How is soliciting a prostitute illegal in states where prostitution is legal?
<p>This question is not concerned with whether prostitution should be legal or not. It is also not concerned with the moral implications of either position.</p>
<p>What I find hard to accept is in states where prostitution is legal, soliciting a prostitute still gets you on a register of sex offenders.</p>
<p>You can pay money for sex in Nevada: You just have to have the prostitute infer your desire for the service from deductive reasoning alone.</p>
<p>I don't get the logic of how a service can be legal but asking for it is not.</p>
<p>If soliciting a prostitute is a problem then prostitution should be illegal.</p>
<p>To me both should be illegal or legal together.</p>

<p>Focusing on the titular question, <strong>it's not</strong>. Soliciting prostitution is not illegal in exactly those places where it is legal to engage in prostitution. <a href="https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#NRS201Sec295" rel="noreferrer">Here's the law.</a> NRS 201.354(1) says</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is unlawful for any person to engage in prostitution or
solicitation therefor, <em>except in a licensed house of prostitution</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>FYI, street prostitution is not legal in Nevada, or anywhere else in the US. This is not to be confused with the situation in jurisdictions which shifted the onus of illegality onto the customer as opposed to the service-provider.</p>

<p>First of all, the law is under no obligation to be &quot;reasonable&quot;. Second, many people consider hiring someone to engage in prostitution to be victimizing that person. To those people, it makes perfect sense that being victimized is not a crime, but victimizing is. For instance, it's not a crime for a minor to have sex with an adult (that is, it's not a crime on the minor's side), but it is illegal for the adult to solicit sex from the minor. It's not illegal for a black person to offer to work for less than a white person, but it is illegal for an employer to offer less money to black people. It's not illegal to work for less than minimum wage, but it is illegal to offer less than minimum wage. It's not illegal to get legal advice from a nonlawyer, but it is illegal to practice law if you're not a lawyer. It's not illegal to buy food from a restaurant that doesn't follow food safety laws, but it is illegal to serve food in violation of food safety laws.  Do you see a contradiction in laws that make hiring a minor for prostitution a crime, but absolve the minor of any criminal liability? You may not think that prostitution is in the same category, but obviously other people do.</p>

<h2>Because it reduces prostitution without criminalising sex workers</h2>
<p>For example, under the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model_approach_to_prostitution" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nordic model of prostitution</a>, everything the client does is illegal and everything the sex worker does is legal. This attacks the demand side of the problem by making procuring a sex act risky thus disincentivising people looking to buy but it doesn’t make the sex workers, who are often vulnerable people, criminals.</p>
<p>That’s the logic of it.</p>
<p>As to how it is enforced, police charge the buyer and say &quot;good evening&quot; to the seller.</p>

united-states criminal-law discrimination