Prostitution in Britain is not illegal. It is not illegal for a woman (or a man) to sell sex. It is illegal though to keep a brothel. Soliciting too is illegal. I don't have a problem with pimps being arrested. I do have a problem with young women being arrested for choosing to work together for safety. The law can't be so stupid as not to be able to tell the difference.
Have a law to prosecute people who exploit prostitutes. Don't have a law that prosecutes prostitutes for working together and also accuses them of money laundering and takes away their earnings. I'm not the only one who believes this. You would think that anyone who believes in the Nordic model would too. They are supposed to believe that men who pay should be punished not women who are paid for sex. However, when they have to give an opinion they say that it is necessary to punish prostitutes.
In 2004 there was a government review and consultation paper called Paying the Price. It recommended not prosecuting women who choose to work together. From this came a Home Office White Paper in 2006 called A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy and a Summary of Responses to Paying the Price (The Strategy). From this came a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) which mentioned nothing about not prosecuting women in this situation.
So they say they believe it but then nothing happens.
"The recommendations in The Strategy to 'remove the stigmatising term "common prostitute" (p.9) and 'The Government will make proposals for the amendment to the definition of a brothel so that two or three individuals may work together' (p.61), have both disappeared from the RIA. So that by the end of the consultation process, the sensible, safe options have been lost and only the punitive or dangerous strategies remain. What went wrong?" The Price of Sex: Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon Chapter 2 page 72
There was another Home Office review Tackling Demand for Prostitution in 2008, which was followed by the changes brought in by the Policing and Crime Act 2009.
Then we had Shifting the Burden in 2014 which said the situation should be reviewed. This was a report produced by The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade.
Then we had the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Prostitution Third Report of Session 2016–17. They came to the conclusion existing legislation should be changed in order to ensure that that brothel-keeping provisions allow those in prostitution to share premises.
Then we had Limits of Consent 2019 by The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission which said current guidance should be reviewed.
I get the feeling that when people like the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission suggest reviewing current guidance it is to make themselves look good. See how reasonable we are, they want us to think. They know perfectly well it will never happen. It will be dropped. Their priority is to stamp out prostitution and that won't happen if the police can't close down some brothels.
Then we had Behind Closed Doors: Organised sexual exploitation in England and Wales 2018 by The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade. It has five recommendations, none of them are to do with not prosecuting sex workers for brothel-keeping, not even reviewing procedures.
There were 55 prosecutions in 2013-14 and 96 in 2014-15. In 2016-17 there were 90 prosecutions for brothel-keeping offences in England and Wales.
This news article is interesting. It says 'Hundreds of people have been arrested for alleged brothel-keeping offences in the last four years under laws that sex workers claim put them at risk. Police forces have detained at least 408 suspects in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since the start of 2017, according to data obtained by Sky News under the Freedom of Information Act.'
They could end up with at least seven years in prison for running the flat if caught by police. At least 64 people were arrested between January and August this year. Kent Police disclosed the highest number of arrests of any force, with 99 since 2017. Other hotspots included Thames Valley (45 arrests), Bedfordshire (32) and London (27).
Sometimes arrests were made where it was "just a landlord-tenant relationship" with "no force and coercion", in which the person detained for suspected brothel-keeping was a landlord that had "nothing to do with the running of the business".
I have heard it said that because sex workers move around the country they must be organized therefore pimped. In Chester there is a mature lady called Diane who doesn't move around the country. In the same street is (sometimes) an Asian woman called Sara who does. It seems that in smaller cities they tend to move but in a big city like Manchester they don't. That's because the supply of customers is smaller in a small city. Diane doesn't have anybody in the flat with her but Sara does. You never see this person who is there for safety.
In Soho in each flat there is the sex worker and there is also the 'maid'. She is usually an older woman. So there are two women in the flat at all times. That appears to be legal because although the police try to close them they rarely succeed. No prostitute has been murdered in Soho since 1947. So it's not true that prostitution can't be made safe. Camille Gordon wasn't a sex worker, she worked in a clip joint. It is said that Elizabeth Valad had a flat in Soho, was forced out of her flat by the police, then was murdered by the Camden Ripper.
When Ireland introduced the Nordic model they had a choice about whether to stop prosecuting sex workers for working together. Frances Fitzgerald the Justice Minister said 'I have no plans to amend provisions relating to brothel-keeping at this time'. She thought that women would say that they weren't been pimped when they were.
This is an odd way of thinking. It would be like raiding a hand car-wash, arresting all the workers and prosecuting them for modern day slavery. You can't find a boss to prosecute so you prosecute the workers. That seems to me prosecuting someone for someone else's crime. Or in the case of brothel-keeping prosecuting women for a man's crime. Where's the justice in that? How is that 'shifting the burden' from women to men?
This isn't the Nordic model - or at least it isn't the Nordic model as presented. What's the difference between what's happening in Ireland and what's happening in America? A prostitute might be pimped or she might not - in neither case should she be arrested.
"It should be noted that the assertion that, without the provision on brothels, sex workers would be pressured into falsely declaring they are not under the control of a pimp, has been contested, including by Wendy Lyon, a solicitor who has acted on behalf of sex workers in Ireland. She told FactCheck that sex workers are less likely to be reveal exploitation, when they are themselves liable to criminal prosecution." FactCheck: Would a new government bill really decriminalise sex workers? thejournal.ie Sep 18th 2016
Mia de Faoite wrote this "The most recent data available from the Central Statistics Office shows a marked overall decline in criminal proceedings since 2010. The number of ‘recorded suspected offenders’ for incidents of brothel-keeping (as recorded by the gardaí) has fallen by 77 per cent, from 123 in 2012 to a new low of 28 in 2018." She gave no reference for this statement, I have been unable to verify it by looking online, and it is unclear what it means. We need to know how many people were prosecuted in Ireland for brothel-keeping, how old were they and what were their ages. If they were mostly women in their 20s then something is very wrong.
"New research by UglyMugs, a sex worker advocacy service, taken from CSO statistics and media reporting of brothel keeping since 2009, found that young migrant women are the people most likely to be convicted of the offence. The results show that the vast majority (85%) of those convicted of brothel keeping are female and most are aged 18-24 (30%) or 25-44 (59%)."
"An UglyMugs.ie analysis found over 90 per cent of those convicted for brothel keeping between 2008 and 2013 were themselves sex workers, profiting only from their own work."
"The vast majority of those targeted for brothel keeping are eastern European women; only three Irish people have been prosecuted in the past three years. The usual penalty is a fine, and about 35 per cent have received jail terms."
"Another effect of the legislation was to double the punishment for brothel-keeping in an attempt to crack down on pimping. Irish law defines a brothel as a place where two or more people work, meaning women working in pairs for safety reasons can be charged for pimping each other." New Statesman 26 March 2018
"One of the changes to the law last February doubled the penalties for brothel keeping. Technically a brothel is any two prostitutes working out of the same premises. The law was designed to target pimps but SWAI says it is affecting independent workers who operate together for safety, forcing them back to street work."
If you look on the Nordic Model Now! site there are a couple of places where they say that women should be prosecuted for working together. For example, in their review of 'Revolting Prostitutes'.
"On balance, I do not support legislation to explicitly decriminalise small groups of women operating from the same premises, because it would legitimise and normalise prostitution."
"The Nordic Model does not endorse prostitution in group settings because, as we have seen, they inherently favour pimps and profiteers, and do not eliminate the harms and violence intrinsic to prostitution."
This is not a coherent policy. Gunilla Ekberg, a prominent supporter of the Nordic model, said 'if you criminalise women your are in a situation where victims are penalised. It is in violation of international law'.
Some people are confused. When two women work together they let one man into the flat at a time. Not two women and two men: that would confer no safety advantage. In Sweden two women working together can be arrested and evicted. One woman working on her own won't be arrested but can be evicted. The Swedish police DO get women evicted, no matter what they might say.
It isn't just prostitutes who can be arrested and convicted. It is also landlords, partners, adult family, security guards and receptionists. That should not happen, but I'm not particularly bothered about businessmen who get arrested. I'm not defending a middle aged man employing younger women to make himself richer.
Some people say that prostitution is inherently violent and can never be made safe. I don't believe that. In Soho no prostitutes have been murdered since 1947. There are always two women in the flat. You could say that some women will choose to work in more dangerous circumstances, they may choose to work as escorts or on the street. That is true, but the answer to that is not to try to ban prostitution but to allow women to work together and encourage them to do so. Welfare officers should be appointed to help them organize in safe ways and to teach them social media. Brothels often have their own websites and use Twitter so that customers can find them.
Many professions are potentially dangerous but we let them organize to solve that problem. Female estate agents no longer show unidentified males around houses. There is an old woman in Chester who is a sex worker, she works on her own as do many women. Despite seeming vulnerable, she seems to have had no problems with violence. It's something rare, but it can happen. Usually it's not a weirdo punter that's the problem, it's gangs looking for money. Then there is the possibility of another serial killer.
In New Zealand women can work together legally without asking permission from anyone. They make the rules for themselves and keep the profits for themselves. They can choose to turn down a particular man for whatever reason. It's a myth that sex workers have to accept anyone who comes to their door. If a man is obese or unkempt he may be turned away. Men can't do anything they want to a sex worker - another myth. A woman can say she doesn't want a man on top of her if he is big and heavy: this has happened to me a couple of times. He will be told what positions are acceptable to her. They don't usually allow kissing or fingering, let alone anal or unprotected sex.
From Shifting the Burden 2014 page 26:-
Whilst controlled brothels are inadequately policed, the Inquiry heard how current legislation is compromising the safety of women who choose to work in the same premises to increase their safety. Under existing legislation, they are liable to prosecution under brothel keeping.
Various submissions called for legislation to change the definition of a brothel, allowing for women to sell sexual services independently but on the same premises:
"The easiest, cheapest and most sensible solution would be to produce a statutory definition of a brothel, which would exclude several prostitutes sharing premises on a co-operative basis, whether in serial or parallel."
Individual Response, Written Evidence Submission 39
"It is much safer to allow sex workers to work together for their own protection. Lifting these restrictions, while maintaining and enforcing laws against exploitative ‘pimping’, will enable cooperatives of sex workers to work safely together, decreasing the pressures towards exploitative vulnerable sex work, and thus reducing the demand for that."
Individual Response, Written Evidence Submission 77
"As an independent I would love to have a friend work with me from the same flat both for security and social reasons but due to current laws I cannot."
Individual Response, Written Evidence Submission 80
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