The government will ban street prostitution with a new bill expected to be approved by the cabinet later this week, parliamentary sources said on Tuesday.
The bill drawn up by Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna will hit both prostitutes and clients with fines ranging from 200 to 3,000 euros. Repeat offences would be punishable with 5 to 15 days in jail.
Pimps exploiting teen-age prostitutes face prison terms of six to 12 years and fines ranging from 15,000 to 150,000 euros.
The bill, set to receive the green light from the cabinet on Thursday, foresees the ''assisted repatriation'' of foreign minors if this is in their interest, the sources said.
By targeting both clients and pimps as well as prostitutes, the bill is more comprehensive than an amendment to a wider emergency security decree approved in June that was criticised for punishing streetwalkers alone.
The amendment - which was pulled from the decree under pressure from the opposition - would only have made soliciting a crime, while requiring the immediate repatriation of all foreign streetwalkers caught in the act.
According to a recent study there are some 100,000 prostitutes in Italy, 65% of whom work on the streets and 35% in private residences or clubs.
Most prostitutes were said to be foreigners, from some 60 different countries, 20% were minors and 10% were forced into prostitution by criminal gangs.
The study also calculated that prostitutes in Italy charge an average of 30 euros per customer and generate a turnover in the neighborhood of some 90 million euros a month.
Clients were said to number around nine million with 80% seeking unprotected sex.
In a bid to clean up their image and strike out at rackets that force women out on the streets a number of Italian cities, including Padua and Verona, have recently boosted fines for clients.
Both cities have brought in fines of 500 euros for clients caught with streetwalkers thanks to greater powers given to city mayors by the emergency security decree.
Only the exploitation of prostitution - pimping - is illegal in Italy, but city mayors combat the phenomenon through the use of fines, often via road traffic or public decency laws.
