian cities, including Rome.

Many of the estimated 70,000-100,000 prostitutes in Italy are from Eastern Europe and Africa, often illegal immigrants who are vulnerable to exploitation.

Removing them is part of a wider drive to address public fears of crime, blamed by politicians and the media on illegal immigrants.

Besides new laws against illegal immigration and street crime, Berlusconi's conservative government has put soldiers on the streets to help the police.

Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna said her bill was the first action Italy had taken on prostitution in 50 years.

"In Italy, as in the great majority of Western countries, prostitution itself is not a crime," Carfagna told reporters.

"As a woman I am horrified by it, I don't understand how someone can sell their body in the street for money. But I realise it exists and, like drugs, cannot be wiped out," she told a news conference after the cabinet approved her bill.

"We intend to make it more difficult and to combat the criminal organisations who make an obscene profit by reducing these women to slavery," said Carfagna.


STRONG MAJORITY

Critics say criminalizing kerbside prostitution will simply force more prostitutes to work behind closed doors, where they may be more at risk of violence and abuse. But the bill should sail through parliament, where Berlusconi has a strong majority.

Carfagna said she had no intention of condoning red light districts, brothels or regulated "cooperatives" of sex workers that exist in some European countries.

The law introduces jail terms of up to two weeks and fines of up to 3,000 euros for people selling or buying sex in public. Sex with under-aged prostitutes from 16-18 will carry jail terms of up to four years and fines of up to 6,000, and paid sex with children under 16 will carry heavier sentences.

People "pimping" minors under the age of 18 will face jail terms of up to 12 years and fines of up to 150,000 euros.

Under-aged foreign prostitutes will be repatriated if there are guarantees that they will be returned to their family.

A Catholic charity praised Carfagna for "having the courage to take on the phenomenon of prostitution as a serious social evil". Her appointment had elicited ridicule because of her past as a showgirl. But the 32-year-old law graduate has won praise for new laws protecting women from sexual abuse and stalkers.
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