A second -o•ial result of prostitution is the en urwieniciit and opportunity it gives to crime. The prostitute and the criminal come to a large from the same social classes. The female member- of criminal families are frequently pros titutes. ..Thireover. the fact that both classes are social outcasts tends to bring them into sympathy with each other. i\lany prostitutes form semi-per manent relations with low criminals Isoutencurs, and support them in the intervals of their criminal operations. The brothel furnishes easy opportunity for robbery and theft. To break up this alliance between vice and crime has been one of the constant endeavors of those who seek to regulate prostitution. In the 1\liddle Ages it was a common practice to form quasi guilds of the prostitutes, imposing upon them col lective responsibility for all violence and disorder that might occur in the brothel. The present policy of tae French police is to force prostitu tion. so far as possible, into brothel-, the owner or tenant of which may be made responsible for crime. One of the purposes of the• plan of con fining prostitution in reservations is the greater ease of police supervision that may result from lessening the area in which prostitution operates.
The hygienic effects of prostitution. however, have attracted far more attention from modern students of the problem than the social etf•ects. Prostitution has always been the source of serious contagious maladies, but in early times, owing to the backwardness of medical science. the rela tion between disease and vice was hardly recog nized. The appearance in Europe of syphilis (q.v.) in epidemic form drew attention to this relation. ln 1700 the Berlin author ities adopted the plan of periodic examina tion of prostitutes. with confinement in hospitals of the diseased, a policy now generally known as 'reglementation.' A similar plan was put into systematic operation in Paris in 1s0•2. and during the first half of the nine teenth century was widely adopted in other Euro pean cities. 'The great majority of the large cities of Continental Europe lur•sue the same policy at the present time. Sanitary control of prostitu tion received an extended trial in England under the Contagious Di-eases Acts. in operation from ltiffll to 1553 in twelve stations in England and two in Ireland. A modification of the same plan was tried in America in Saint Louis (1S'70-73). In parts of •lapan reglementation is the accepted method of dealing with vice. The ideal of regle mentists is to compel every person devoted to pro fessional vice to submit to periodic inspection for signs of disease. In Paris. which may he selected
as typical of cities in which reglementation is well established. inmates of brothels are inspected weekly at their place of residence. These form only an insignificant fraction of the total number. The great majority live in furnished room s. and are required to report twice a week at the dispen sary. Each prostitute who submits to control is given a card which frees her from molestation un less her conduct is flagrantly disorderly. A regis ter is kept of tolerated prostitutes. and when once enrolled upon the register, they cannot he freed from the obligation of periodic inspection except. upon evidence of a change in their mode of life. If they are found to be diseased, they are sent to the hospital of the prison of Saint Lazare, where they are detained until cured.
Registration may take place at the request of the prostitute, or by order of the official head of the •lorals Police,' a body of police set apart es pecially for this service. inasmuch as probably the majority of prostitutes regard their state as only temporary, expecting to return to honorable lite sooner or later, they usually resist strenuously the efforts of the police to place them upon the reg ister, since they believe that the register may be employed at any time in their lives to brand them with infamy. The chance of detention for months in a prison hospital in order to be cured of a malady which causes little suffering is another deterrent to the acceptance of police toleration. For these reason- the police are forced, by fre quent arrests and imprisonment, to render the po sition of the unregistered or 'clandestine' prosti tute as unsatisfactory as possible; and frequently the office finds it necessary to register prostitutes against their will. In spite of the incessant ac tivity of the police, the number of those who are found on the register is only a small minority of the total number of prostitutes—not over 25 per emit., and probably nearer 10 per cent. What is true of Paris is true in the main of most other cities in which reglementation is practiced. In Berlin the police act with somewhat greater free dom in registering prostitutes against their will, but succeed in subjecting no very large percentage to control. The difficulties in the way of control are less in the smaller cities, and it is claimed that in some towns, e.g. Dorpat in Livonia, clan destine prostitution has been praetically eradi cated. This is, however. but very rarely the ease. and no supporter of reglementation is optimistic enough to hope for equal effectiveness of control in large cities.