Maine Governor Janet Mills signed a bill into regulation on Monday that partially decriminalizes prostitution within the state.
Legislative Doc (LD) 1435, referred to as An Act to Cut back Business Sexual Exploitation, amends current regulation to take away all references to prostitution. As a substitute, the brand new regulation criminalizes business sexual exploitation, which is a Class E crime carrying a most penalty of $1,000 and/or 180 days in jail. The brand new regulation goes on to outline business sexual exploitation as “offering, agreeing to offer or providing to offer a pecuniary (financial) profit to a different particular person to have interaction in a sexual act or sexual contact.” This language limits the criminalization to those that are shopping for the providers—not these promoting.
Additional criminalized within the new regulation is business sexual exploitation of a minor and an individual with a psychological incapacity, which classifies these as Class C crimes carrying penalties of a tremendous of $5,000 and/or 5 years in jail.
The brand new regulation additionally mandates the Division of Public Security seek the advice of with anti-trafficking and home violence organizations to develop an anti-sex-trafficking and business sexual exploitation protocol by March 1, 2024.
In 2021, Mills vetoed the same invoice that aimed to handle Maine’s human trafficking drawback over fears that the sooner model of the invoice (LD 1592) would decriminalize prostitution wholly and “encourage the exploitation of young people.”
At the moment, Nevada is the one state that permits restricted authorized prostitution within the US.
Source / Picture: jurist.org
