Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/528

* PBOSTITUTION. 460 PROSTITUTION. have proved effective in centralizing vice, al- though grave doubts have been cast upon the social expediency o£ such a policy; and in large cities it has never proved satisfactory even to those who are convinced of the expediency of regu- lation. A second social result of prostitution is the encouragement and opportunity it gives to crime. The prostitute and the criminal come to a large extent from the same social classes. The female members of criminal families are frequently pros- titutes. Moreover, the fact that both classes are social outcasts tends to bring them into sympathy with each other. Many prostitutes form semi-per- manent relations with low criminals [souteneurs, "cadets"), and support them in the intervals of their criminal operations. The brothel furnishes easy opportunity for robbery and theft. To break up tiiis alliance between vice and crime has been one of the constant endeavors of those who seek to regulate prostitution. In the Middle Ages it was a coiunion practice to form quasi- guilds of the prostitutes, imposing upon them col- lective responsibility for all violence and disorder that might occur in the brothel. The present policy of t.ie French police is to force prostitu- tion, so far as possible, into brothels, the owner or tenant of which may be made responsible for crime. One of the purposes of the plan of con- fining prostitution in reservations is the greater ease of police su])ervision that may result from lessening the area in which prostitution operates. The hygienic effects of prostitution, however, have attracted far more attention from modern students of the problem than the social effects. Prostitution has always been the source of serious contagious maladies, but in early times, owing to the backwardness of medical science, the rela- tion between disease and vice was hardly recog- nized. The appearance in Europe of syphilis (q.v. ) in epidemic form drew attention to this relation. In 1700 the Berlin author- ities adopted the plan of periodic examina- tion of prostitutes, with confinement in hospitals of the diseased, a policy now generally known as "reglementation.' A similar plan was put into systematic operation in Paris in 1802. and during the first half of the nine- teenth century was widely adopted in other Euro- pean cities. The great majority of the large cities of Continental Europe pursue the same policy at the present time. Sanitary control of prostitu- tion received an extended trial in England under the Contagious Diseases Acts, in operation from 180G to 18S3 in twelve stations in England and two in Ireland. A modification of the same plan ■was tried in America in Saint Louis (1870-73). In parts of .Japan reglementation is the accepted method of dealing with vice. The ideal of regle- mentists is to compel every person devoted to pro- fessional vice to submit to periodic inspection for signs of disease. In Paris, which may be selected as typical of cities in which reglementation is well established, inmates of brothels are inspected weekly at tlieir place of residence. These form only an insignificant fraction of the total number. The great majority live in furnished roojus. and are required to report twice a week at the dispen- sary Each prostitute who submits to control is given a card which frees her from molestation im- less her conduct is flagrantly disorderly. A regis- ter is kept of tolerated prostitutes, and when once enrolled upon the register, they cannot be freed from the obligation of periodic inspection except upon evidence of a change in their mode of life. If they are found to be diseased, they are sent to the hospital of the prison of Saint Lazare, where they are detained until cured. Registration may take place at the request of the prostitute, or by order of the othcial head of the "Morals Police,' a body of police set apart es- pecially for this service. Inasmuch as probably the majority of prostitutes regard their state as only temporary, expecting to return to honorable life sooner or later, they usuallyresist strenuouslythe ellorts of the police to place them upon the reg- ister, since they believe that the register may be employed at any time in tlieir lives to brand them with infamy. The chance of detention for months in a prison hospital in order to be cured of a malady which causes little suffering is another deterrent to the acceptance of police toleration. For these reasons the police are forced, by fre- quent arrests and imprisonment, to render the po- sition of the unregistered or 'clandestine' prosti- tute as unsatisfactory as possible; and frequently the office finds it necessary to register prostitutes against their will. In spite of the incessant ac- tivity of the police, the number of those who are found on the register is only a small minority of the total number of prostitutes — not over 25 per cent., and probably nearer 10 per cent. What is true of Paris is true in the main of most other cities in which reglementation is practiced. In Berlin the police act with somewhat greater free- dom in registering prostitutes against their will, but succeed in subjecting no very large percentage to control. The difficulties in the way of control are less in the smaller cities, and it is claimed that in some towns, e.g. Dorpat in Livonia, clan- destine prostitution has been practically eradi- cated. This is, however, but very rarely the case, and no supporter of reglementation is optimistic enough to hope for equal effectiveness of control in large cities. It is almost impossible to form a just estimate of the effect of reglementation in checking the spread of venereal maladies. Until the last dec- ade it was generally believed by the medical world that statistical evidence existed which dem- onstrated clearly the sanitary advantages of reglementation. Those statistics have since been subjected to careful analysis, and have been prov- en to be practically worthless. Defenders and op- ponents of the .system have practically agreed to discard statistical arguments and to rely upon common sense to defend their positions. Judged from this standpoint, it is obvious that the insig- nificance of the proportion of registered prosti- tutes to the total number and the comparatively long interval Ijetween inspections must limit nar- rowly the possible improvement in public health. What is more serious, it appears in the light of recent progress in medicine that the period of con- finement for treatment is not sufficiently pro- longed, and that many who are dismissed as well are capable of transmitting conta- gion. These defects in the system hardly^ admit of a remedy, since the police at present exhaust practically all means at their command to increase the proportion of registered prostitutes, and consequently it is impossible that more extensive registration can be instituted. To increase the frequency of inspections, or the length of the period of compulsory treatment, would greatly increase the difficulty of administration,