After clearing prostitutes from its streets, Verona is planning the country's first crack-down on sex workers who operate in private apartments, Mayor Flavio Tosi said Monday. The right-wing Northern League mayor said residents will be asked to report people causing ''disturbances'' in their apartment blocks, who will then be slapped with a heavy fine. Under current Italian law only the exploitation of prostitution - pimping - is illegal in Italy, but city mayors combat the phenomenon through the use of fines, often via traffic or public decency laws.
Verona and Padua were the first Italian cities to introduce an experimental scheme in cracking down on clients and introducing fines of 50 euros, which resulted in prostitutes demonstrating against the measure in the streets and offering anyone slapped with a fine a ''free service''. Last summer the two cities also led the way in introducing more effective fines of euros for clients caught with streetwalkers, thanks to greater powers given to city mayors as part of the centre-right government's emergency security decree.
Although the maxi-fines have helped clear city streets across the country, Tosi stressed that mayors' powers are still limited. Rita Sanlorenzo, secretary of a magistrate's organisation, expressed concerns over Tosi's plans to fine prostitutes working in private houses, meanwhile. The government is currently mulling plans to criminalise street prostitution, and in September the cabinet gave a first green light to a new bill. If passed, the bill will hit both sex workers and clients with fines ranging from to 3, euros and jail terms of between five and 15 days.
It also foresees harsher penalties for clients who have sex with minors and the repatriation of teenagers without family in Italy who are caught prostituting themselves. Critics have slammed the bill, saying that clearing the streets will simply force the sex trade further underground, where they will be less accessible to both police and social workers.
Prostitutes' Rights Committee spokesperson Carla Corso said at the time that the bill would make sex workers ''more invisible and at the mercy of traffickers''. The study also calculated that prostitutes in Italy charge an average of 30 euros per customer and generate a turnover in the neighborhood of some 90 million euros a month.
