Prostitution is a violent, disruptive business. Which is precisely why it needs to be legalized.

"Fuckin' guy pulled my hair the whole time," barks Charlotte, spitting and coughing between words. She's 33 and not much to look at. Her face is haggard, with deeply sunken hazel eyes; her hair shows signs of too much bleach; her breasts, braless, sag beneath a skintight black body suit.

Charlotte has been working the streets since she was 16, when her mother's boyfriend suggested pimping her to make some drug money. "When I was 19 I tried to get out, but they got me hooked on smack to keep me working," she says matter-of-factly.

This -- a pathetic woman emerging from an alleyway after servicing some sweaty middle-aged man -- is precisely the sort of scene people conjure up when they argue for stricter laws against prostitution. It's the kind of situation they want to pretend doesn't even exist.

"I wish they'd just fall through the cracks they crawled out of," a South End resident told me as we watched a slightly overweight, middle-aged prostitute climb into the passenger side of a gray van one afternoon.

And that is exactly how most of American society views these women. In cities big and small, across the country, police and politicians wage a low-grade war on prostitutes. There are neighborhood watches, street sweeps, and even undercover sting operations. Inevitably, though, most of the women end up back on the street -- undeterred and unhelped. If one part of town gets too hot, they simply move to another.

Here in Boston, the story is much the same as it is elsewhere. The Boston Police Department has just launched its sixth encore of Operation Squeeze. The procedure is simple: groups of police officers, male and female, assume the roles of prostitutes and johns in areas where prostitution is rampant. Once the undercover streetwalker is solicited, backup officers move in and make the arrest. Police release the names and residences of the arrested johns to the press, which sometimes publishes them. Punishment ranges from fines and mandatory AIDS education to hours of community service, including sweeping and cleaning the very streets those men cruised in search of sex.

But there are reasons why prostitution is the oldest profession. There will always be men who will pay for sex; there will always be women who are willing to have sex for money. Despite genuine commitment on the part of law enforcement agencies, women like Charlotte will continue to walk the streets.

Many people have moral objections to legalizing prostitution. (See "Prostitution Theory 101.") "I don't pretend to know a lot about how legal prostitution works in other states," says Ralph Martin, district attorney for Suffolk County. "But I do have a visceral reaction that it exploits women, and I don't see it as a healthy option for Massachusetts."

But the more time you spend on the street, the more one thing becomes clear: if society really wants to end the spread of disease and the violence, the only solution is to give prostitutes clean, safe places to work, well away from residential neighborhoods. Make prostitution a strictly regulated, but completely legal, proposition.

On to part 2