The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne IN

•A woman has been charged with running “escort services” out of a Canterbury Green apartment.

•People who have been charged with running a poker game out of Three Rivers Apartments are moving through the courts.

•Trial is pending for people accused of breaking laws governing charity gambling at the now closed Parnell Poker Palace in a strip mall off Clinton Street.

•Police recently busted a massage parlor.

•The City Council is considering outlawing a product that is, in essence, a recreational drug similar to marijuana and being sold openly over the counter.

Does this mean the city has more vice? Not necessarily. But it does seem to be more out in the open.

Civilized society has long struggled with how severely to prosecute vice. While Americans have reached a consensus that such activities should be off limits for minors, whether adult vices should be strictly prosecuted – or even illegal to begin with – is more hotly debated.

Libertarians argue that such vices – prostitution, gambling, soft drugs – hurt only those who participate in them. Many conservatives argue that such activities should be illegal precisely to protect society, while liberals tend to look the other way at some vices while wanting the government to protect us from ourselves regarding others.

Even the definition of vice varies. Webster’s New World Dictionary says it’s “an evil or wicked action, habit, or characteristic.” Princeton University’s Wordnetweb has a much softer definition, calling vice a “frailty” or “moral weakness.” Wikipedia – which has a varying degree of veracity but which, at its best, is the sum of the collective wisdom of its users – calls it “a practice or a habit considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society.”

While more Americans tend to believe we should be left alone in our own homes, the more open vices are, the more uncomfortable it makes many people, and the more it affects others.

We like our privacy, but we don’t necessarily want to be known as the city of easy escorts, the city of illegal poker games, the city where you go to buy a marijuana substitute.

And our standards change, depending on time, place and circumstances. Cincinnati, for example, has long been known as a city that heavily restricts vices, while just across the river, the Kentucky cities of Covington and Newport are more open.

So, our City Council weighs regulations to license escort services, tighten zoning for strip bars and outlaw synthetic marijuana. State legislators decide which gambling is state-sanctioned and which is illegal – confusing many residents. These processes give the public ample opportunity to offer their opinions.

Citizens have less direct say on local police and prosecutors and judges, all of whom have much power to decide what is really illegal. And vice will almost always be a lower priority than murders or assaults or robberies. But the criminal justice system does not operate in a vacuum, either, and tends to apply the law in ways that fit the society.

No laws will end some people’s desires to gamble, to do drugs, to hire people for sex. That’s why these vices have persisted so long.

But the more open they become, the more public demand increases for society to push back. So it’s no accident that local police and prosecutors have pursued charges against vice operations allegedly running out of prominent apartment buildings and storefronts.

Council members are not arbitrarily focusing on a product sold publicly at retailers.

When vices become that open, they do affect a community and its reputation. Too much enforcement can be an unwise priority for police and a court system with limited resources, but too little enforcement can be costly, too.