Posted on 07/19/2007 2:59:58 PM PDT by WesternCulture
Merchants, visitors, residents and workers in downtown Oslo are becoming downright annoyed over open drug-dealing and prostitution on several city streets. Some offenders have taken to having sex in a downtown park, just behind the venerable Akershus Fortress and Castle. A prostitute and her customer didn't seem to be bothered by passing cars or even a photographer from Aftenposten.
"It's not very nice that it looks like a bordello in the park and on the side streets," Jan Bredesen told newspaper Aften. He works as a waiter at nearby Gamle Logen, a stately old mansion now used for concerts and other cultual arrangements.
Bredesen wants the authorities to issue citations against both the prostitutes and their customers, who engage in all sorts of paid activity in the park at Grev Wedels Plass. Sexual activity in public places is illegal, and subject to fines of up to NOK 7,000 (about USD 1,200).
Norwegian politicians appear poised, when the next parliamentary session opens, to make the purchase of sexual services illegal in Norway. Bredesen says that will be meaningless if the police don't enforce the laws already on the books.
Merchants along Karl Johans Gate, Oslo's main boulevard, are also complaining about the increase in prostitution and the drug addicts that congregate at the lower end of Karl Johans Gate, just across the street from the central train station. Tourism officials worry that drug dealing and solicitation can be among the first things greeting visitors who arrive in Oslo by train and ferry.
Police claim they're not overlooking the illegal drug and sex activity, but say they don't have the capacity to stop it. "This is going on all over the city," said Kåre Stølen of the downtown police station at Grønland. "We don't allow it, and we break in when we come across it.
"But it's limited what we can do with it, in relation to demands from other sorts of crimes. We have to set priorities."
“Norwegian politicians appear poised, when the next parliamentary session opens, to make the purchase of sexual services illegal in Norway.”
- Here in Sweden (neighbor country of Norway), we’ve had the same kind of problems with prostitution and drug dealing going on in public. By now, they seem to have disappeared.
For long, prostitution and the use of narcotics wasn’t prohibited in Sweden (although selling narcotics and all sorts of procuring was).
Today, the use of narcotics (except in areas of medicine) is prohibited and the - mere - purchasing of ‘sexual services’ has been banned (because it’s more PC to hunt down the men, of course).
This strategy could’ve worked just fine. That is, if undercover law enforcement operations weren’t ILLEGAL in Sweden which they are, for some reason.
The result:
The underground market is flourishing, national currency is flowing out of the country in an uncontrolled manner and lives are destroyed.
What rationale brought about such a law in the first place? Do you know?
“It’s amazing that undercover police operations are illegal in your country. With those restrictions it would be amazing that any crimes involving groups of criminals are solved—that is, if they are indeed solved at all.”
- I agree.
In one way, it is amazing. On the other hand, with a practice like ours, chances are you end up with a judical order that exposes itself to weak evidences and things like hearsay.
Let’s trust the law, let’s the police, if we can NOT agree to do that, in whom can we trust?
To a large degree, civilization depends on trust.
From my point of view, the Swedish judical system is primarily designed to safeguard the inviolable rights of the individual, but NOT to prevent crime. This kind of approach is understandable in the case of societies that, even closely, resemble Scandinavia of the 1950’s.
Today, no societies at all resemble Scandinavia of the 1950’s. Even the Scandinavian countries themselves will have to face up to this reality, ugly as it is.
Best of regards.
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