The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Pornography Zoning

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. There must be very few cities in this country where authorities haven`t agonized recently about how to control the rising tide of pornography and prostitution.

One new weapon various cities have been trying is restrictive zoning -- to scatter the porno movie houses, strip joints and dirty book stores; or to concentrate them in one place. Detroit is trying the scatter plan, New York wants to try it. But tonight we look at the other idea. With Jim Lehrer in Boston we look at what other cities can learn from Boston`s controversial experiment with the Combat Zone. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, Boston used to have an unofficial Combat Zone which grew up naturally on its own; it was in the historic Scollay Square area near the waterfront. Sailors were the first to call it the Combat Zone. When construction of Boston`s new City Hall began in the early sixties the Zone moved uptown to a two block strip near the Boston Common. In 1974 the City of Boston Zoning Board made it official, declaring it an adult entertainment zone. Now, that law didn`t legalize anything, it merely requires that all new adult entertainment centers -- official jargon for strip joints, peep shows, X-rated movie houses, bookstores and the like -- be located within that zone. Robin?

MacNEIL: The Combat Zone made national news last fall when a Harvard football player was stabbed to death there. The public outcry prompted a police crackdown that is still in effect, and it stirred up fresh debate on whether the Combat Zone was a good idea. The cold winter weather, as well as the heavy police presence in the two-block area of the Combat Zone, has meant a decline in street activity and in business for the bars, theatres and shops catering to the sex trade. The Zone doesn`t have massage parlors, and some frequenters of the area say what goes on there is tame by New York standards. The zoning law didn`t make anything legal that was illegal, but the idea of a-zone caused some people to think so, according to Mrs. Paul Anderson.

Mrs. PAUL S. ANDERSON, V.P., Morality in Media: The reason it came about at all is because obviously there was a problem there. There were violations of the state law before our `74 law, then were violations afterwards; but they were increasing -- prostitution was increasing, mugging was increasing, street crime in general. So some people had the view that in order to solve this problem, which was really spilling out and affecting Boston along with its racial problems which came with the forced busing issue, they had to do something about this; it was really becoming unbearable. So the Mayor, Kevin White, and the Zoning Commission decided- that they would try this approach. I think they`ve decided now that it was not an answer. They simply tried to contain it, always saying that there would be nothing illegal going on there; but it did go on, and I think the reason is because when you give moral sanction to an area like this it`s almost as though you`re supposed to wink at it. Obviously there`s nothing new going on; this has all been known and practiced, I suppose.

But the legitimizing it in the eyes of the citizen by giving it moral status ... it gives it moral status when it`s legitimized, in other words. This encourages a new crop of people who will go into it thinking it`s all right. I think that throughout the ages there have been laws against this sort of thing not because people simply want to put brakes on other people., it`s because society in general is harmed by it. We have all kinds of human sadness that comes out of prostitution -- illegitimate pregnancies, VD, alcoholism -- everything that`s -- rape, of course; the rape rate is terrific; the degrading of women used as objects, or just using another person selfishly. That shouldn`t be encouraged, I shouldn`t think, by law; it should be discouraged.

MacNEIL: The Zone advertises what it can`t always deliver and attracts those it doesn`t necessarily want. The Zone has hired its own public relations woman to gain support for its existence.

The argument that the Zone keeps pornography and prostitution away from residential areas is supported by a prostitute who has worked in and out of the Zone.

"SHERRI": I was a stripper for two years before I became a prostitute, and I never thought I could be a prostitute. When I did, I just accepted the fact that there was the market for it, it`s an economic reality; it`s an economic advantage over any other job that I`ve ever held, and for that reason I got into it. Over the spring I was working in the Combat Zone and I was averaging $120 a night, I would say. I was working about six nights a week then. Prostitution exists, it has always existed, it`s probably always going to exist. And residents in residential areas for one reason or another tend to object to prostitution, particularly street soliciting, in their area, and if prostitution and related activities are zoned in a specific non-residential area it should eliminate the complaints by the residents. If suddenly Boston were to revert to puritanical attitudes and all of the movies were closed down, there would be a reduction in business volume in the area and as a result there would be less customers in the area and as a result there would probably be less prostitutes, but that would only be a temporary thing, just as the recent crackdown was only a temporary setback.

MacNEIL: Iaw enforcement in the Combat Zone was criticized in a report released by Boston`s former Police Commissioner shortly before the killing of the Harvard student. The report charged police corruption. A new commissioner has responded with tough measures to control illegal activities in the Zone. Detective Bill Morrissey, formerly an undercover cop, works in the Zone.

BILL MORRISSEY, Boston Detective: We`ve had crackdowns here in the past. To put a heavy police presence in this area is a very costly item in the budget; and the recent crackdowns have had little effect until this last major one where we`ve kept a heavy police presence in the area. It`s a very hard area to patrol. There`s a lot of alleys, a lot of ... like the subways here, where a lot of the robberies occur inside -- you might be patrolling outside, but you wouldn`t see the actual robbery taking place. In one aspect it does control the hard-core pornography business: it keeps them in one area. On the other hand, it attracts a certain type of clientele into the area and also attracts these roving gangs of muggers -- there are more muggers hanging around, more crimes being committed here than if it had been a spread-out area; it makes it very difficult to enforce.

But we have films showing actual robberies -what we refer to as wolf packs, roving bands of muggers, either prostitutes or just people that are out and-out muggers who rob you. People would be walking down the streets and they`d just grab them, rob them, beat them up, leave them lying in the area.

(Boston Police Videotape -- July 1976, showing illegal activity in the area.)

MORRISSEY: It`s a very costly item to the City, and we do need the cooperation... (sirens) ... of the license... (sirens)

INTERVIEWER: What`s happening now?

MORRISSEY: I`d say it`s either a robbery-in-progress or an officer-in- trouble call.

INTERVIEWER: Well, there certainly are an awful lot of police cars around here.

MORRISSEY: This is a direct result of the recent crackdown.

"SHERRI": Violence in the Combat Zone I think is primarily engendered by the proliferation of bars in the area -- anyplace you have a lot of bars you`re going to have some violence; but I don`t think that violence necessarily follows hand-in-hand with prostitution. There`s a ring of women working in the Combat Zone who are not prostitutes, who are posing as prostitutes but who are actually muggers. What they`re doing is soliciting a man; when he thinks she`s being very sexy and feeling him up, she isn`t; she`s removing his wallet. And then she disappears and tells him she`ll meet him in a half an hour, or whatever, and meanwhile she disappeared with his money. She has no intention of keeping the arrangement -- she does no prostitution, she just mugs.

I`ve worked in the Combat Zone, I`ve also worked in residential parts of Boston soliciting; and I have never mugged a customer, I`ve never started any violence with a customer, I`ve never done anything that would call attention to myself. I`ve never been arrested, I`ve never done anything that would frighten anyone.

MacNEIL: The Combat Zone exists in the middle of an urban renewal district at a time when the philosophy of tear down and build anew has been replaced by that of renovation and restoration. Dan Ahern, former development director for Boston`s waterfront renewal project and now a columnist writing for the Boston Herald-American on urban affairs, believes the Combat Zone has worked.

DAN AHERN, Boston Herald-American: Since the zoning was enacted I think it`s been very successful. And what`s happening here is that there`s a sort of decline and compaction, and the area is getting smaller; and I think the controls can work better. I think Boston has selected a good policy. Boston is one city that has a very large in-town population; it`s one of the few cities in America that people want to live in. And very close to this zone there are a lot of people living; in fact, if you look down the street you`ll see the Ritz Carlton Hotel -- so it`s a small city. And if strip clubs and porno places were allowed to spread they`d be spreading right into residential neighborhoods; and that`s why controls are very important -- to protect the residential neighborhoods of the city. One can take the ideal view that it simply shouldn`t exist, and that`s certainly an understandable view, but it does; and I think it`s a case of practical policy. It will continue to exist, so it`s not a question of getting rid of it, in my mind; it`s a question of controlling it and managing it as best you can do. And I think the city policies are good. Enforcement is very difficult; if they are enforced over a period of time I think the results will be beneficial.

LEHRER: Well, that gives us a flavor of the debate that rages here in Boston over this project. Another person with very strong views about it is Tim O`Neill, an assistant district attorney here.

From your point of view, Mr. O`Neill, how is the Combat Zone idea working out?

TIMOTHY O`NEILL: It`s not working out. It`s a failure, and I think part of the reasons that it can be deemed a failure some of the people have commented: Boston`s a very small city. It has a residential population right in the downtown area, unlike other cities. It can`t tolerate, really, this tremendously powerful magnet that`s been placed at the heart of a small downtown area, attracting the very worst elements, given the illusion of license by the city officials...

LEHRER: You agree with that comment that the lady made on the film then, that this does, in a way, legitimize prostitution and all these other things, even though they`re illegal?

O`NEILL: Of course it does, if you have the city officials creating this adult entertainment zone, this euphemism which is with the small print. "Of course, we don`t mean that you can violate state law." What they have done, of course, is create in the downtown area a powerful incentive to do just that, just by the sheer capitalistic incentive or competition of the places. You have, instead of one or two occasional violations showing hardcore pornography, every single cinema in that area and peep shows are constantly showing hard-core now.

LEHRER: Was it a bad idea to begin with, or was it a good idea that was poorly executed?

O`NEILL: Of course, that kind of thing is like, "Has Christianity ever been tried?" Let`s try harder, let`s really have a good Combat Zone. It`s a bad idea -- it`s a bad idea for Boston ...and I can feel Barney itching at my side here, because the next solution....

LEHRER: Barney is our next guest -- Barney Frank, in a moment.

O`NEILL: ... is the legislature. The obvious answer to those that say, "Let`s try harder" is "Let`s create an area totally free from state law; let prostitution exist without any sanctions of law in the Combat Zone. Let pornography, which is against state law, exist in the Combat Zone, and create a free zone as in European cities." That is the next step if you follow that insidious logic that some would have us follow, that would further enhance a lucrative monopoly for the very worst type of people.

LEHRER: All right. Let`s do bring Barney Frank in now. Mr. Frank is a state legislator here in Boston. What do you think? Do you agree with Mr. O`Neill`s assessment of the Combat Zone?

BARNEY FRANK: Of course, the basic problem is, none of the critics tell you what they would want to do instead. If they are proposing that we simply send the police in to wipe out all sex oriented entertainment in a metropolitan area of three million they`re really promoting a crime wave; because as Detective Morrissey, quoted earlier, said, putting a heavy police contentration down there drained the rest of the city of police protection for a while. We only have a limited number of cops here, so one of the things you have to think of is, what are the alternatives? We all wish that we lived in a mentally healthy society where no one was motivated to get sexual. enjoyment in what some of us might not think is a healthy way, but we know there are thousands of people who do have those drives; and we have to begin with the question of how to control it. I think what we could have done in the Zone -- not just there, but in two or three places downtown -- is precisely what Tim was saying I would say: make it legal. Prostitution:..

LEHRER: He knows you well.

FRANK: Prostitution -- we have to understand, what`s the problem about prostitution? It`s a problem if it bothers other people; but if two mature adults want to have sex it`s none of Tim`s business or mine, if they do it discreetly.

LEHRER: All right, but let`s get back to the original question, Mr. Frank. Is the Combat Zone as it`s now being operated in Boston working?

FRANK: Better than the alternatives, but it could be improved upon.

LEHRER: All right. Where has it gone wrong? How could it be improved?

FRANK: We should have made these things legal. I think that it is a legitimate criticism that we`re in a halfway kind of twilight area. For instance, we saw women mugging people and picking their pockets because prostitution is still illegal. People who are seeking prostitutes make sure that they do it outside the view of police officers. If prostitution within certain areas were legal and there were no sanctions against it, if people didn`t object in that area, then you could have the police standing there and you wouldn`t be setting people up as clay pigeons for the muggers. It`s like drinking; it the twenties and thirties a lot of people got shot in bars because of prohibition -- being illegal meant drinking became much more violent. By making prostitution illegal everywhere we increase the violence associated with it. Pimps are a factor because it`s illegal. So what I would have done with the Combat Zone would have been, yes, to say, "If you want to pay money for sex in these areas and not bother any residents, and it`s your money and you do it discreetly, good luck to you."

LEHRER: I take it, Mr. O`Neill, you think that`s a lousy idea.

O`NEILL: I think so, because you`re not talking an ideal world, you`re talking prostitution as controlled by certain people; the Combat Zone perhaps is controlled by four or five people -- their connections aren`t the very best -- grand juries looking into that right now, federal grand juries...

LEHRER: What do you mean, they`re controlled by four or five people?

O`NEILL: Four or five groups of people that have organized crime backups. These women, for instance, don`t just appear out of thin air; they move from city to city; the pornography moves in a network of distribution. And you have created through the city sanctions a very lucrative monopoly -- they love this.

LEHRER: But what if it was legalized, as Mr. Frank is suggesting?

O`NEILL: If you legalized it in the Zone?

LEHRER: Right.

O`NEILL: They would like that, too. You mean the law would say, "Okay, it`s all right in the Zone."

LEHRER: Illegal everywhere else, but it`s legal in the Zone.

O`NEILL: Of course, you`ve created another -- you`ve transferred the enforcement problem. You`re saying to the police, "Okay, but you`d better chase all the prostitutes that are on the fringes of the Zone, that are in the residential areas"...in other words, the same law enforcement problem exists if you legalize it in one small area. We have seen quasi- legalization here in Boston; in fact, prostitution arrests went down forty percent in the two years of the Zone`s existence. One can ask why. Were the police just looking the other way? Was it a kind of a sanction? But it didn`t decrease in the other areas, because there were too many prostitutes for the few johns that were there, and I think they spilled over.

LEHRER: Mr. Frank has been shaking his head throughout the time you`ve been talking.

FRANK: Responding two ways, one: yes, it is true that there is a monopoly now -- or an oligopoly -- of control of these activities, but the law creates that. It`s kind of silly to say, one, these activities are illegal, and then say, well, see, the trouble with them is that only criminals run them; that`s the same thing as with prohibition. When you tried to ban alcohol, that`s what created the organized crime hold on alcohol. And that`s what we`ve done today -- we`ve said that these activities that a lot of people want to engage in, that don`t bother anybody else if they`re conducted discreetly and in proper areas, that they`re illegal; and so necessarily organized crime gets a hold on them. And that`s just a circular argument.

O`NEILL: Could I say, "if they`re conducted discreetly" is part of the whole problem; of course, that`s an enforcement problem. If it`s behind closed doors and in a private room, no one knows...

FRANK: That`s just dishonest. The fact is that the law now says that what goes on in private rooms behind closed doors is illegal, and we just had the spectacle of the Boston police, with people getting robbed and cars being stolen. The Boston police were running around -- the vice squad -- last week with light meters and yardsticks, going into dark clubs -- private, off the street, entrance by admission only, you had to pay to get in, nobody inside was complaining -- and the Boston cops are in there with the light meters and yardsticks because we`ve got some rule that says the entertainer has to be two feet away and it has to be so bright.

LEHRER: Let me ask you, Mr. O`Neill: we know that you don`t like the Zone, you don`t want to move the step that Mr. Frank wants to go. What would you suggest as a way to combat this kind of thing?

O`NEILL: The problem is surely one of controls. You`re dealing with a business, a very lucrative business; if you`re talking enforcement, even Barney would say you have to have controls -- you have to keep it discreet. Right now it can be looked on as a nuisance to the public. The normal citizen...

LEHRER: Well, what do you do about it?

O`NEILL: I say the law simply forbids it, and through that -- you`re not going to suppress it totally, of course; prostitution is always going to exist --but by the suppression of it the law does not ... the public forum doesn`t tolerate prostitution. So what you do is, it then is easily suppressed or it at least is kept out of the public eye. Are you going to declare a free zone in a small downtown area that the normal citizen can`t walk in? You can`t do that. And that`s outside of any question of what it does to women, and the whole women`s liberation argument, which I happen to agree with, on prostitution and pornography -- that it debases women; that`s a side issue, perhaps. Look at it just enforcement wise: it`s easier enforced if it`s dispersed, if it`s kept under cover, if it`s kept under wraps.

LEHRER: Easier to enforce if it`s dispersed, Mr. Frank?

FRANK: No. There`s a word for what Tim is describing as a policy -- it`s called hypocrisy. We pretend it doesn`t exist and we feel better. In the first place, the women`s movement -- those who are concerned with the plight of the prostitutes -- want it made legal. I wish we didn`t have economic conditions and social conditions in this society that drove some women into prostitution. But it`s silly to say that those conditions existing, you make those women better off when you make it illegal and put them at the mercy of pimps and at the mercy of crazy people, without police protection. And what you do if you say, "Okay, we`re going to let it be discreet all over the city," is then to make it a real problem. Prostitution is like a gas station. It`s not a problem -- and I represent the downtown areas, I represent the residents who live nearby there -and if two mature adults on LaGrange Street want to pass money and go to bed together, they don`t bother anybody; but when they do it at two o`clock in the morning in a residential district they do. And I figured it`s a lot easier for the police to be told, "Don`t wipe out prostitution,` which no society except maybe China today has done, "but contain it."

LEHRER: All right, gentlemen. Robin, as you can see, it`s a hot subject in Boston. Robin?

MAcNEIL: Yes. Let`s get another view. In 1970 a U.S. government Commission on obscenity and Pornography issued a report with a generally liberal view of the place of such materials in American society. The Commission recommended against trying to limit by law the right of adults to read, obtain or look at explicit sex materials. W. Cody Wilson, a social psychologist, was executive director of the Commission. He`s currently on the faculty of Adelphi University, Long Island, New York. Dr. Wilson, you saw our film, you`ve heard the arguments in Boston; do you have an opinion on whether concentrating or scattering such establishments by zoning does any good?

Dr. CODY WILSON: I don`t think there`s a simple answer. This is a very complex problem, and to solve one aspect of the problem you probably create other kinds. Concentrating creates certain problems but it solves certain problems; dispersing solves certain problems but it creates other problems. And you know, in our society the attitudes toward these two solutions are determined by the values of people; and our society doesn`t have any unanimity about how they feel about this whole topic, so some people are going to like one solution, others are going to dislike it. The other solution, others are going to like it, and some are going to dislike it. And if the point is to try to solve this problem so that everybody is happy, I don`t think we`re going to do it today or tomorrow.

MacNEIL: So just with regard to zoning, that in itself is not a solution to this problem.

WILSON: I think not. You have two types of zoning -- to either concentrate it or disperse it -- if you concentrate it, it makes it highly visible in a certain area but not visible in another areas. If you disperse it, it isn`t highly salient all over but it`s encroaching on people`s private lives. And so some people like one solution, other people like the other solution. It isn`t a final, simple, sovereign solution to the problem, no.

MacNEIL: As somebody who has studied this, and when you were working with that government commission on it obviously you thought about it a lot, what in your own opinion is how American society should deal with this problem?

WILSON: You see, I`m not sure what the problem is. I don`t believe that the existence of explicit sexual materials is a real problem in our society except that it`s offensive to a minority of people in our society.

MacNEIL: And to parents of children.

WILSON: To-parents of children--- we don`t generally want our children to be exposed to sex and to depictions of sex, and so on; we want to protect them. And so there is concern about this. But other than this -- consenting adults -- sex does not appear in any way that I know to be a terribly significant problem, except to a minority of people in our society who are terribly concerned about sex; it`s a very threatening kind of thing. They don`t like to have it around very much and they want to suppress sex, depictions of sex and conversation about sex, to keep it from threatening them.

MacNEIL: You`re talking about, there, what the Commission did, about books, films, sex materials. Now, the other part of that, presumably, is prostitution.

WILSON: Prostitution? I don`t know; I think there has been sex under many different guises and for many different purposes throughout society, throughout history, and still sex serves many purposes today. I`m not sure that prostitution is, in absolute terms, a "bad` thing. It may be bad under certain circumstances or if you have certain kinds of values; to other people, it serves certain very good social purposes.

MacNEIL: I just wonder, finally, what the three of you would recommend to other cities who might have been thinking of the Boston experience. What would be your advice, Mr. O`Neill, to other cities in the country?

O`NEILL: Copy Boston? Ask the people that have businesses in the Zone; ask New England Medical Center, with 667 nurses -- they have trouble getting people to work; ask the people in Chinatown, who live in the area. And it just doesn`t work. The zoning has created an explosive situation by concentrating it in the downtown area, brought the worst and most violent types of people, and created and set up and easy target. Watch our people stumbling out of the bars at two, and come all ye prostitutes...

MacNEIL: So don`t copy Boston, you`re saying. What do you say, Mr. Frank, to other cities?

FRANK: I think you look at your own city; you decide, first of all, where these activities have been going on -- because nobody created the Combat Zone, it grew like topsy because people want to pay for it -- and then I would take several areas scattered around the metropolitan area but each of some size, where it made sense, and make legal those activities which don`t involve anybody being robbed or hurt or beaten, and say that where adults want to pay each other money for various sexual purposes that don`t shed blood they be allowed to do that as long as they do that in non-residential areas that aren`t going to impinge on other people`s sensibilities.

MacNEIL: I think we have to leave it there. Thank you both very much. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Thank you, Dr. Wilson. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.