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There are some debate between pros and cons considering prostitution as a legal job in many countries. One thing that pros say is that it can decrease violence against all women from prostitutes and non prostitutes.
Is there any valid evidence to prove their claims about?
There is definitely evidence that legal prostitution decreases violence against the prostitutes. So even if it has zero effect on women who are not prostitutes, the net effect would be that violence against "all" women would therefore be lower. (And men too since there are male prostitutes as well.) I realize that isn't the angle you were aiming for, but it is mathematically sound.
Here is some of the evidence mentioned in the first sentence: The prostitutes in a legal brothel in Nevada have security, call buttons, they can request that managers keep the intercom throughout the session if they have a new customer or someone they deem suspicious, money is taken out of the room before the session begins, they are tested weekly, and the police are called to arrest abusive "johns": Info Here. Sometimes the prostitutes are allowed to make house calls, but most don't because it's too dangerous. A notable quote is on page 15:
As one prostitute said, “I don’t go out of this house with anybody I don’t know and I don’t book anybody outside of the house.” To do so is to lose one of the vital protections offered by legalized brothel prostitution: the security of the house and the people in it.
Here is some evidence that prostitution as a whole is a dangerous profession in the US, where over 99.9% is illegal prostitution. (See Point 2.)
As mentioned in a comment by PoloHoleSet, another obvious benefit of legalized prostitution (or at least decriminalization) is that prostitutes would no longer be afraid (due to fear of legal prosecution) to report crimes against them.
It's hard to know but apparently -as far as we know it- it helps to prevent. Studies emphasize the need for make a more regulated market because in the end, the prostitution is a sex industry. Researchs made based in the experience of the Netherlands and publsihed in the American Economy Journal and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (Sweden), regarding the legalization of prostitution gave positive results because:
Regularization avoid human trafficking: Being recognized as (legal) workers helps to identify and fight human trafficking. It doesn't mean is going to end this, on the contrary, encourage new ways to insert sexual slaves in the street.
Enable to focus in other areas: Prostitution is not something you talk only because between this industry there are other issues such as violent crimes (not related to sex), drugs, assaults among others. The regularization helped to focus more in this issues.
Without regulation, human trafficking is on the rise: With political support and fewer unlicensed sex workers, is more likely to reduce human trafficking.
Does this mean the legalization prevents violence? Not sure, most times -the study concluded- the relation between crime registered (something that happened) and crime perceived (I think this is unsecure) does not match statistically. The media has some responsability over there confusing -what Nassim Talleb called- intensity with frequency. The main problem is not the prostitution but crime related drugs issues, which is not a problem in the tippelzone, according to the study. And the swedish research previolusly mentioned finished the study highlightning:
these predictions have not yet been tested
No, it is not clear that decriminalizing prostitution improves safety and public health, even though researchers have studied its simultaneous 2003 decriminalization in New Zealand and Rhode Island.
It's supposed by some researchers that "indoor prostitution" is safer for the prostitute than street prostitution (link) but other researchers oppose this claim (link).
It is not clear that the increased availability of "indoor prostitution" under decriminalization has any impact on street prostitution at all (link - see footnote). Unfortunately, the reduction in violence seen among all women in Rhode Island in 2003 was preceded by a rise in violence in 2001-2002, so the decriminalized state was still just as unsafe as its neighbors after the improvement.
Furthermore, it seems likely that decriminalization will enable other crimes against women, such as trafficking into the decriminalized area (link).
A 2014 study-of-studies determined that at a minimum, we observe that 3 in 10 prostitutes will become victims of violent crime. Some studies found that 3 in 4 prostitutes were victimized. (link) Nobody imagines that regulations will alleviate this insane risk, but merely that regulation could remove the black market's impenetrable firewall between perpetrators of violence and justice.
Also, decriminalized prostitution contracts will inevitably result in violence if a client changes his mind and refuses to pay, resulting in the poisonous legal quagmire of court proceedings to determine whether anything happened. If the court sides with the dishonest client, then it could become true that the prostitute had been raped.
One think to keep in mind is that prostitution can be considered as a degrading act that shames all women.
If a society were to then legalize such a profession, it may disgrace the status of all women in that particular society, and as a result, lead to far more violence upon them, due to the fostering of a general stigmatization of women, i.e. inhabitants of that society may perceive women in an inferior light from then on. That would not be an appropiate response of course, but it would happen.
