PURSUING JOHNS
Subtitle: CRIMINAL LAW REFORM, DEFENDING CHARACTER NY CITY'S COMMITTEE OF FOURTEEN, 1920-19 (HISTORY CRIME & CRIMINAL JUS)
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: March 1, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 297
ISBN-13: 9780814209882
Subjects: Social Science; Legal Reference / Law Profession; Sociology; Criminal Law - General; Criminology; Criminal justice, Administration of; History; New York; New York (N.Y.); New York (State); Prostitution
Description: "In Pursuing Johns, Thomas C. Mackey studies the New York Committee of Fourteen and its members' attempts to influence vagrancy laws in early-20th-century New York City as a way to criminalize men's patronizing of female prostitutes. It sought out and prosecuted the city's immoral hotels, unlicensed bars, opium dens, disorderly houses, and prostitutes. It did so because of the threats to individual "character" such places presented. In the early 1920s, led by Frederick Whitin, the Committee thought that the time had arrived to prosecute the men who patronized prostitutes through what modern parlance calls a "john's law.""

"Mackey's contribution to the literature is unique. Instead of looking at how vice commissions targeted female prostitutes or the commerce supporting and surrounding them, Mackey concentrates on how men were scrutinized."--Jacket.