Call it a unique kind of most wanted list or simply an attempt to clamp down on the area’s worst-kept secret.

Working off a roster of the reputed 50 “most prolific prostitutes” in Clark County, Las Vegas police and prosecutors are taking unprecedented steps to keep repeat prostitution offenders off the Strip.

Some are criticizing the law enforcement crackdown as overly aggressive. And it comes at a time when some policymakers are talking about eventually legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution in the Las Vegas Valley.

The Vice Enforcement Top Offenders (VETO) list, which took the vice unit two years to compile, has the names of women with the longest prostitution-related criminal records in Clark County, said Lt. Karen Hughes.

Most of the women on the list have been convicted of exchanging sex for money or of prostitution-related theft charges inside several Strip hotels, not for street prostitution.

Within days of launching the crackdown, police over Super Bowl weekend arrested 13 of the women on charges of soliciting prostitution, loitering for the purposes of prostitution, or trespassing, police records show.

In all, 24 of the 50 women on the list were arrested between Jan. 28 and Feb. 13, all on misdemeanor charges.

Six on the list were arrested twice during that period.

Those arrested range in age from 20 to 41.

Police declined a request by the Review-Journal for the entire VETO list.

Hughes said it is time to stop the revolving door of prostitution-related arrests, especially when those arrests involve “trick rolls,” in which prostitutes steal from men.

“We’re talking about girls who have been arrested repeatedly over the years, ones that we all know by face and by name,” said Hughes, citing one woman who was arrested 18 times in a single year.

“If they get the message that Las Vegas is not going to ignore their subsequent arrests, then maybe they’ll take their lifestyle to a different city,” she said.

Or at least to a different part of Clark County.