Has demand decreased in Sweden?
Many people are campaigning to bring the Nordic model to Britain. It has already been introduced in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. This would criminalise men who pay for sex. The whole point of the Nordic model is that it aims to reduce demand. It aims to reduce the number of men who pay for sex.Campaigners for the Nordic model believe that Sweden has been a success story and in the 20 years since the model was introduced there demand has been reduced. This is the key issue, and we need to look at the facts. There have been a number of reports over the years, and the most important I have listed below.
1. Prohibition of the purchase of sexual services (Anna Skarhed) 2010
2. Prostitution in Sweden (National Board of Health and Welfare) 2007
3. Comparative Report: Disrupt Demand (Immigrant Council of Ireland) 2018
4. Study on the gender dimension of trafficking in human beings (Sylvia Walby et al) 2016
5. The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed success and documented effects (Dodillet and Östergren) 2011
6. Criminology and Criminal Justice (Levy and Jakobsson) 2014
7. Selling Sex in Sweden: An Analysis of Discourses about Sex Workers and their Human Rights (Katie Sophie Gonser) 2016
8. Evidence Assessment of the Impacts of the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex: A Review (Scottish Centre For Crime And Justice Research) 2017
9. Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017)
10. House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Prostitution Third Report of Session 2016-17
11. Prostitution in Sweden 2014 The extent and development of prostitution in Sweden Mujaj and Netscher (Länsstyrelsen 2015)
12. Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Sweden 2017
The first of these is a Swedish government report, the second is by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. Neither make any claim that the amount of prostitution has decreased overall in Sweden. The Anna Skarhed report tries to put a positive spin on all the data; they say that prostitution in other Nordic countries has increased, that it would probably have increased in Sweden also if there had been no sex buyer law, and that therefore it is a success.
The first of these is a Swedish government report, the second is by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. Neither make any claim that the amount of prostitution has decreased overall in Sweden. The Anna Skarhed report tries to put a positive spin on all the data; they say that prostitution in other Nordic countries has increased, that it would probably have increased in Sweden also if there had been no sex buyer law, and that therefore it is a success.
The evaluation compared the same time period to streetwalking activity in Denmark, where there is no such law. But those data came from a Copenhagen NGO whose numbers claimed the number of streetwalkers in Denmark was about six times higher than it actually is.
It looks as if there is evidence for a drop in numbers of active sex buyers in Denmark after the financial crisis. "Sex work is not rapidly growing in Denmark; there was dramatic growth in the industry from 1970 to 2000, but after 2000 there was stagnation, then a drop after 2007 due to the financial crisis." From this page.
However, this is just guesswork. There has not been a decrease in demand in Sweden. Also, one wonders why they do not say that prostitution has increased in all of Western Europe apart from Sweden. If the figures show that prostitution has not increased in Britain, for example, why is Britain not regarded as a 'comparable country'?
MP Sarah Champion has said that the number of active sex buyers in Sweden is now 'the lowest in Europe'. That is not true, as I explain below. There also seems to be some confusion over whether there has been an increase in street prostitution in other Nordic countries. A decline has been observed in other countries since the mid 1990s. In Scotland the police have said recently that street prostitution has declined 'considerably' in the last 10 to 15 years.
The amount of street prostitution has (probably) decreased in Sweden but it has decreased in Britain even more than that as far as I can see. Go to Argyle Square or Tooting Bec Common in London and you won't see prostitutes whereas there used to be many.
Numbers 5 and 6 on my list are critical of the government viewpoint. Numbers 3 and 4 are very biased, to the point of being dishonest, as I seek to show on this web page. Number 4, the Sylvia Walby et al 2016 document, is the most egregious in this respect. Let us consider the most important paragraph in this report, on page 191. I have highlighted the most important statements.
We need to look at a previous section of the Sylvia Walby et al 2016 report (page 132) for more details.
It is simply not true that 'Even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers' and 'The evidence on demand reduction is, therefore, accepted by both sides of the debate'. Let's have a look at what Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren have to say about it.
However, what everyone is missing is that in the 1996 survey there would have been older men participating who would have been young men at the time of the Second World War. They would have been too old to participate in the 2008 survey, in both surveys the cut off age was 74. Sweden was neutral in the war but there was large scale conscription and if there was a culture of paying for sex among conscripts this could partly account for the high figure which then drops: nothing to do with the 1999 law.
The 0.8 % figure that Walby uses is different. This is the figure for men who have paid for sex within the previous 12 months of the survey in 2014. As well as men (and women) being asked in the surveys if they have ever paid for sex at any time in their lives, they were asked a different question - have you paid for sex within the last 12 months. This is to count active sex buyers. We have the figures for active sex buyers for the 1996, 2008, 2011 and 2014 surveys.
It is curious that Walby doesn't seem to want to tell us about these figures, even though they are the figures that can tell us whether demand is increasing or decreasing. When you see the figures though it is obvious why Walby doesn't use them. They show an increase in active sex buyers from 1.3 % in 1996 to 1.8 % in 2008. It is true that it went down to 0.8 % in 2014, but this can't be 'attributed to the sex buyer law'. It can be attributed to the 2008 financial crisis after which men would have had less disposable income. If it was a result of the 1999 law, why was there an increase between 1996 and 2008?
Levy and Jakobsson 2014 go even further: they not only agree with Dodillet and Östergren that "there is no convincing evidence that levels of prostitution in Sweden have decreased since 1999" they say "it is not even certain that levels of street sex work decreased on a permanent basis" (page 5).
There is a very recent report (2019) Prostitution Policy in Sweden – targeting demand which says: "One certainty is that street prostitution has declined in Sweden since 1995, by more than 50 per cent including a few fluctuations and a minor recent increase. However, just like in other countries, availability has increased due to the internet." Since 1995? The new law came in in 1999, so it seems the decline started before then. It's gone up and down, and now there's been an increase. They don't give details, and I can't find them anywhere, so we don't know if it really is minor. They seem to be hiding something.
Walby et al are dishonest when they say everyone - even the critics - say there has been a reduction in demand. They are dishonest when they rely upon the 13 % to 8 % drop as clinching evidence for reduction in demand. They know perfectly well that criminologists at Stockholm University have said the figures cannot be correct - yet they still use them. They have hidden the more useful figures of a 1.3 % to 1.8 % rise in active sex buyers.
They enable campaigners like Sarah Champion to stand up in the House of Commons and say things which are false. They show a complete indifference to the welfare of women. If the Nordic model doesn't work at reducing demand then it makes the lives of prostitutes more difficult and dangerous for no good reason at all. That's quite apart from the fact that prostitutes still get arrested (and evicted). They make out that men like me are no better than rapists, but they are the ones who harm women.
UPDATE: Since I published this page I have found out another couple of ways that Sylvia Walby et al have been dishonest. MP Sarah Champion said this in the debate 'Commercial Sexual Exploitation' (4th July 2018):-
What Sarah Champion has said and written is wrong. You could say that it's not her fault, it's the fault of Sylvia Walby and her colleagues. However, if neither Sarah Champion nor her (mostly Christian) colleagues can be bothered to check their statistics we can only conclude they are insincere when they say they are motivated by concern for the welfare of vulnerable women. You can't make good laws on false statistics. Do they want a good law that works to protect women, or a law to punish men for promiscuity? Maybe even they don't know the answer to that question.
As I said the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document has plenty of data. Some of it is new to me. Its full name is 'Prostitution in Sweden 2014 The extent and development of prostitution in Sweden', by Endrit Mujaj and Amanda Netscher (Länsstyrelsen 2015). 'Länsstyrelsen' means 'County Administrative Board' (of Stockholm).
They make it clear - as did Dodillet and Östergren - the important difference between the number of men who pay for sex and the number who have paid at some time in their lives. They state that the second number can only change slowly and is therefore of much less importance in assessing changes in demand. They call the first number 'incidence' and the second number 'prevalence'.
When Sarah Champion said in the House of Commons that "The most recent studies of prevalence rates found that 0.8% of men in Sweden had paid for sex in the previous 12 months" she has failed to understand that this figure is not the prevalence rate, it is the incidence rate. There is an important technical difference between these two words that she doesn't comprehend. They made the same mistake in their document 'Behind Closed Doors'.
I already knew that there was a drop in the number of men who reported that they had paid for sex at some time in their lives (prevalence) from 13% (actually 12.7%) in 1996 to 8% (actually 7.6%) in 2008. I didn't know that the 1996 survey was an interview study whereas the 2008 survey was a questionnaire. That seems relevant to me: you have to compare like with like.
I also knew that the figure for 2014 was 7.5%. Not much of a decrease. I didn't know the figure for the 2011 survey. Turns out that between 2008 and 2011 there was an INCREASE from 7.6% to 10.2%. No wonder you can't find that in the other documents: they don't want you to know about THAT.
I didn't know that there are figures for people who SELL sex, not just for those who BUY it. In 1996 it was 0.4%, then it went UP to 1.2% in 2008. A big increase. They kept that one quiet too. Figures for 2011 and 2014 were 0.7%. A decrease - but not to below the figure for 1996. So in surveys more people reported that they have sold sex in 2014 than before the sex buyer law.
The key statistics are the number of men who pay for sex (have paid in the previous year), the number of men who have paid at some time in their lives, and the number of people who have sold sex at some time in their lives. All these statistics show an increase at some point after 1999 when the sex buyer law was enacted in Sweden. There was then a drop sometime after the 2008 financial crisis when men had less disposable income. Not much of an endorsement of the Nordic model.
All the key metrics of demand from the surveys show an increase after 1999 except one. Active sex buyers: 1.3% to 1.8%. People who have sold sex: 0.4% to 1.2%. Women who have sold sex: 0.3% to 1.1%. These are the figures from the 1996 and 2008 surveys (Länsstyrelsen 2015). The only one that didn't is men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives (the only one of these Walby uses). That did however increase after 2008, another thing she doesn't tell us.
Add to that young women and schoolgirls who have sold sex increased from 1% in 2003 to between 1.2% and 4.6% in 2009. Syvia Walby et al must know all this because they referred to the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document in their 2016 document. Just as she knows that criminologists at Stockholm University have said that her figures are statistically impossible. What a dishonest and unprofessional way of conducting oneself.
I have also read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017) which has much information that seems to contradict Sylvia Walby's report and similar reports. It says that street prostitution has decreased considerably in the past 10-15 years in Scotland. Without criminalising men who pay for sex. It says that many former street based sex workers have probably been dispersed either indoors or to less visible outdoor areas. It says that foreign women don't work on the street. That means that any reduction in street based sex work cannot be taken to mean a reduction in trafficking.
Summary
* The word that the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document uses for this rise is "osäker" which means 'uncertain' or 'ambiguous'. Perhaps 'anomalous' is what they mean. However, it is just as likely that the fall between 1996 and 2008 is the anomalous one, considering that all the other metrics increased during this period when the sex buyer law was introduced and the inadequacies of the 2008 Kuosmanen report. In any case Swedish criminologists have said they cannot be correct. If you feel that we cannot trust the figures, that is understandable, but still we cannot say there has been a decrease in demand.
It looks as if there is evidence for a drop in numbers of active sex buyers in Denmark after the financial crisis. "Sex work is not rapidly growing in Denmark; there was dramatic growth in the industry from 1970 to 2000, but after 2000 there was stagnation, then a drop after 2007 due to the financial crisis." From this page.
However, this is just guesswork. There has not been a decrease in demand in Sweden. Also, one wonders why they do not say that prostitution has increased in all of Western Europe apart from Sweden. If the figures show that prostitution has not increased in Britain, for example, why is Britain not regarded as a 'comparable country'?
MP Sarah Champion has said that the number of active sex buyers in Sweden is now 'the lowest in Europe'. That is not true, as I explain below. There also seems to be some confusion over whether there has been an increase in street prostitution in other Nordic countries. A decline has been observed in other countries since the mid 1990s. In Scotland the police have said recently that street prostitution has declined 'considerably' in the last 10 to 15 years.
The amount of street prostitution has (probably) decreased in Sweden but it has decreased in Britain even more than that as far as I can see. Go to Argyle Square or Tooting Bec Common in London and you won't see prostitutes whereas there used to be many.
Numbers 5 and 6 on my list are critical of the government viewpoint. Numbers 3 and 4 are very biased, to the point of being dishonest, as I seek to show on this web page. Number 4, the Sylvia Walby et al 2016 document, is the most egregious in this respect. Let us consider the most important paragraph in this report, on page 191. I have highlighted the most important statements.
"A key claim as to the effectiveness of the law in reducing prostitution was the halving of street prostitution in Sweden registered by the police in the period immediately after the law came into effect, while that in neighbouring Nordic countries continued at similar levels or increased. Since street prostitution is widely held to be a key site of trafficking, this is likely to have entailed a decline in trafficking at the same time. This may be considered to be the consequence of the normative effect of the legislation on male behaviour or perhaps the threat of sanctions. However, there are debates as to whether off-street prostitution has grown in compensation; here the evidence base is weak and contested. An alternative approach to measuring changes has been to focus on men’s willingness to buy sex. Indeed, this methodological focus better reflects the concern to ‘reduce demand’. The proportion of men reporting that they have paid for sex decreased substantially after the law came into effect, with some studies suggesting that this fell by almost half, though the evidence base as to the exact proportions is contested. However, even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers. There are significant indications that Sweden has a smaller market for commercial sex than many other European countries. Thus the law may be considered to have had some of the effects that were sought in that it has reduced demand for the purchase of sex, with consequences that the scale of the Swedish sex market has been limited at minimum and reduced at best with probable consequences for a reduction in trafficking. Although caveats need to be added to this statement since we still lack robust data on prostitution and trafficking, this is the best judgement when assessing the available data."They begin by discussing the reduction in street prostitution. There does seem to have been a genuine reduction in street prostitution (although not all critics acknowledge even this). Does that mean there has been an overall reduction of prostitution? It's not possible to say that. They then discuss demand, saying that the whole point of the new law is to 'reduce demand'. Their figures though - a reduction in demand by almost a half - are completely wrong. They are also completely wrong when they say 'even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers'. So their 'best judgement' is fatally flawed.
We need to look at a previous section of the Sylvia Walby et al 2016 report (page 132) for more details.
"Less men buying sex
The proportion of men reporting that they have paid for sex has decreased by almost half since the law has been in place. In his study conducted before the law came into force, Månsson (2000) found that around 13 % of men reported having paid for sex at some point in their lives. By the time of Kuosmanen’s (2010) study, this had fallen to 8 %, with the latest population study conducted in 2014 showing 7.5 %; and just 0.8 % of these within the last 12 months (Länsstyrelsen 2015).
In Kuosmanen’s (2010) study, ten male and one female participant said the legislation had affected their purchase of sex: five of the 34 men who had paid for sex had stopped as a result of the law, two paid for sex less often, and one had found more clandestine ways of buying sex. In the most recent study (Länsstyrelsen 2015), barely half of respondents who reported paying for sex had done so since the introduction of the Act. Extrapolating these results to the whole population would suggest a significant number of men no longer pay for sex as a direct result of the law reform. One interviewee noted that the latest research showed the proportion in the last year as the lowest ever, despite the increase in online advertising and globalisation: this was attributed to the sex buyer law.
Even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers (Dodillet and Östergren 2011; Levy and Jakobsson 2014). Furthermore, the latest research concludes that the law has had a normative effect on prospective buyers and thus had an impact on the extent of prostitution in Sweden (Länsstyrelsen 2015: 3). The evidence on demand reduction is, therefore, accepted by both sides of the debate."They do not make it clear what these percentages refer to. They do not refer - apart from the last one - to men who pay for sex. They refer to men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives. If you ask someone in a survey if they have ever done something and they answer 'yes', they cannot answer 'no' in a subsequent survey even if they have stopped doing it. So the only way that percentage can change is if older men become too old to participate in surveys or die, being replaced by young men who become old enough to participate. Even then, the only way it will change is if the younger men have a different sexual culture to the older men.
It is simply not true that 'Even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers' and 'The evidence on demand reduction is, therefore, accepted by both sides of the debate'. Let's have a look at what Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren have to say about it.
"In spite of this data, the official evaluation claims that the Sex Purchase Act deters clients, referring to one of the studies within the NIKK research project.
It was a questionnaire survey about Swedish men’s and women’s experiences of and attitudes towards prostitution that formed the basis of Jari Kuosmanen’s 2008 NIKK study, and contained questions intended to determine whether the ban had affected the pattern of actions of prospective sex buyers. Kuosmanen writes that the men who stated that they had bought sex were fewer in his study (8%) than in a study done in 1996 (13.6%), and that several of those questioned in his survey stated that the ban had affected their actions, making them give up or cut back on buying sex. But (and this is not translated in the English summary of the official evaluation), Kuosmanen himself hedges the results, one reason being the low response rate. Out of the 2,500 surveys that were sent out, only 45.5 percent responded, slightly less men than women, and young men especially were underrepresented. He also poses the question as to whether the result represents a real decrease, or something else. Finally he discusses the willingness to answer questions about purchasing sex in 2008, given that it has become a criminal act. He concludes that in order to know if there is an actual reduction in the number of clients, more population-based surveys are required.
The criminologists at Stockholm University write in their response to the official evaluation that figures from surveys do not tell us anything about what is going on in reality, as opposed to what people say. They also show why the above-mentioned figures cannot be correct. If the responses are to be considered representative, then all men who answered “yes” to having ever purchased sex in 1996 should have also been represented in the 2008 survey (with the exception of the twelve oldest age groups) and would still have answered “yes” if they were answering truthfully. Even if no one bought sex after the Sex Purchase Act came into force, such a major decrease in the prevalence of buying sex amongst men simply cannot be achieved in that time. The National Council for Crime Prevention is also among those who discuss the possible deterrent effect of the Sex Purchase Act. In an early report they state that it is not known if the new ban has deterred buyers in the hidden indoor prostitution market."So the criminologists at Stockholm University have said the figures cannot be correct. It's just simply impossible for these figures to change that quickly. Yet all the proponents of the Nordic model use them, for example MP Sarah Champion in a House of Commons debate recently.
However, what everyone is missing is that in the 1996 survey there would have been older men participating who would have been young men at the time of the Second World War. They would have been too old to participate in the 2008 survey, in both surveys the cut off age was 74. Sweden was neutral in the war but there was large scale conscription and if there was a culture of paying for sex among conscripts this could partly account for the high figure which then drops: nothing to do with the 1999 law.
The 0.8 % figure that Walby uses is different. This is the figure for men who have paid for sex within the previous 12 months of the survey in 2014. As well as men (and women) being asked in the surveys if they have ever paid for sex at any time in their lives, they were asked a different question - have you paid for sex within the last 12 months. This is to count active sex buyers. We have the figures for active sex buyers for the 1996, 2008, 2011 and 2014 surveys.
It is curious that Walby doesn't seem to want to tell us about these figures, even though they are the figures that can tell us whether demand is increasing or decreasing. When you see the figures though it is obvious why Walby doesn't use them. They show an increase in active sex buyers from 1.3 % in 1996 to 1.8 % in 2008. It is true that it went down to 0.8 % in 2014, but this can't be 'attributed to the sex buyer law'. It can be attributed to the 2008 financial crisis after which men would have had less disposable income. If it was a result of the 1999 law, why was there an increase between 1996 and 2008?
Levy and Jakobsson 2014 go even further: they not only agree with Dodillet and Östergren that "there is no convincing evidence that levels of prostitution in Sweden have decreased since 1999" they say "it is not even certain that levels of street sex work decreased on a permanent basis" (page 5).
There is a very recent report (2019) Prostitution Policy in Sweden – targeting demand which says: "One certainty is that street prostitution has declined in Sweden since 1995, by more than 50 per cent including a few fluctuations and a minor recent increase. However, just like in other countries, availability has increased due to the internet." Since 1995? The new law came in in 1999, so it seems the decline started before then. It's gone up and down, and now there's been an increase. They don't give details, and I can't find them anywhere, so we don't know if it really is minor. They seem to be hiding something.
They enable campaigners like Sarah Champion to stand up in the House of Commons and say things which are false. They show a complete indifference to the welfare of women. If the Nordic model doesn't work at reducing demand then it makes the lives of prostitutes more difficult and dangerous for no good reason at all. That's quite apart from the fact that prostitutes still get arrested (and evicted). They make out that men like me are no better than rapists, but they are the ones who harm women.
UPDATE: Since I published this page I have found out another couple of ways that Sylvia Walby et al have been dishonest. MP Sarah Champion said this in the debate 'Commercial Sexual Exploitation' (4th July 2018):-
"There is extensive evidence of the effectiveness of the sex buyer law in reducing demand. In Sweden, which was the first country to adopt an “end demand” approach back in 1999, anonymous surveys conducted in 1996 and 2008 revealed that the proportion of men in Sweden who reported paying for sex dropped from 13% to 8% in that period. The most recent study of prevalence rates found that 0.8% of men in Sweden had paid for sex in the previous 12 months, which is the smallest proportion recorded in two decades and the lowest in Europe."We'll come back to the 13% to 8% drop in a minute. Sarah Champion and her colleagues wrote almost exactly the same thing in their document 'Behind Closed Doors'. There was a reference for the 0.8% figure being 'the lowest in Europe' and it was to the 2016 Walby et al document 'Study on the gender dimension of trafficking in human beings'. This document does indeed state this (page 139):-
"Swedish research also shows an ongoing decrease in the proportions of men who admit to paying for sex, with the 0.8 % in the previous 12 months in the most recent study the smallest recorded in data covering two decades and the lowest level in Europe (Länsstyrelsen 2015)."They are saying that the source of this statistic is Länsstyrelsen 2015. However, the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document does not say this. This is what it does say (page 7):-
"Approximately 7.5 percent of Swedish men between 18 and 65 years of age have bought sexual services at some point in their lives, which is a low figure compared to other Nordic and European countries. The proportion of Swedish men who have stated that they have bought sexual services during this past year is 0.8 percent, a figure which is also relatively constant over time."This document is saying that the 7.5% figure is a low figure compared to other European countries. It is not saying it is the lowest in Europe. It does not give data about other European countries to back up this claim, even though it has plenty of data about other things. The claim is made for the 7.5% figure - not for the 0.8% figure. So it is completely wrong for Walby to say that the 0.8% figure is 'the lowest level in Europe'.
What Sarah Champion has said and written is wrong. You could say that it's not her fault, it's the fault of Sylvia Walby and her colleagues. However, if neither Sarah Champion nor her (mostly Christian) colleagues can be bothered to check their statistics we can only conclude they are insincere when they say they are motivated by concern for the welfare of vulnerable women. You can't make good laws on false statistics. Do they want a good law that works to protect women, or a law to punish men for promiscuity? Maybe even they don't know the answer to that question.
As I said the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document has plenty of data. Some of it is new to me. Its full name is 'Prostitution in Sweden 2014 The extent and development of prostitution in Sweden', by Endrit Mujaj and Amanda Netscher (Länsstyrelsen 2015). 'Länsstyrelsen' means 'County Administrative Board' (of Stockholm).
They make it clear - as did Dodillet and Östergren - the important difference between the number of men who pay for sex and the number who have paid at some time in their lives. They state that the second number can only change slowly and is therefore of much less importance in assessing changes in demand. They call the first number 'incidence' and the second number 'prevalence'.
When Sarah Champion said in the House of Commons that "The most recent studies of prevalence rates found that 0.8% of men in Sweden had paid for sex in the previous 12 months" she has failed to understand that this figure is not the prevalence rate, it is the incidence rate. There is an important technical difference between these two words that she doesn't comprehend. They made the same mistake in their document 'Behind Closed Doors'.
I already knew that there was a drop in the number of men who reported that they had paid for sex at some time in their lives (prevalence) from 13% (actually 12.7%) in 1996 to 8% (actually 7.6%) in 2008. I didn't know that the 1996 survey was an interview study whereas the 2008 survey was a questionnaire. That seems relevant to me: you have to compare like with like.
I also knew that the figure for 2014 was 7.5%. Not much of a decrease. I didn't know the figure for the 2011 survey. Turns out that between 2008 and 2011 there was an INCREASE from 7.6% to 10.2%. No wonder you can't find that in the other documents: they don't want you to know about THAT.
I didn't know that there are figures for people who SELL sex, not just for those who BUY it. In 1996 it was 0.4%, then it went UP to 1.2% in 2008. A big increase. They kept that one quiet too. Figures for 2011 and 2014 were 0.7%. A decrease - but not to below the figure for 1996. So in surveys more people reported that they have sold sex in 2014 than before the sex buyer law.
The key statistics are the number of men who pay for sex (have paid in the previous year), the number of men who have paid at some time in their lives, and the number of people who have sold sex at some time in their lives. All these statistics show an increase at some point after 1999 when the sex buyer law was enacted in Sweden. There was then a drop sometime after the 2008 financial crisis when men had less disposable income. Not much of an endorsement of the Nordic model.
All the key metrics of demand from the surveys show an increase after 1999 except one. Active sex buyers: 1.3% to 1.8%. People who have sold sex: 0.4% to 1.2%. Women who have sold sex: 0.3% to 1.1%. These are the figures from the 1996 and 2008 surveys (Länsstyrelsen 2015). The only one that didn't is men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives (the only one of these Walby uses). That did however increase after 2008, another thing she doesn't tell us.
Add to that young women and schoolgirls who have sold sex increased from 1% in 2003 to between 1.2% and 4.6% in 2009. Syvia Walby et al must know all this because they referred to the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document in their 2016 document. Just as she knows that criminologists at Stockholm University have said that her figures are statistically impossible. What a dishonest and unprofessional way of conducting oneself.
I have also read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017) which has much information that seems to contradict Sylvia Walby's report and similar reports. It says that street prostitution has decreased considerably in the past 10-15 years in Scotland. Without criminalising men who pay for sex. It says that many former street based sex workers have probably been dispersed either indoors or to less visible outdoor areas. It says that foreign women don't work on the street. That means that any reduction in street based sex work cannot be taken to mean a reduction in trafficking.
 |
| This is the picture that is used on the Walby et al report. They obviously feel that they are freeing captives instead of making women's lives more difficult and dangerous for no good reason. |
- It is not true that the proportion of men who reported paying for sex decreased substantially: the number of active sex buyers increased. The figures Walby uses are for men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives: criminologists have pointed out that they cannot be correct, and they increased again after the drop.
- It is not true that even the critics acknowledge that there are fewer customers: Dodillet and Östergren 2011 and Levy and Jakobsson 2014 do not say that.
- It is not true that Länsstyrelsen 2015 says that the 0.8% figure for active sex buyers in the most recent survey is the lowest in Europe: the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document does not say that.
- What the Länsstyrelsen 2015 document does say is that active sex buyers increased from 1.3% in 1996 to 1.8% in 2008, men who have bought sex increased from 7.6% in 2008 to 10.2% in 2011, people who have sold sex increased from 0.4% in 1996 to 1.2% in 2008, women who have sold sex increased from 0.3% in 1996 to 1.1% in 2008. It also says that young women and schoolgirls who have sold sex increased from 1% in 2003 to somewhere between 1.2% and 4.6% in 2009. None of this crucial information is there in her document. Walby conceals figures which do not support her ideology.
| year | active sex buyers | bought sex at some time | sold sex at some time | type of study |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 1.3 | 12.7 (13) | 0.4 | interviews |
| 2008 | 1.8 | 7.6 (8) | 1.2 | questionnaire |
| 2011 | 1.2 | 10.2* | 0.7 | questionnaire |
| 2014 | 0.8 | 7.5 | 0.7 | online questionnaire |
I have put lots of new information here.
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