Monday September 18 7:39 AM ET

Police Open Brothel, Crack Down to Make Cash

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Police in China's eastern province of Jiangsu found a novel way to fill their pockets with cash: They opened a brothel, arrested the customers and ``fined'' them.

With seed money of 6,000 yuan ($725), Lishui County police substation deputy chief Gao Mingliang set up operations in a brothel disguised as a restaurant in May last year, Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News reported on Monday.

Prostitutes would entice their customers into the back rooms. After a while, the police would raid the rooms, arrest the customers, haul them down to the police substation and fine them, it said.

``Depending on how much money the police station pulled in, they would issue a performance bonus to the girls,'' the paper said.

Between May and August last year, the bureau racked up more than 80,000 yuan through the scheme.

The Lishui County police plan unraveled when a neighboring police substation arrested the man listed as owning the restaurant and sentenced him to a year in a labor camp for running a brothel, it said.

Upset after a year of hard labor, the man sent a petition to high level officials who uncovered Gao's scam, the paper said.

Gao later confessed and in September a Nanjing District Court sentenced him to one year in prison for abusing his authority.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), September 18, 2000

Answers

Now, they can both volenteer a kindey.

-- r.1 (r.1@juno.com), September 18, 2000.

How come prostitution is illegal so many places? After all, we're just doing what comes naturally.

-- Question Man (Qman@how.come?), September 18, 2000.

>> How come prostitution is illegal so many places? After all, we're just doing what comes naturally. <<

I suspect the answer is that sex is such a strong drive that society always places a wall of restrictions around it, in an effort to contain that drive into "beneficial" channels.

Laws against prostitution are designed to prevent access to sex outside of monogamous relationships. The fear is that prostitutes provide such strong competition to marriage that most men would forego marriage in favor of commercial sex. Marriage is seen as the only beneficial channel for sex, because (duh!) sex creates children and producing and raising children is critical to the future of society.

Once you analyze it down to the basics, you realize it has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of sex for pay and everything to do with social taboos that try to avert social breakdown by creating "safe" roles for all of us.

Crime is whatever threatens social order and stability. Morality is what strengthens it. Stability and security are the be-all and end-all for society. Not peace. Not justice. Not morality per se. Just stability and security. There is no justice in outlawing prostitution and jailing prostitutes or their customers. But it does serve a function.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), September 18, 2000.

There's a certain fantasy [for me] involved in owning a brothel [in a state or county where it's legal, of course.] Personally, I think I watched too many movies wherein the owner of the brothel was always protecting the girls from the viciousness of some clients and I could play the role of protector. [grin]

Hey, if you think THAT's bad, my mom had fantasies of being a bubble dancer.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 18, 2000.

Madame Anita....yeah,gotta ring to it.Derringer in the top of your stocking,that kinda thing.

-- Sam (wtrmkr52@aol.com), September 18, 2000.

I am married to a prostitute.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), September 18, 2000.

Anita, interesting... Have you ever been inside a real brothel? Prostitution is illegal in Clark County NV (where Las Vegas is) but is OK in most of the rest of the state except the county where Reno is and maybe Tahoe. There are a couple of intresting establishments over in Pahrump near Art Bell's place if anyone wants to take an excursion. It's about an hour from LV.

-- Researcher (Vegas@never.sleeps), September 19, 2000.

"Prostitutes would entice their customers into the back rooms. After a while, the police would raid the rooms, arrest the customers, haul them down to the police substation and fine them, it said."

After a while? What does this mean, exactly? Were the customers allowed to get their, er, bang for the buck?

BTW, You care to post a menu with pricing, Researcher? I may be out that way next month and it might be, uh, helpful. I am planning to drive out to Art Bell's place anyway...Really I am...

-- Another, uh, researcher (howe9@shentel.net), September 19, 2000.