Justice
Is Zurich's Drive-In Prostitution Facility a Flop?
The city's innovative approach to keeping women safe may have actually had the opposite effect.
On the face of it, Zurich's plans to combat the darker side of legal prostitution seemed to make perfect sense. Prostitution has been permitted in Switzerland since 1942, but the country's largest city moved this summer to clamp down on street-walking and brothels.
Reasoning that street prostitution made sex workers vulnerable to pimps and violence and also spoiled neighborhoods for residents, Zurich’s police have hustled prostitutes off their usual beat near the city's railway station. Across the city, new rules also made brothels illegal in areas that were more than 50 percent residential, excepting brothels that could prove they'd been open more than 20 years.