Ronald Weitzer

Indoor prostitution is quite different from street prostitution. Weitzer views street prostitution as a serious social problem. Many streetwalkers are underage or runaways or homeless or economically distressed—selling sex out of desperation and for reasons of survival. They are at high risk of drug abuse and victimization and street prostitution has a negative impact on surrounding communities. The push factors that lead individuals into street prostitution (such as poverty, drug addiction, or being runaways from abusive parents) will not be alleviated if street prostitution is decriminalized. At the same time, it is clear that arrests, fines, and incarceration do little to address the root causes of street prostitution. Weitzer advocates far more local government resources be devoted to helping streetwalkers leave prostitution and to facilitating their reintegration into society—requiring a holistic program of temporary housing, drug treatment, health care, counseling, job training, and other needed services.

Weitzer analyzes these and other issues in a journal article that critically evaluates many of the popular claims about human trafficking. Such claims are often devoid of verifiable data but typically get treated as factual by the mass media, politicians, pundits, and activists—and government policies and expenditures regarding trafficking are often based on these highly dubious claims. As an alternative, Weitzer advocates that policies and legislation be based strictly on solid evidence.

In 2012 he published a book on legal prostitution systems, Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business. The book is based on Weitzer's review of studies of legal prostitution in various nations (New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, and the US state of Nevada) as well as his own research on Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Weitzer notes that the notion of "legal prostitution" is not monolithic: it varies considerably from place to place. First, nations differ in the kinds of prostitution that they permit. Some allow brothels only, others restrict it to escort services, while others allow only independent operators (i.e., those who self-employed and have no connections to a third-party manager or business establishment). A few societies, such as New Zealand, permit all types of consensual adult prostitution, but most continue to criminalize street prostitution because it is considered more risky and more of a public nuisance than indoor prostitution. In addition, in places where the trade has been decriminalized, at least some types of participants remain illegal. For example, minors are not allowed to work legally, exploitative pimping and trafficking are outlawed, and some societies prohibit migrants or persons infected with HIV from working legally. So, even where prostitution has been decriminalized and is now government-regulated, some types of participants are excluded from the legal regime.

The book also evaluates existing legal systems. While no system is problem-free, Weitzer finds that several have registered a good measure of success. New Zealand scores well, as does Queensland, Australia, where a 2004 government assessment concluded that its legal brothels "provide a sustainable model for a healthy, crime-free, and safe legal licensed brothel industry" and are a "state of the art model for the sex industry in Australia." While positive outcomes are by no means automatic or guaranteed, Weitzer finds that legal, well-regulated prostitution can be superior to blanket criminalization.

Weitzer has done research on police-minority relations in Israel, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the United States, including studies of racial profiling and police misconduct and racially biased policing.<refWeitzer, Ronald; Tuch, Steven A. (2002). "PERCEPTIONS OF RACIAL PROFILING: RACE, CLASS, AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE*". Criminology. 40: 435–456. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2002.tb00962.x. </ref> His research has used multiple research methods including quantitative surveys of the public, in-depth interviews, archival research, and systematic observations of police-citizen interactions at "community policing" meetings. He conducted in-depth interviews and observations of police-citizen interactions in a major study of three neighborhoods in Washington, DC—funded by the National Science Foundation. Each neighborhood was either racially or economically distinct—a black middle-class community, white middle-class community, and an impoverished black community. Major differences were found between the three neighborhoods in their perceptions of the DC police and the kinds of interactions and experiences neighborhood residents had with police officers. Prior to this study, Weitzer conducted major research on police-community relations in Northern Ireland, comparing four types of Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods and the impact of policing on each. The study resulted in his 1995 book, Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland. Recently, Weitzer has analyzed survey data on Arabs and Jews opinions of the Israel Police. In 2006, he published a book on Americans' views and personal experiences with the police, entitled Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. This research project was followed by several studies of African Americans and the police in St Louis and East St Louis, published in Urban Affairs Review, Sociological Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Weitzer has authored a number of papers on the sex industry, with a focus on laws and policies regarding prostitution and sex trafficking. He published a 1999 article evaluating US policies as well as a 2009 study of prostitution in Western Australia, whose state legislature voted to legalize brothel and escort prostitution in 2008.

Weitzer's earliest research focused on Zimbabwe, where he conducted field research in the early 1980s. At that time, he documented the trend toward a de facto one-party state headed by President Robert Mugabe, whose ruling party relied on repressive security measures and institutions to cripple the political opposition. Mugabe's ruling party (ZANU-PF) used laws inherited from its predecessor—the white-minority regime, which collapsed in 1980 and gave way to majority rule. The pattern of de facto one-party rule and repression of political opposition has continued for 30 years, up to the present time. Weitzer's research was published in a groundbreaking 1984 article titled "In Search of Regime Security: Zimbabwe since Independence" in the Journal of Modern African Studies and in his book, Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe (published by University of California Press, 1990). This early research set the stage for his subsequent investigation of counterinsurgency policing and ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland and his many studies of police relations with minority groups in the United States.

Ronald Weitzer (born 1952) is a sociologist specializing in criminology and a professor at George Washington University, known for his publications on police-minority relations and on the sex industry.