This page is about how the Nordic model is going in Ireland both North and South. The Nordic model - which punishes men who pay for sex - was introduced first in Sweden, then in a number of countries, then in Northern Ireland (in 2015) and the Irish Republic (in 2017). If it is seen to be a success in Ireland then more people will support its implementation in Britain.
There are two reports which can tell us how the Nordic model is going in Ireland. For Northern Ireland we have A Review of the Criminalisation of Paying for Sexual Services in Northern Ireland by the School of Law at Queen's University, Belfast (2019). For the Republic we have The Implementation of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, Part IV – An Interim Review by Dr Geoffrey Shannon (2020).
A number of questions need to be answered. Has it reduced demand? Have sex workers really been decriminalised? Has money been spent to help women (and men) exit prostitution? Has the number of murders of sex workers decreased? Has injury to sex workers decreased? Coercion? How many men have been arrested?
Another important question often ignored is the independence of sex workers. Does a change in law make women more reliant on pimps? It is widely recognized that the 1993 law in the Irish Republic which restricted the activity of sex workers drove women into the hands of pimps.
We should also know who gets arrested, whether they are male of female, and their age. If young women are arrested for pimping offenses when they choose to work together for safety then it is obvious that they are not being decriminalised. Evictions and deportations need to be looked at too. And soliciting/loitering.
In Sweden there were four surveys which could track changes in demand. They were in 1996, 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2017. The Nordic model came in in 1999. So we had a survey before and after the introduction of the law. That should have happened in Ireland too. It would have been good to have a survey every year, asking questions like 'have you paid for sex in the last 12 months?' (to count active sex buyers), 'have you ever paid for sex?' and 'have you ever sold sex?'. These were in the Swedish surveys but they should also have 'have you sold sex in the previous 12 months?'.
I have dealt with this issue in detail in other pages on my blog but briefly the only document coming out of Sweden that gives all the relevant data is the 2015 document by Mujaj and Netscher (Länsstyrelsen). It shows that all of the metrics of demand increased between 1996 and 2008 apart from one. The one that didn't increase is the proportion of men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives, but then that went back up in 2011. The proportion of Swedish men who are active sex buyers increased from 1.3% to 1.8% which is the relevant figure - not the widely reported drop from 13% to 8%.
There was a small survey done for Northern Ireland report but they also used data from Internet sites. What they found is that there was an increase in demand. It concludes: "That being the case, it may suggest that sex-purchase legislation is not particularly effective at reducing either the supply or demand for prostitution and in particular circumstances may actually increase both".
Arrests and convictions: "Furthermore, we noted in this report that there have been few arrests, prosecutions and convictions under Article 64A and the two convictions that have ensued have had nothing to do with either human trafficking for sexual exploitation or prostitution."
Violence: they did not find an increase in violence "However, what we did find was an increase in anti-social, nuisance and abusive behaviours directed to sex workers".
I can't find anywhere in the Irish Republic report to say whether demand has increased or decreased.
It does have something to say about money to help women exit prostitution: "Extra resources were promised and have not been delivered on – hence both State and NGO provider services are struggling to meet needs". Also: "Civic society organisations are critical of the insufficient resources provided by the Irish State for comprehensive exit supports for women affected by prostitution and sex trafficking."
It says women are still being arrested: "However, there is a concern that women who are not themselves organising prostitution or profiting from the exploitation of the prostitution of others may have, on occasion, been targeted under this law. The highest profile incidence of this happening was the conviction and the sentencing of two young Romanian women for brothel keeping, one of whom was pregnant".
There have been three convictions of men for buying sex under the 2017 law. None of the other questions have been answered.
The report mentions that Irish sex workers are rarely independent but shows no awareness that this is because of the 1993 law. There seems to have been an increase in coercion. The book Paid For by Rachel Moran gives one account of prostitution in Ireland and the book Slave by Anna gives a different account from a later period. There are also the three studies done by Ann Marie O'Connor and her colleagues. They all seem to show an increase in violence.
It is wrong for people to say that it is in the nature of prostitution that woman are not independent. They have created that situation. They are the ones that are the enablers of pimps, not people who want decriminalisation. When they have brought in laws by using false statistics that is disgraceful. 127 sex workers murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation? That's what Jim Wells said in the Northern Ireland Assembly. 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide? That's what Ruhama said but they have given a false account of the research of Ann Marie O'Connor and her colleagues.
Rachel Moran has used both of these false statistics. She used the first on national radio and the second in her book. Rachel Moran said that there is a Ruhama report that says that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide and 25% have been diagnosed with depression. In one sense she was correct, there used to be a pdf file that said this but it seems to have been withdrawn. Just as well I have a copy. Below I have reproduced the first page.
If you take a look at the O'Connor 1994 study you will find that it says nothing about suicide or depression. You can find the statistics in another of O'Connor's reports but it is not about Irish prostitutes in general but a small group of street-based drug addicted sex workers in Dublin. O'Connor and her colleagues were eager to point out that these women were not representative of sex workers in general. They also detailed the stress factors in these women's lives, not only street prostitution but drugs and having to deal with arrests and convictions.
So Ruhama are hiding the evidence for the reality of prostitution in Ireland. They hid the true statistic by referring people to the wrong study. Now they seem to be hiding their lies by withdrawing the pdf file so that no one can see it.
There are two other reports from the Irish Republic. One of them is Shifting the burden of criminality (2020) by Dr Monica O'Connor and Ruth Breslin of SERP. SERP is The Sexual Exploitation Research Programme, part of University College Dublin. Ruth Breslin worked for Ruhama so I see this as the words of Ruhama. The other one is Sex worker lives under the law (2020) by Dr Kathryn McGarry and Dr Paul Ryan of Maynooth University for HIV Ireland.
The SERP report makes no claims that demand has reduced since the introduction of the 2017 law. It says there was an Irish committee that went to Sweden: "Members of the Committee travelled to Sweden where they found the evidence ‘compelling’ in relation to the reduction in the size of the prostitution trade; the effectiveness of using the criminal law to tackle demand for prostitution and in reducing trafficking; the provision of extensive services to women in prostitution; and in particular, the normative, declarative and deterrent effects of the law in relation to gender equality and sexuality". They don't tell us what this evidence is.
As I have said elsewhere on this blog the evidence is the opposite of compelling. The SERP report makes great use of Sylvia Walby's 2016 report which is biased. They compare estimates of the number of prostitutes in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany (page 26). This doesn't say anything though about increases or decreases in numbers due to changes in legislation, which is the point.
In Sylvia Walby's report she states that the 0.8% figure for the proportion of Swedish men who are active sex buyers in 2014 is the lowest in Europe. That is a lie. She gives a reference for this figure, from the Länsstyrelsen 2015 report, but the Länsstyrelsen report does not say that. It does say though that active sex buyers increased from 1.3% in 1996 to 1.8% in 2008 (the new law was introduced in 1999). Only after 2008 (after the financial crisis) did it decrease.
They go on to discuss the situation in New Zealand. They don't say that things have got worse since decriminalisation there. They do point out that 'there is no complete decriminalisation'. This is to misunderstand what decriminalisation means: it has never meant that child prostitution, trafficking and pimping should be legal. Coercion will be always be illegal.
They offer no evidence that the Nordic model reduces demand, either in Sweden or now in Ireland. Instead they discuss at length the harms done to some women in prostitution in Ireland, without discussing the proportion of women in prostitution who suffer these harms, whether the harms have increased or decreased, or the damaging effects of the 1993 change in law.
They say that the number of 'recorded incidents' of brothel keeping, soliciting/loitering and living off immoral earnings has decreased in Ireland. That is true, but it has been happening since 2012, so the 2017 law can take no credit for that. Why they detail 'recorded incidents' (whatever they are) and not arrests or convictions they don't say. They cannot tell us if these figures have gone down because the police are more caring about sex workers, or because sex workers are now too scared to work together, or because people have learned to avoid police detection.
On page 30 of the Sex worker lives under the law report a sex worker called Lee said this: "The police are cracking down, they aren’t even pretending that enforcing this law is something that is about sex workers as victims, and protecting women, they’re not even pretending. They’re doubling down on the brothel-keeping law in just sweeping rates."
On page 94 of the Shifting the burden of criminality report they say this about a Bolivian sex worker: "She was upset as Gardaí had raided her apartment. They took €2,000, sim cards and her college papers for investigation. When WHS [Women’s Health Service] staff subsequently contacted her to ask if she needed any further support with this matter she emailed back to say that she is trying to resolve her own problems because she cannot trust anybody, especially the police, as they took her money and she believes they are corrupt. WHS staff determined that the Gardaí had confiscated a wide range of the woman’s belongings – including the receipt for payment of her college fees, health insurance documentation, photographs, personal telephone numbers and payslips. The woman contacted Gardaí to ask for her belongings to be returned – but she was told an investigation was ongoing. She sought a solicitor’s advice and engaged their services in securing the return of her property".
In Shon Faye's book The Transgender Issue she states that "Eviction of sex workers is now common" in Ireland. She quotes sex worker and activist Adeline Berry:-
"When it comes to homes, even when a worker is working by herself, the police will then contact the landlord and threaten him with third party law. So he's forced to evict her, which happened to me and it's happened to other workers."
If you are an Irish landlord and you have been contacted by the Gardaí putting pressure on you to evict a tenant please contact me. I would like to know precisely how they do it.
So the Gardaí (police) are still punishing women, when the women are supposed to have been decriminalised, and this is a woman who needed money for college. Also if her phone is taken she may have lost her regular clients, meaning she has to look for clients again. And stolen her money.
Dr Geoffrey Shannon in his 2020 report stated: "To date, there have been a total of four outcomes of criminal proceedings against buyers (three convictions and one where the Probation of Offenders Act was applied). There are 13 persons pending prosecution as per the latest official data available – provided by An Garda Síochána in July 2019." How this relates to the ten 'recorded incidents' in 2018 and the 92 'recorded incidents' in 2019 from the Shifting the burden of criminality report is impossible to work out. Yet they regard these incidents as evidence of success for the new law.
This newspaper article states "Since April 2017, it has been illegal to buy sexual services from a prostitute and figures released by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) under Freedom of Information, show that while there were no related prosecutions in 2017, seven were instigated in 2018, 29 in 2019 and 23 last year [2020]". Why can't they just say that? These are prosecutions, not convictions. How many convictions have there been? Not many I'm sure.
The Sex worker lives under the law report says that women are being harmed by the 2017 law in Ireland. According to Det Supt Derek Maguire the sex industry is booming despite the pandemic, making millions of euros for thugs each year. He said this in a newspaper article earlier this year. How is this possible, years after the sex buyers ban? Demand has not decreased, instead it is increasingly being controlled by violent criminals. This is the 1993 law change all over again.
There is another report from Northern Ireland done by the Department of Justice. It just seems to confirm what the official report says.
This BBC article from January 2024 says that there has been One conviction under NI 'paying for sex' law.
There is supposed to have been a review of the paying for sex law in the Irish Republic in 2024. I would very much like to see it when it comes out. It has been delayed by years. There have been reviews already, the main one being the Dr Geoffrey Shannon report.
Dr Brooke Magnanti has a lot to say in her book Sex Lies & Statistics. Although there has been few men prosecuted for paying for sex there have been many women prosecuted under the Nordic model.
ICI's track record, and that of the associated charity Ruhama, does not point to major success. A July 2011 report, Who are Ireland's brothel keepers? detailed arrests from 2008 to 2011. According to their own statistics, 91% of the people convicted were sex workers, not owners or managers of brothels who have others working for them. Data collected by Uglymugs IE, a sex worker-led group, found the stats from 2008 to 2013 confirmed this was not unusual. 92.9% of all the people arrested under Ireland's laws - meant to punish pimps, traffickers, and all the other baddies - end up imprisoning sex workers themselves.
So much for 'shifting the burden of criminality'. And bear in mind that Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald doubled the penalties for brothel keeping ahead of the introduction of the Nordic model. See below.
EVIDENCE SUBMITTED TO PARLIAMENT
- It bears stating that new legal provisions criminalising the clients of sex workers do not automatically remove all, or even any, burden of criminalisation from sex workers themselves. Nevertheless, proposed or actual legal changes in several countries have been misleadingly described by their proponents as 'shifting the burden'. To take a few examples:
- Section 15 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act 2015 (Northern Ireland) criminalises the purchase of sex and has been lauded as “decriminalizing prostituted individuals”[4]. However, under the terms of the legislation, street sex workers are newly subjected to an offence under the Public Order Act 1994 if they are “acting in a manner which consists of loitering in a public place for the purpose of offering his or her services as a prostitute”. So a Bill that claims to ‘shift the burden’ has in fact increased the criminal burden on street-based sex workers.
- The Swedish Sex Purchase Act 1999 and the Norwegian Sex Purchase Law 2008 criminalise not only clients but also landlords who knowingly rent to sex workers. In many cases, the police have intentionally notified sex workers’ landlords, thus essentially exploiting this provision to force evictions. As documented by Amnesty International[5], this practice has been especially systematic in Norway, where it has been formalised as “Operation Homeless”. The Swedish authorities have systematically deported both trafficking victims and voluntary migrant sex workers, in at least one case stating on a deportation order that the deportee “has not supported herself in an honest manner”.[6] Moreover, in order to obtain evidence against clients, the police routinely harass sex workers and conduct raids on their premises.
- When the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was being debated in Parliament, Fiona Mactaggart MP proposed an amendment that would have criminalised the purchase of sex, and was described as 'shifting the burden', but included no provisions for removing criminal sanctions from sex workers themselves.
MORE EVIDENCE SUBMITTED TO PARLIAMENT
Northern Ireland
66.Northern Ireland has become the first part of the UK to pass legislation making the purchasing of sex illegal. Under section 15 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, it is an offence to obtain sexual services in exchange for payment, either by paying, or promising to pay, any person directly, or through a third party. The legislation came into effect on 1 June 2015. However, Sex Worker Open University pointed out that, under the terms of the legislation, street sex workers are newly subject to an offence under the Public Order Act 1994 if they are “acting in a manner which consists of loitering in a public place for the purpose of offering his or her services as a prostitute”, and so “a Bill that claims to ‘shift the burden’ has in fact increased the criminal burden on street-based sex workers”.74
There is one final thing I want to deal with. When I was reading the Northern Ireland report I came across the idea that in Sweden prostitution or street prostitution 'virtually disappeared' and that there was a decrease in the total number of sex workers from between 2,500 and 3,000 to 650. It is true that street prostitution disappeared after the 1999 law. Then, according to National Board of Health and Welfare, it gradually returned till in 2007 in Stockholm two thirds of the original number were back. Bear in mind that many will be on the streets at 2 am instead of 2 pm, in less visible outdoor places or indoors. The 2,500 to 3,000 figure seems to be accurate but the 650 figure is wrong. Charlotta Holmström, who estimated the 650 figure, had no confidence in it (according to the 2010 Skarhed report).
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