Controlling Vice: Regulating Brothel Prostitution in St. Paul, 1865-1883 Book

My Professional Ethics professor recommended this book in class. Since I had just recently finished The Happy Hooker, I was intrigued to learn how St. Paul, where I currently live, regulated prostitution in the 1800s.

The book had some very interesting information, from police behavior to dangers of prostitution to the theories behind social deviance. The book gave me a lot of good information for my paper discussing whether or not to legalize prostitution. However, the book disappointed me in a few ways:

1. I thought it would have a lot more detail about the history of regulating brothels. However, it was probably difficult to do without obtaining first hand interviews from the time. The author researched police records to get much of the information used to discuss the history of regulation, but it lacked the in depth descriptions I was anticipating.

2. There was a lot of repetition in the book. It felt as though each chapter was a stand-alone that did not assume the reader had read the information from the previous chapter. It was disappointing that the same information was regurgitated throughout.

Overall, while the topic was intriguing, I wouldn't necessarily go out and recommend the book to interested parties. I could probably verbalize the essence of the book to save an interested reader the trouble.