increased violence

I have written that the 127 statistic is false. 127 prostitutes were murdered in the Netherlands since legalization there, so some people say (bigots like Jim Wells). It turns out that most of these women were murdered before legalization not after. It looks as if legalization has cut the rate of murder of prostitutes in the Netherlands. The data is not good so I wouldn't like to draw this conclusion.

There is better data for the amount of violence that sex workers face in Norway. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ by Ulla Bjørndahl gives statistics, the only problem being that there are two sets of statistics which are not so easy to compare. There are statistics for three years after the Nordic model was introduced in Norway, and also statistics for before. The before statistics are not for three years though, they are for the whole lifetime of the sex worker.

That makes it difficult to compare, unless you have a reasonable estimate of the number of years the average prostitute spends as a prostitute. Melissa Farley says "we calculated the average length of time in prostitution to be 9 years across countries". Many people believe what Melissa Farley has written blindly, but I don't think they want to believe this.

If you feed this 9 year figure into the statistics then it is clear that violence in all categories has increased for sex workers in Norway since the introduction of the Nordic model. The Nordic model harms women.

If you decide that 9 years is too long a period, even if you put in 6 years it is still true that violence has increased in all categories except one - pinching - which is the least serious of the categories.

Staying with the subject of Norway, there was a report by Steinar Strøm, Ingeborg Rasmussen, Sidsel Sverdup and Vibeke Wøien Hansen called Normative Findings from the Evaluation Report of the Norwegian Sex Buying Act. Curiously, I could only find a full copy of this report on the Vatican website. Below is the most important paragraph.

This makes it difficult to provide a correct estimate of the size of the market. Still, according to informants in this branch of the prostitution market, prices are lower now than before the introduction of the prohibition, which indicates lower demand. More travelling both across borders and within the country, more advertising and somewhat lower prices, show that competition has become tougher after the law was implemented, and demand is lower. It was reported that prostitutes in indoor market prostitution have to work harder now in order to secure 2008 income levels.

Just because prices are lower it doesn't mean that less prostitution is going on in Norway. When we say 'lower demand' that should mean that there are fewer sex sessions occurring within prostitution. It shouldn't mean that men don't want to pay so much. A sex worker can drop her prices to get the same number of customers that she had before. Or she may need more customers to get the money she needs.

The above paragraph does not show that less paid-for sex happens. If it did it would mean that there might be less violence to women. What it does show is that women in prostitution are suffering. They don't seem to care about that though. That's not part of their calculation.