what was their justification for passing this?

From my understanding, it's more that the children won't be punished than it is outright legal.

Is there any real difference though?

Well, I assume it's still illegal to pay a child for sex, and I also assume it's illegal to pimp children. If those are both legal in California, then yes child prostitution is legal there. If not (and I do hope they're not), then child prostitution is illegal, but who takes the punishment isn't focused on the child.

No, it's a joke thread. Sorry. California did not legalize child prostitution. Posing the discussion under those terms simply ignores the real discussion worth having about how best to protect children, in favor of fake news bullshit. Take that noise somewhere else.

you guys are hopeless twits

I never said I support the law, I was just giving a critique of the way it was presented in the OP.

If you want my opinion about the law itself... I'm really iffy. I see there's some potentially good intention about not punishing children in something they likely didn't choose themselves (since they can't legally consent to sex anyway). But I'm also quite sure some do. And when the child DOES choose that themselves, who to punish? I doubt it's easy catching the people who pay the kids for sex, and if there's no pimp there's not much that can really happen.

Even more, laws aren't about intention, they're about law. You don't enforce intentions. One of the biggest traps lawmakers can fall into when voting on a bill is voting on what the writer SAYS it's supposed to do instead of what the bill actually says. And this bill would be the sort of thing that it can only be done well if it's written REALLY well and thoroughly to account for the possible major problems. But I tried reading the bill. It was written like they didn't want people reading it, it was really circumlocutive, and I think it's mostly supposed to be amendatory, but it's not easy to see the amendments to existing law. That's a really bad sign.

And the thing about California is I don't really trust that system to be thorough. It has the Democratic version of a problem Oklahoma has. Since the politics don't really give much opportunity for more than one party to have a voice, there isn't much room for criticism. And that leads to bad bill writing.

In the end, it doesn't matter what people say about what a bill says. What matters is what the bill says. And I don't have a clue.

tprado are you really that dense?

Yes

Because putting children in prison for being victims of sex trafficking is a bad thing?

There are provisions to temporarily take them into custody, which stops the actual act from happening and gets them out of a system that is using them as sex workers. It also gives them an opportunity to safely take themselves to the police if they have the means to without fear of punishment, though in my mind the practical benefits of that point are limited.

Leth is right. Prado makes the point that the opinion is being misconstrued, but expresses actual concern in nonconcrete terms that don't add to the discussion. The rest of you should try harder to make intelligent points.

they don't go to prison. they go to child protective services and are placed under foster care

If you want something more concrete of a concern, let me give an example for one of my points:

Let's say there's a 17 year old attending a university in California. They live out of state, so they're separated from their parents. They decide they want some extra money, so they decide to start having sex with other students for money.

While not necessarily likely, this sort of thing is entirely possible, and with an issue of such gravity as child prostitution, all sorts of scenarios need consideration in the bill writing process.

@Brad, they go to juvenile detention, which is not the same thing. I see nothing here preventing them from going to CPS when caught.

@Prado, beyond the fact that a 17 year old attending a university in the first place is already an incredibly tiny minority, do we really need to be punishing them for it to any extreme?

You're selling your body. It's dangerous. There's a good argument you should stop, and there's enough leniency in what police can do here that it's possible you still will. The major problems with prostitution are sex trafficking and abuse, and in the vast majority of cases, these are actual issues. An obscurity with much lower harms shouldn't invalidate something that can help people.

Let's say we have a family in poverty. The parents tell the child that she should go pimp herself out as a responsibility to the family and that it's perfectly legal. The child ends up getting caught, and the child denies that her parents have any involvement, and the parents likewise plead ignorance. By this new law, nothing can happen, and moreover it puts pressure on children in such situations because they would be making a perfectly legal living for their impoverished family.

The way this article is of course sensationalistic, first misleadingly implying in the headline that there's a total green light for sex with minors for money in California and then diving into an obviously political motivated editorial. It's a just a big dumb article.

I'm not overly versed on this new law, but from my understanding of it I think the philosophy of it is in the right direction. When it comes to juvenile sex-for-money activities I do feel the criminal liability here should lay more on the side of the adults involved in this act whether that's the pimp, the john, the trafficker, the person who knowingly provides a space or anybody else that participated in enabling the situation. In my eyes it's the same spirit in which you don't charge the minor in situations of statutory rape you charge the adult. For the minors these are social welfare issues not criminal issues.

Whether it's a good law or not is more about how well they thought out the details of it, which i can't say based on my shallow dive into it. Sure if the law was drafted poorly it could open up legal loopholes that could only encourage child prostitution from a business perspective and if proper social programs aren't in place children in bad situations could fall through cracks where they may have been better off in care of juvenile corrections. I hope that's not the case but would be ignorant to jump into a conclusion the lawmakers and politicians are completely inept and didn't bother to but thought into it. Maybe they really are in California, couldn't say.

As for the examples of the non-sex trafficked cases where the young girls want some extra cash by servicing the college dorm for $50 a pop or wanted to run away and find a means to be self-sufficient, are we really envisioning a bunch of teenage girls out there dreaming of this lifestyle but the legality of it is holding them back?

Since reasonable people have already pointed out the obvious flaws here, let me comment on the '17 year old college student' thing...

Have you ever met a younger college student? I started university just barely old enough to drive and let me tell you, I was absolutely not ready to start prostituting myself at the time, and neither were any of the other young students I met. We're generally odd kids with the "gifted" label forced on us. We feel like all eyes are on us at all times because that's how we grew up. Now, let's say that a kid was sent off by their parents who doesn't meet this stereotype, they're most likely alone and wholly unaware of the new world they're living in; does this sound like the type of person more likely to take advantage of the legal system or someone more likely to be exploited by sexual predators?

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, it is inevitable that this law will be exploited, just as all laws against prostitution tend to be...But the majority of people who will likely be helped by this are children in really tough situations that I doubt you can even wrap your mind around!

also, living in many parts of california is expensive. Say a young person fell on hard times and needed a little extra money. If someone becomes a victim, do you really think it's better for them to fear reporting their actions to the police? Law enforcement needs to be centered around helping victims, especially around traumatic incidences like these.