Section 286: Living on earnings of prostitution

Firm annotation

Section 286 is the profiting-and-facilitating provision of the prostitution group, and it is considerably wider than a simple living-off-earnings offence. Paragraph one lists seven acts and any one of them is enough: (1) assisting, facilitating or protecting the prostitution of another person; (2) receiving a benefit in any form from another's prostitution or from a person who engages in prostitution; (3) compelling, threatening, deceiving or unjustly exercising influence over a person, or taking a person into employment, for the purpose of prostitution; (4) arranging prostitution between a person who engages in it and a client; (5) concealing or disguising the source of income or of property obtained from prostitution; (6) habitually living with or associating with one or more persons who engage in prostitution and being unable to show the source of the income on which one lives; and (7) obstructing the work of an agency responsible for the prevention or control of prostitution, or for assisting or educating those involved or at risk. There is one penalty for all seven: imprisonment not exceeding twenty years and a fine not exceeding 400,000 baht, or imprisonment for life. The section states a maximum only, with no minimum term, and it contains no age element for the offender. The final paragraph takes limbs (2) and (6) out of the section where the benefit is one the person is entitled to by law or by moral obligation, which is what keeps a lawful maintenance payment outside the offence.