Texas government leaders and legislators have been aggressively combating prostitution , also called sex trafficking , with a new emphasis on prosecuting persons who use the internet to arrange for paid sex acts. In June , Governor Abbott signed the Texas legislature's new law , effective in September of that year, elevating ordinary first-offense prostitution from a Class B misdemeanor to a third-degree or even second-degree felony when including an online element.
The new law recognizes that, like lawful commerce, unlawful prostitution transactions arranging for sex acts for money or other things of value have largely moved online. Estimates indicate that about eighty percent of prostitution involves an online element. The quality of your criminal defense representation is one thing you can control for your best outcome to Texas felony online prostitution charges.
The risk of facing Texas felony online prostitution charges is real and substantial for anyone using the internet for prostitution activity. Enforcement actions have followed the online prostitution trend, aggressively enforcing Texas's new online prostitution law.
State, county, and local law enforcement departments staff and train internet crime units not only to monitor and detect online sex trafficking activity but also to solicit that activity by posing as sellers and buyers.
Internet pop-up ads, websites, and chat rooms for prostitution activity may be police stings , not the real thing. Sting operations are just as much a part of online prostitution as street prostitution, where law enforcement officers have long posed as prostitutes and, in other ways, attempted to gain evidence of prostitution, solicitation of prostitution , and related sex crimes.
