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Study finds that legalizing sex work decreases the spread of sexually transmitted infections and violence.

2009

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The study is enabled by an accidental move by Rhode Island lawmakers who, in amending a law in 1980: "inadvertently created a legal loophole that decriminalized paid consensual sex if it took place indoors. This result went unnoticed until 2003, when police took a number of massage parlor workers to court and lost because of this unanticipated interpretation of the law. It wasn’t until 2009 that new legislation was passed to re-criminalize indoor prostitution" (Hong 2014).