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After several false starts, the Los Angeles City Council is poised to begin battling the world's oldest profession with one of society's oldest weapons--shame.
Just print and broadcast the names and photos of men arrested for soliciting prostitutes, the argument goes, and johns will be so humiliated that they will go away and not come back--not to mention the deterrent effect on their brethren.
The plan, introduced by Councilman Hal Bernson and supported unanimously by the rest of the council, has been implemented in various forms in large and small cities nationwide.
But from Boston to tiny La Mesa in San Diego County, officials say that the program has had little measurable impact on prostitution.
The best that the city attorney of La Mesa could say is that "there's no evidence that it doesn't work." The San Diego suburb pays a local paper to run ads featuring the names and photos of convicted solicitors.
In Long Beach, where the Press Telegram regularly publishes convicted johns' names as a free public service, arrests have remained at about the same levels, fluctuating mainly according to the size of the vice squad and the number of anti-prostitution sweeps that police are able to conduct, officials said.
Meanwhile, civil libertarians and the Los Angeles city attorney have warned that Bernson's plan leaves the city wide open for lawsuits, in part because...