Criminal Justice

Florida Is Creating a New Sex Offender Registry Just for Prostitution Customers

The bill also targets strip clubs



After an initial defeat in the Florida House of Representatives, the registry—arguably the worst part of a new Florida crime bill capitalizing on human-trafficking propaganda—was revived and reinserted before the measure's passage in the Florida Senate. The final version, approved last week, creates a database of convicted prostitution customers, targets strip clubs, and mandates that a slew of state workers and businesses jump through new hoops to accommodate a few politicians' latest attempt to get their names in the press.

As the Florida Senate's Committee on Community Affairs stated, the new registry "will collect and centralize information relating to those convicted of soliciting prostitution, regardless of whether the person subject to the solicitation is a victim of human trafficking or not."

The Soliciting for Prostitution Public Database will list anyone who has been convicted of, or plead guilty, to "soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit prostitution, lewdness, or assignation." The legislation specifies that the database should include a person's name, photograph, address, and offense. Listed people who go five years without a subsequent offense could have their names removed.

"This isn't creating a list of bad or dangerous clients; it's just a list of clients who got caught by the police," Kaytlin Bailey of Decriminalize Sex Work told Filter. "It's impossible to tell the good guys from the bad if you lump them all together. Men who pay for sex aren't predators. Predators who pose as clients are. When you make potential clients scared of giving sex workers the information they need to screen, you make it impossible to tell the difference between men who are scared and men who are scary."

The new measure also classifies strip clubs as "adult theaters"—then makes it a first-degree misdemeanor criminal offense for the operator of any adult theater to fail to keep proper records.

The law also creates wide new categories of workers and businesses that are required to make state-approved "anti-trafficking" curriculum part of employee training, continuing education hours, or occupational licensing schemes.

In Florida and elsewhere, this training has proven to be anti-prostitution and pro-surveillance propaganda disguised as tips for teaching bystanders how to prevent human trafficking. Officials get to collect fees for the training, or award funding for it to favored law enforcement and activist groups. Making sure businesses comply with training and awareness rules gives government officials a new reason to monitor them.

While it will certainly transfer private money to the state, give bureaucrats something to do, and provide the public with people to gawk at and judge, Florida's "human trafficking" legislation does nothing for victims of actual sex trafficking.


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Criminal Justice Sex Florida Sex Trafficking Human Trafficking Sex Crimes Sex Offender Registry Sex Work


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55 responses to “Florida Is Creating a New Sex Offender Registry Just for Prostitution Customers

  1. It’s impossible to tell the good guys from the bad if you lump them all together.

    My good madam, it’s not about protecting sex workers or even human trafficking victims. It’s about public wins for beleaguered and otherwise ineffectual law enforcement (and legislators) desperate for them.



    2. Exactly.

  2. I’m curious as to the boring record on this one. I’m guessing it has bipartisan support from the fringes.

    1. If the State legislature is worse than who they send to the US House and Senate (Wasserman Schultz, Rick Scott, pretty much all of them) I’m sure it’s an unholy crooked mix of holier than thou imbeciles and rejects.

  3. These Sex registries are unconstitutional. Nowhere in the US or state Constitutions does it give government the power to require registration of certain groups of citizens and then allow criminal punishment if they dont update that info with a sheriff.

    First they came for the pedophiles like Sarah Palin’s Buttplug, and I did not speak out….

    1. Yet, communist, progressive, socialist GOP types are all over this legislation like Goose on Gannon.

    2. Econazis have similar laws on the books. If your oil tanker leaks a single drop of slightly oily but still potable water into the Gulf, that’s a felony that’s hard to prove to a jury. So they added a requirement that you must hire a team of scribblers to log and track every cc of water, oil, whutevah, 24/7, and fine you a million dollars if the penmanship is sloppy or a space was not ticked or filled in properly. The 16th Amendment is precedent for a whole lotta socialism–like the other nine Commandments in Uncle Karl’s Manifesto.

  4. Should have, explicitly, no exception for elected officials, lawmakers, etc., or their children and spouses. They go on the list, forever, just like everyone else. Finding a single instance of a lawmaker using his political power to get someone in their peer group off the registry shall be grounds for voiding the entire registry.

  5. “soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit prostitution, lewdness, or assignation.”

    “Assignation”? As in “transferring ownership of incorporeal property”?

    *** strikes down “law”, pounds gavel ***

    1. It was supposed to say “ass ignition,” as in getting that badonkadonk all fired up.

    2. What if I’m in one of those dumpy strip clubs off I-75 in Northern Florida, and I happen to add a $10 tip for my lap dance, and then the fair lady spontaneously gives me a blow job – that’s consensual, right?

    3. Assignation as in arranging to meet someone in secret. How is that a crime?

    4. “Assignation”? As in “transferring ownership of incorporeal property”?


      Cheating on your wife with a prostitute? 2 counts of assignation, one for each definition.

  6. Florida lawmakers just voted to create a public registry of people caught paying or attempting to pay for sex.


    This may increase down loading porn at home so the man can masturbate. Think of all the potential babies exploding from the johnson, never given the chance to enter the vagina and became a human.

    1. This is not a confessional Rock.

    2. Think of all the resulting repetitive motion injuries.

  7. If the intent is public humiliation, then, as far as I’m concerned, it fits the definition of cruel and unusual. If they stay on the registry for longer than whatever sentence the judge gives them, they’re punishing people extrajudicially–twice over if the judge isn’t the one who sentences them to be put on the registry.

    I maintain that defendants should be free to waive their right to a public trial–just like they can waive their right to a jury, waive their right to counsel, waive their right to remain silent, etc. If the judge chooses to sentence you to be put on a public registry after you’ve been convicted, then, maybe that’s different.

    1. And I don’t see what other intent this law has. The justification for the sex offender registries was that the people are uniquely dangerous among criminals. That was dubious enough, but there is no such justification for prostitute customers. Unless, I suppose, you assume that all prostitutes are victims of forced sex trafficking.

  8. If you want to understand what this registry for the customers of the prostitutes is all about, read “Libido Dominandi” by E Michael Jones. The demon infested ruling class inflame the passions so that they can control the people.
    C’mon, you guys, don’t you think it’s strange that the globalist scum bags promote the idea of Sexual Revolution and Sexual Liberation and then come around the back side of it and have people sued and registered and arrested and imprisoned for acting out sexually?

    1. This seems more like a Baptists and bootleggers thing than a globalist scumbag thing.

    2. But I’ve been told that going after the johns is the compassionate way of handling this. And this is a great example of why I disagree.

  9. So since Florida doesn’t believe in redemption, they’ll be eliminating parole correct? Or is it only murderers and rapist that can be redeemed?

  10. Florida man hardest hit.

    1. Especially if Florida Woman finds his name on the list.

    2. Poor, poor FloridaMan. World’s Worst Superhero is about to get a slew of bad pub

  11. Honestly, they need to just do away with the registries as extra-judicial punishment.

    If the registries are valid†, then being put on one, and how long you’ll be on it, should be part of the sentence.

    ’cause really, that’s the big injustice here. They’ve been ruled as not “punishment” (even as they limit where you can work, live, and eat lunch), that legislatures adding new criteria retroactively is somehow constitutional, and far more problems, all on the basis that it isn’t part of the sentence/punishment, which it clearly should be and clearly is.

    Fix that problem, and the rest of it falls-in-line.

  12. Registries are to keep tabs on people who have committed harm. Paying for prostitution or even going to view ladies at an adult theater are harmless pastimes but like gun registries its not about protecting anyone its always about the ability to punish on a whim thus keeping people from doing what they are legally allowed to do. BTW if you give your wife a ring have you not just paid her making her a prostitute. Register all husbands

      Depends on whether she’d fuck you even if you didn’t give her a ring.

  13. Can hookers get a copy of the list? Seems like the Glenngary leads for them.

    1. Targeted marketing?

  14. for everyone, or just for Bob Kraft because he wouldn’t roll over and accept their ‘deal’ & has the cash & connections to fight it??

    1. That’s ok, he’s into that.

  15. Most proponents of lowering the voting age don’t appear to actually respect the decision-making abilities of teenagers,

    This puts me in mind of that study that came out some years ago that found that the brain functions of people like under the age of 23 weren’t fully developed and therefore teenagers were ultimately not responsible for their actions. Defense attorneys around the country jumped on this and NPR had several on claiming that The Science Was Settled, none of their clients were responsible for their actions.

    I guess all that goes out the window for the vote, eh?

    Simply pointing out that teenagers sometimes make adult-ish decisions so hey, let’s let them make decisions for other people is incredibly thin rationale for lowering the voting age.

      1. Good post nonetheless; and given what we know about the age group [as supported by the evidence you cite] they will overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Probably with similar proportions to those who cross the Southern boundary without having made prior arrangements.

    1. Then you also have to consider that after age 30 or so your brain is pretty much in decline.
      Also, what does “fully developed” mean?

    2. I have always said that we should raise the voting age to 25, as you do not have a full head on your shoulders until then.

  16. “…victims of actual sex trafficking.”

    It would be enlightening to see something on this; is there anything to see?

  17. Holy Sinfest, Batman! Was this because California’s serial rape murderers did not want to be associated with “extreme right-wing” voluntary laissez-faire agorist outliers?

  18. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Florida!
    Mind your own business.
    Oh, wait.
    That’s not the job of government.
    Its the job of the government to stick a microscope everybody’s ass to see if there is any dirt there.
    My bad.

  19. So, the people who pay the money are bad and the people who accept the money are good?

    Could it be any more arbitrary?

  20. We are at the endtimes now, and how long before a politician is caught with a prostitute? They best think this one through.
    The only ‘logical’ next step in lawmaker stupidity is to have it be unlawful to be caught in public with concealed genitals.
    I am now officially embarrassed and ashamed of my country.

  21. […] Florida lawmakers vote to create a registry of those who buy sex from prostitutes. […]

  22. […] Florida Is Creating a New Sex Offender Registry Just for Prostitution Customers (Reason, May 9, 2019) […]

  23. So sex between consenting adults is now an offense?

  24. So.. basically men are screwed no matter how they get sex. If you date somebody or just hook up, the woman can cry rape and you are guilty until proven innocent – and even then still considered guilty. No matter what, you reputation is destroyed and you’re scarred forever. If you pay for consensual sex, you’re an evil “sex offender” which makes you worse than murderers in much of society’s eyes. And it’s a life sentence on a “sex offender” list.

    This country is becoming so repressive we might as well have the Taliban.

  25. […] Florida prohibitionists are now tripling down on their awful anti-whore laws: […]

  26. Misandry and totalitarianism in full view in Florida. Please men, challenge this law!

  27. Florida politicians like others are incapable of coming up with meaningful legislation that truly help the people. Therefore always coming up with nonsense to make it look as if they are doing something. Country would run so much better without these useless idiots.

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