THE REAL INWARDNESS OF REGULATION
Reasons for partial survival of regulation.—Policy rapidly losing
ground.—Ignorance of its details.—Political and social
conservatism.—Vested interests.—Regulation and police
corruption.—Ulterior motives.—Final objection to regulation.
In the course of the last three chapters I have been at pains to discuss
in detail the continental regulation of vice. I have shown that the term
regulation denotes no uniform system, but that, on the contrary, marked
variations of system exist, explicable in the main, as different
attempts to stop a gap, to prevent further collapse, or to effect a
readjustment somewhat less repugnant to modern feeling. Two reasons
continue to be advanced officially in support of the system: that it is
necessary to the police authorities for the maintenance of order, and
that it contributes to the reduction of venereal disease. The former
contention has been shown to lack substantial basis; the latter is
assuredly in most cases either insincere or mistaken,—insincere, I take
it, in Paris, where the most elementary sanitary precautions are
neglected, where the administration of the hygienic features is so
notoriously bad that one cannot but suspect the entire sanitary object;
mistaken at Vienna, where a conscientious administration continues to
labor at the task with implements and methods already obsolete. I have
shown, further, that, futile at its best, regulation is at its worst
when associated with recognized or tolerated bordells, for the bordell
is itself the scene of disorder and the hotbed of exploitation, excess,
and disease. Of the ethical argument against regulation little has thus
far been made, for it seemed better in the first place to examine the
system on its own chosen ground. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that
the ethical argument has played a part in discrediting a system, which
has suffered alike from its own obvious failure as well as from the
growing disgust of society.
For the reasons just summarized, regulation has lost and is still
rapidly losing ground. As recently as a quarter of a century ago it was
in vogue throughout the Continent of Europe; in the seventies it enjoyed
a brief currency in Great Britain as well. It is decaying in France
where, of 695 communes having over 5,000 inhabitants, it has entirely
disappeared from 250[504] and practically from many others. In Germany,
of 162 cities, 48 have dispensed with it,[505] while it is moribund in
others. In Switzerland it survives only in Geneva; it has been wholly
abandoned in Denmark, Norway and Great Britain. A special commission has
recommended its total abolition in France; and a similar body in Sweden,
far from unanimous at the start, has unanimously come to the same
conclusion. Partisans of regulation sometimes endeavor to explain away
this general movement on the ground that in it ethics and sentimentality
have simply prevailed over science and commonsense. But the facts lie
far otherwise. Religious bodies have indeed taken a prominent part; but
there has been no lack of facts contributed and vouched for by
physicians and scientists of distinction. Among the most prominent
opponents of regulation are publicists, who have observed its futility
from the standpoint of order, and medical specialists who have become
convinced of its uselessness from the standpoint of sanitation.[506]
For its partial survival thus far in France, Germany, and
Austria-Hungary there is no single or simple explanation; several
considerations combine to retard what is unmistakably a general movement
destined to efface the system in all its forms. Let us briefly consider
the factors in question.
Ignorance is partially responsible. The general public is uninformed;
many intelligent people have only the vaguest ideas as to what is taking
place in the name of regulation; even the police have rarely studied the
problem except shortsightedly in relation to their own daily
necessities. In Paris, the principles involved have been indeed the
subject of acrimonious discussion for many years; but I recall the utter
amazement with which a distinguished politician, to whom I had been
referred as one keenly interested in the topic, heard that at that
moment only one hundred and seventy women were interned on the score of
disease. Other similar incidents could be given. The Budapest officials
had studied and adopted the revised Berlin procedure; the Vienna
officials had studied the Budapest and Berlin bureaus on the ground; but
other instances of painstaking examination of the workings and the
effects of regulation even on the part of those charged with its
enforcement were very rare indeed. I learned to my surprise that the
police of one town knew of other systems only what was printed,—an
inadequate basis for judgment, because the official accounts are too
favorable and quite fragmentary, conveying no accurate idea of
conditions and events; the abundant outside literature is so uneven and
so conflicting that the bureaucrat, reading it in his office, and not
knowing what to believe, neglects it almost altogether. Partisans of
retention, reform, and abolition alike fight more or less largely with
lame weapons,—reports, hearsay, and newspaper clippings. The Paris
police, for example, urge that if the morals patrol were abolished,
respectable women would not be free from molestation on the streets; and
a high official cited Zurich as a striking example. Inquiry and
observation on my part at Zurich failed to discover the slightest basis
for the statement. Non-existent statistics are frequently referred to,
to show the dreadful things that have followed in the wake of abolition
in England. Under these conditions the emotional fervor with which the
ethical argument has been pushed has had at times an effect just
opposite to that intended. The police official sees a conflict between
facts and ethics where, had the facts been dispassionately and
comparatively presented, he might remark that religious zeal was merely
sweeping away in righteous indignation the fallen timbers of a structure
condemned by its own results.
The political and social conservatism of Europe doubtless also operates
to stay the reforming hand. Regulation of some kind has existed time out
of mind,—in classical and medieval, as in modern times. Prostitutes have
formed a class apart; and societies which respect class differentiations
readily enough transmit an institution which appears to be founded
simply on the frank acceptance of what has been, is, and will continue
to be. That much more than this is implied in and countenanced by
regulation is a consideration, the force of which is not appreciated
until the critical and inquiring spirit becomes active.
Regulation enjoys, however, more positive and more formidable protection
than would be afforded by either ignorance or tradition. It is
identified with powerful vested interests. Of European office-holders—as
of all others—it is true that “officials rarely resign and never die.”
The officials—lay and medical—and the patrolmen directly and indirectly
connected with the morals bureau form a place-holding interest,
magnifying its own importance, stating its own case in the way that is
most likely to carry conviction and resisting interference with all the
strength of the instinct that struggles for existence. The destruction
of the system would sweep away a more or less numerous official
apparatus: commissaries and inspectors for whom there might be no other
places; examining physicians to whom the official stipend is perhaps an
important item.
Less creditable motives are also alleged. The European police[507] bear,
on the whole, an excellent reputation. As to the capacity, intelligence
and integrity of the officials one hears no question raised. The
administration of the police furnishes a legitimate and honorable
career, comparable in prominence and dignity with that of the army or
the bench. The police president is usually a jurist of university
training who has risen to his post by promotion on the basis of merit.
His appointment has no connection with politics, and he holds office for
life or good behavior. The very patrolmen are selected with scrupulous
care. In Germany no man is appointed unless he has served as an
under-officer during his military service; in England, fresh men are
taken from the country and small towns in order to avoid connections and
associations possibly prejudicial to disinterested service. The rank and
file therefore are trustworthy and respected. Exceptions occur, but it
is nowhere believed that they are frequent or serious.
But this exemplary reputation does not belong to the morals police. Once
more, the head officials are nowhere involved; charges of corruption and
grave impropriety on the part of the patrolmen in the morals service
are, however, all too common. The situation created by regulation is
indeed an impossible one. Prostitution is treated as inevitable; it is
authorized and “regulated” on the ground that men will indulge
themselves. And yet the morals police who are closest to it are expected
to hold aloof! Again, women are exploited by pimps, by liquor-dealers,
by bordell-keepers; yet regulation assumes that the morals police who
are every moment in position to sell favors, exemptions and privileges
will refrain from doing so.[508]
In truth, such oversight as would insure an honest morals police
adequate to the need in point of number cannot possibly be instituted.
The task would be difficult enough if all prostitutes were treated
alike; for public opinion and official supervision could then enforce a
consistent policy. But public opinion and official supervision cannot
enforce a policy abounding in exceptions. The moment exceptions occur,
an opportunity for trading, for corruption, for collusion is created;
hence the danger arising from measures applicable to part only of the
offenders. If at the most one prostitute in six or eight or ten is to be
registered, who is to know on what basis the others escape through the
net? Who is to tell whether an officer refrains from making an arrest,
because he lacks proof, or has been bought off with money or favors? It
can occasion no surprise therefore to find it freely asserted that among
the stronger forces working for the retention of regulation must be
reckoned the personal interest of corrupt placemen, and of
liquor-dealers, dance-hall-owners, and bordell-keepers who through
regulation come into possession of a group of women whom they can
exploit. The effort to dislodge regulation in Geneva—the sole Swiss town
in which it survives—has been so far successfully resisted by a
combination of bordell-keepers, liquor-dealers, gamblers and high
livers, who proclaim Geneva as a “smaller Paris,” and urge that the
miniature should be characterized by all the gaiety and frivolity of the
prototype. In Paris it is charged that morals policemen have acted as
“go-betweens” in negotiations between brothel-keepers and street women;
that they have in some instances under threat of arrest forced girls
from the street into houses needing recruits; and that they have been
bribed to overlook infractions of the age-limit. These are not the
irresponsible charges of unknown journalists; they are made on the
authority of some of the ablest publicists in France,—a former prime
minister among them. I have in my possession a copy of a letter written
by a morals policeman to a street prostitute working for him as a pimp!
One hears of similar incidents elsewhere. Shortly before I went to
Berlin,—so I was informed—twelve men had been dismissed from the force
for unworthy conduct. A similar incident again recently took place. The
Berlin morals patrolmen are permitted to utilize registered women as
spies in order to obtain information for their guidance. A girl thus
used turned upon her employers, denouncing them as “pimps.” Of those
accused additional evidence was procured against only three; and of
these one was clearly proved to have received from her 1,000 marks. At
Frankfort I was told of instances in which it was found that police
officers lived in the very houses to which registered prostitutes were
referred. We may conclude, therefore, that the corrupt interest of
unprincipled men inside and outside the force is a factor in the
struggle to retain regulation.
With the difficulties of the police situation in non-regulated
communities I shall deal in subsequent chapters; but it must be remarked
at this juncture that the defects of the morals police above pointed out
arise not only from the existence of this specialized force, but from
the fact that they are called on to execute a self-contradictory policy;
neither superior officers nor the public can know to whom the rules are
applicable and to whom not. But in non-regulated towns, with or without
a morals police system, the same policy is applied to all.
Street-walking is or is not allowed; bordells are or are not tolerated.
The opportunity for corruption disappears, not simply because the morals
police disappear—this is not always the case—but because an equitable
and readily controllable régime is introduced.
There must, of course, be other motives at work to account for the
maintenance of regulation; for the police heads being, as I have urged,
men of honor and intelligence must be regarded as putting up with, while
combatting, the evils just mentioned for the sake of other objects,
which they assume to outweigh the disadvantages involved. Certain
provisions of the rules governing inscribed women give the clue by means
of which the motives in question may be arrived at; and confirmatory
evidence can also be found.
I have frequently called attention to the fact that a woman is not
registered because she is a prostitute, nor even because she is a
diseased prostitute. The women who nightly frequent the cafés, dance
halls and variety shows are among the most notorious prostitutes in
Europe,—thoroughly well known to the police and to the public,—yet no
effort is anywhere made to inscribe them. These women are not overlooked
because their health is miraculously protected; as a matter of fact,
they have run the gamut of disease, are liable to gonorrhœal
re-infection, and are by some specialists regarded as especially
dangerous because they appear to rather better advantage than
street-walkers. The same statements apply to hundreds, in the largest
cities to thousands, of prostitutes, far more humble in aspect who ply
their trade quietly and unostentatiously on the streets. From time to
time a few of them, apprehended for drunkenness or soliciting, are
forcibly inscribed in towns permitting compulsory inscription; but for
the most part, these women do not reach the police rolls and no
systematic effort is anywhere made to place them there. Over a glass of
wine in the cafés of Montmartre or the Latin quarter one readily elicits
the tell-tale facts. The habitués of these resorts know the police and
the police know them. There is not the slightest doubt as to their
status; nightly they appear in their habitat. They are not inscribed,
even though their notoriously promiscuous relations necessarily result
in infection. They are not inscribed because they behave well.
Unaggressive in demeanor, they engage the passer-by in bantering
conversation, disclosing their purpose but rarely pushing it. Their
habits, abode, and associations are known to the police, but known to
involve no open break with order or with conventional notions of
decency. Only when crime or disorder brings them into suspicion or
prominence, do they become objects of police observation, eventually
inscribed and forced to report for medical examination—the device by
means of which they are kept under close surveillance. “The medical
visit is only the excuse made for arbitrary police power.”[509]
The fact then that notorious prostitutes who give no offence by their
actions, associations, or movements easily evade inscription suggests at
once that inscription is not due to prostitution as such, or to
prostitution complicated by disease, but to prostitution in so far as it
is suspected of alliance with criminality or disorder.[510] This
interpretation is sustained by many facts; in the first place, by the
spy system, which has just been exposed in Berlin. The streets abound in
prostitutes to detect whom no spies are needed; yet they are for the
most part overlooked by the police. Spies are utilized to get hold of
prostitutes to whom there is some objection other than their promiscuous
sexual life. Again, everywhere in deciding the question as to whether or
not a woman should be arrested, enormous importance is attached to her
possessing a definite domicile. In Berlin, for example, girls with
“feste Wohnung” (definite domicile) are not apprehended on the streets
unless irrefragable evidence is at hand; girls who on interrogation
prove to be without “feste Wohnung” are taken up promptly. The
distinction is obviously not made on the theory that the former is not a
prostitute, while the latter is,—both are; nor on the theory that the
former is probably infectious, the latter not,—again, both are. The
significant difference is that prostitutes with “feste Wohnung” are apt
to be law-abiding and can in any case be readily laid hold of, while
prostitutes without “feste Wohnung” are apt to be criminal vagabonds of
highly elusive quality.[511] Registration enables the police to pin
these women down and by compelling them to report to headquarters at
brief intervals enables the police to keep in constant touch with a
criminal or semi-criminal element.
There is perhaps another point worth mentioning. The continental police
are constantly concerned lest some possible source of disturbance escape
surveillance. For this reason they keep a close watch on individuals, on
political movements, social agitations, societies, etc. Prostitution is
a potential source of disturbance; the police therefore need to do
something about it, before anything happens. Fortunately, from time to
time experience shows that well-ordered and well-governed communities
may safely be less solicitous about themselves; and cities which have
discarded regulation are surprised to find that the loss of unusual
machinery and the neglect of unusual precautions have been without
baleful consequences.
The above view—that regulation at the present day is retained because it
gives the police an additional arm in dealing with a certain class of
delinquents—is further sustained by certain explicit provisions of the
rules. For the Berlin regulations stipulate: “Registered women must at
once, at any time, day or night, admit to their rooms police officers
who come to make inspection respecting persons found with them.”[512]
Similarly in Hamburg: “Apart from all the regulations affecting
registration of addresses required of all inhabitants, registered
prostitutes must in person report within twenty-four hours every change
of address; further, if they propose to leave the city permanently or
transiently, they must in person announce the fact.[513] Police officers
wishing to view their premises must be admitted without delay.”[514] In
Paris, the rules warn women “not to resist the agents of the
authorities, nor to report falsely their names or addresses.”[515] In
Vienna, “the police may without explanation at any time forbid
prostitutes to occupy a particular house or to room with a particular
madame; the domiciles of prostitutes are to be under constant
surveillance and delegates of the police must be admitted on
request.”[516] Schneider, noting that it “is well known that the police
frequently utilize the lowest grade of prostitutes, who are accustomed
to consort with criminals, as detectives,” and that not seldom
bordell-keepers and bordell inmates are required to act as police spies,
quotes the following from the regulations in vogue at Eger: “Bordell
proprietors are in duty bound to keep close watch on strange customers
and to give the police prompt and quiet notice whenever suspicion is
aroused.”[517] The above regulations apply only to controlled women;
uncontrolled prostitutes are amenable only to the rules applicable to
all other persons. The special provisions above cited are comprehensible
if it is understood that a certain class of prostitutes, themselves of
doubtful character, consort with and conceal criminal and suspicious
characters; and the fact that regulation makes in general no effort to
be more extensive than the class in question lends color to the view
here taken.
There is, however, other evidence to the same effect. M. Lépine the
former Prefect of Paris, has already been quoted as authority for the
statement that it is the controlled women who annoy the police. Unless
these women are enrolled not because they are prostitutes, but because
they are criminals, there would be no reason why arrested prostitutes
should prove to be mainly controlled prostitutes. If prostitutes were
enrolled without regard to criminality or criminal associates, those
arrested would be mainly non-registered women, since the latter are much
the more numerous and at least as prominent. Yet the figures everywhere
tell the opposite story. In Paris, for instance, in 1903, 55,641 arrests
were made among the inscribed women, numbering that year 6,418 women;
among the far greater number of unregistered women, 1,426 were arrested
once, 1,395 more than once,—a total, almost negligible, of 2,821.[518]
The disproportion is less marked at Berlin and the totals smaller, but
the same fact emerges: of controlled women in 1909, 1,122 were arrested;
of clandestines many times as numerous, 636; in 1910, the figures are
1,984 and 878 respectively.[519] The following table shows for a series
of years the number of women arrested by the morals police of Breslau
and the quotas contributed thereto, by inscribed, formerly inscribed,
and non-inscribed women:[520]
Years 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894
Total arrests 1,336 1,570 1,707 1,768 1,995
Inscribed women 1,197 1,386 1,497 1,560 1,621
Formerly inscribed women 12 16 22 14 17
Non-inscribed women 127 168 188 194 357
At Stockholm, those imprisoned are always much more numerous than those
in the hospital, as e. g., 201 in prison, 23 in the hospital in 1870;
162 as against 30 in 1890; 216 as against 74 in 1904.[521] So, of 979
women punished between 1885 and 1889, 198 were sentenced to hard labor
twice, 146 three times, 111 four times, 10 ten times, and 2 thirteen
times.[522] That enrolled prostitution and criminal prostitution fairly
coincide is thus manifest.
It is absurd, as we shall see when we deal with the preservation of
order in non-regulated cities, to argue that either regulation or a
special police is required in order to make these arrests. As a matter
of fact, not a few of the occasions leading to arrests are attributable
to regulation, partly in consequence of the well-nigh inevitable abuse
of the privileges extended to the inscribed prostitute, partly because
of trivial infractions of liberties enjoyed by non-inscribed and denied
to inscribed prostitutes;[523] for just as the inscribed prostitute is
authorized to do certain things without molestation, so she is forbidden
to do others that her non-inscribed sister does without
interference.[524] In any case, as disorder and crime are most rife
among registered women, it would appear that the women are registered on
the ground that they need police oversight and thus get it more
effectually.
In the proceedings of the Paris bureau, incidents occur daily,
explicable on the theory that I have just set forth, and not otherwise.
The police possess, as I have elsewhere explained, summary power; the
girl has no witnesses, no counsel, no appeal. I watched the following
transactions, all suggestive of ulterior motive: a girl released from
St. Lazare forty-eight hours before, was brought before the police
physicians without charge of definite offence, adjudged diseased, and
sent back to prison. Clearly the police wanted her behind the bars, and
regulation enabled them to put her there and keep her there. Another had
left St. Lazare twenty-four hours previously: picked up for disorder,
she was sent back for four days. A third, arrested the previous Friday,
spent Saturday and Sunday in prison; re-arrested Monday, she received a
six days’ sentence. The fourth was arrested at 2 A. M., after being out
of prison one day. The next was asked at my suggestion, “How many terms
have you served at St. Lazare?” Her answer: “I don’t know,—too many to
count.” The prison attendant explained to me that some of these
“repeaters” spend twenty-five nights out of every month there, receiving
a constant succession of short sentences. They are hardened cases, whom
the medical inspection keeps close to the police,—the police, who, by
means of their summary jurisdiction, can put them out of the way
whenever their suspicions are aroused! The fact that clandestines thrice
arrested for “racolage” (soliciting) are compulsorily inscribed bears
witness once more to the fact that registration seeks to get hold of
only the disorderly and criminal.
The criminal arm with which the police are thus furnished is a
plain-clothes division—a secret body moving noiselessly and armed with
summary power. The women and the bordell-owners, where bordells exist,
prosecute their business on the sufferance of this body. I have pointed
out how this situation may lead to corruption of the rank and file. It
is openly and responsibly charged that it has led even the higher
authorities in some places—notably Paris—to employ their irresponsible
power for political or other purposes. It is alleged that prostitutes
and bordell-keepers have been utilized for blackmail and espionage.
Concrete cases are always so involved in detail that the charge is hard
to substantiate; but the high character of the persons who make it
warrants the belief that it is not wholly baseless.[525] Only a few
months ago, the city of Mainz was profoundly agitated by the charge that
the matron attached to the morals bureau had been utilized illegally by
her superiors in this very direction. To one who has taken the time to
understand both the letter and the spirit of continental regulation, the
point is too clear to require extensive argument. Blaschko’s comment is
entirely sound: “Hygiene is not the reason why the police so stubbornly
hold on to regulation. For reasons that have nothing to do with hygiene
the police have a decided interest in keeping under constant observation
precisely this group of professional prostitutes. They are the women who
stand in intimate relation with the criminal world, the friends of
pimps, thieves, and burglars, often enough themselves thieves. Nobody
disputes the right of the police to watch this dangerous class. But
there is no doubt that the criminal point of view which is the real
basis of existing regulation actually gets in the way of efficient
sanitary control.”[526]
I shall show in the chapters dealing with abolition, that, in so far as
concerns legitimate police control of the criminal element on which
Blaschko here touches, there appears to be nothing in the problem that
requires an extraordinary instrument vested with extra-legal powers; in
so far as the final explanation of the tenacity of the police is
espionage, there is no place in any modern society for an agency of this
character. Crime can be kept within bounds without giving certain
criminals the right to practise prostitution; to use the prostitute and
her exploiter as spies and for that purpose to condone or to license
their immorality traverses the modern conception of the function of the
state.
And here we come upon the final and unanswerable objection to any form
of regulation. The modern state—the modern European state—is an
organization charged with the positive duty of securing and promoting
conditions which make for the welfare, happiness, and usefulness of
every member of society. How far it can at any moment travel in the
direction of compelling better conditions is a detail to be determined;
but certain it is that the fundamental basis of modern statesmanship is
violated by the notion that certain members can be sacrificed, body and
soul, in order to win a trivial police advantage! Prostitution exists
and on a large scale. The state is bound to face the fact, bound to
admit its present existence,—its long history in the past, its menace
for the future. But, be the outlook for its extermination or reduction
good or bad, favorable or unfavorable, at the very least the whole
weight of the state’s power and influence, direct and indirect, must be
thrown against it as wasteful, demoralizing, and infamous. If positive
measures are feasible, they must be taken; if social disapproval is even
slightly deterrent, it must be proclaimed with all the authority of
society. “The law must be a teacher” in so far at least as it embodies
an expression of what ought to be. It is absurd to suppose that the
state can take this position—whatever its value—and yet authorize
prostitution on any ground whatsoever,—absurd to preach continence and
to license vice.
True enough, no police officer in Europe admits that regulation licenses
vice. But, whatever the legal theory be, it does, nevertheless! The
prostitute believes that she is practising a trade regulated by society,
that society simply prescribes rules for the conduct of her business.
There is, therefore, no more pathetic incongruity than that which is
presented in the morals bureau of Berlin, Munich and Budapest, where a
social worker is installed for the purpose of dissuasion, while the
police officer waits in the adjoining room ready to authorize the career
from which well-meaning but ineffective pleading has first endeavored to
deter. The permission implied in the existence of regulation is at cross
purposes with the sound attitude implied by the effort to persuade the
girl to renounce her vicious ways. The social effort under these
circumstances is little more than a sop to the popular demand that the
state address itself with all its might to prevention and to salvation
and under no circumstances to authorization.
This then is the final and weightiest objection to regulation: not that
it fails as hygiene, not that it is contemptible as espionage, not that
it is unnecessary as a police measure, but that it obstructs and
confounds the proper attitude of society towards all social evils, of
which prostitution is one. Men can refrain; the state must do nothing to
make indulgence easier. Women must be saved, if possible; rescued, if
preventive measures have come too feebly or too late. These sentences
sum up the simple and entire duty of the state. Society must presume
that the human spark has not been utterly quenched in the wrecked
soul,—a fact that is not without support from experience. As against all
this, inscription entices the girl, offering her a _quid pro quo_ if she
crosses the line. Thus it snaps the last weak thread that ties her to
decent occupation or other associations. In its ultimate effect,
therefore, it is a compact with vice, whatever the language employed. It
may not intend to encourage vice, but by conceding to vice a privileged
position, it discourages all effort to prevent or uproot it.