ABSTRACT
One critical barrier to theorising the socio-legal issues pertaining to child prostitution is the unavailability of an established analytical framework. This chapter summarizes past governmental and professional responses to the problems of child prostitution in Taiwan. It describes the process from discovery to legislation which led to the management of recognised problems in a ‘three-compound matrix’ and shows that within this matrix the child victims have been misplaced in the whole process of problem management on both treatment and prevention. The chapter examines the inappropriateness of responding to child prostitution in Taiwan as a problem of family dysfunction, of illegal prostitution, and of juvenile delinquency. It attempts to show the possible pitfalls of a fragmentary approach to the problem and of socio-legal measures which focus only on the individual behaviour defined as ‘deviant’, while ignoring the necessity of attacking the cultural, social, economic and political conditions associated with the identified ‘deviance’.
