This page is a response to the report The Limits of Consent by The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
The main author of the report is Fiona Bruce MP.
At least this report is willing to discuss two very important issues. One is the fact that many women want to make themselves safe by working together and can then be convicted of brothel keeping. This happens in Britain, but also in all Nordic model countries: Ireland doubled the penalties when the Nordic model was introduced. The irony is that the Nordic model was supposed to decriminalise sex workers. The other issue is, can sex work be called work?
The Commission recognise that although most women enter prostitution because they need the money, it is also true that most people do their jobs because they need the money. They call this 'indirect coercion'. They don't try to make out that the two forms of indirect coercion are different because prostitutes have no control over what happens to them and can be forced to do things that they hate.
Instead, they argue that society and the law treat prostitution differently, therefore they are different. Sex is about 'mutual intimacy' and work is about payment: that's how society sees it so that's the way it's got to be. That and unspecified health risks and 'methodological reservations'. I have dealt with these issues below.
The phrase 'mutual intimacy' is important here. The Commission says 'society understands sexual intercourse as an expression of mutual intimacy'. I can understand that to Fiona Bruce and her friends in the Evangelical Alliance it must seem that way. Many would like to add 'between a man and a woman' to the end of that sentence. The Commission doesn't define the word 'intimacy'. It can't mean physical intimacy because obviously that is involved in any sex act, paid for or otherwise. It must mean emotional intimacy. So that means you have to be in love, or it must be part of a long-term relationship.
There are some people who think that sex should just be for making babies. Some people think it should be just for married (heterosexual) people. Some people think that it should be in the context of a long-term relationship. Some people think that if you meet a stranger on a Friday or Saturday night or on holiday it's acceptable, even if you don't see them again. It can be just for fun.
Which type of person is most common in Britain today? I think it is probably the last type. If sex can be for fun then it can be purchased, just like any other type of fun. For most people massage can be an expression of mutual intimacy or it can be fun: for most people it does not involve an economic transaction but for some people it does. Sex doesn't have to be one thing and it doesn't have to conform to what 'society understands' as normal.
The Commission says that 'the law treats sexual consent differently, and hands down severe criminal penalties for those who fail to obtain it'. I don't think that's true. If I start talking to a woman in a park and offer her money to come to my flat and do my housework that's one thing. If I was to kidnap her and force her to do work for me there would be severe penalties. False imprisonment and modern slavery are phrases that come to mind.
If I start talking to a woman in a park and offer her money to come to my flat and have sex that's one thing. If I were to drag her off the street and force her to have sex there would be severe penalties. That would be rape. So there are severe penalties for forcing people to work for you. Slavery is rightly considered one of the worst evils. And there are severe penalties for rape. So how can you say the law treats consent to have sex with someone differently from consent to work for someone? Obviously it's not exactly the same, but it's not substantially different.
The Commission says that work within the labour market is ordinarily understood as remunerated activity for a purpose (different from how sex is 'ordinarily understood'). Obviously, if it is within the labour market then it is remunerated. That's what 'within the labour market' means. There are many activities though which may or may not be within the labour market and remunerated. Housework is one. Massage is another. Playing a musical instrument is another.
The Commission says 'Society clearly has a completely different understanding of the ordinary purposes of sex and ordinary forms of labour'. Society has an understanding that housework is something that somebody does for themselves or for their family - without payment. It it not ordinarily understood as a human activity undertaken for gain. It doesn't have to be that way though, most people understand and accept that, and views about housework can change.
The Commission says 'A society which views sex as an act of mutual intimacy requiring free consent cannot simultaneously be a society in which consent is sold'. I don't believe society views sex as always an act of mutual intimacy. What does 'free consent' mean? She doesn't mean that women should be free to consent to payment for sex: she wants to have that freedom taken away from them. She thinks that if you need the money then you've been forced.
To reach that conclusion, you have to accept that consent to being paid for sex is substantially different from consent to be paid for housework, massage or playing a musical instrument. Or you think that 'prostitution involves wholly incomparable internal and external exposure of the body with attendant risks to mental and physical health' which doesn't make sense to me.
Is it talking about STDs? Is it talking about violence? Interviews with drug-addicted street-based sex workers show that one of their greatest stresses is imprisonment. They get imprisoned or fined and so do members of their families. Trying to avoid arrest means they engage in more risky behaviour and that's the main reason why they end up traumatised.
The Commission says that prostitution in general seems to affect mental health. She refers us to a 2017 Scottish Government report. I am familiar with one 2017 Scottish Government report that has little or nothing to say about mental health. There is another one that I haven't read yet. I will get round to reading it, but I bet that it only talks about drug-addicted street-based sex workers.
I have read Evidence Assessment of the Impacts of the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex: A Review (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research Scottish Government, 2017) but I haven't read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017). Neither have I yet read the other reference for mental health issues Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality: Theory, Research and Policy (Ashgate, 2012). One of the contributors is Melissa Farley who is known for work with drug addicts then pretending that it applies to all sex workers.
In Sweden very little money has been spent trying to help prostitutes. They discourage outreach work such as handing out condoms. The number of violent attacks on sex workers has increased by 50% in Ireland since the Nordic model came in. That's not going to help their mental health.
The Commission says that the first of the Scottish Government 2017 reports says that evidence of worsening safety for Swedish sex workers is based on small sample sizes. The implication is that the evidence can therefore be discounted. It does say that, but in Sylvia Walby's 2016 report it says that Jakobsson’s study, which was part of a larger internet-based survey with HIV Sweden, is an exception to studies on this subject that have small sample sizes. So maybe they ought to look more carefully for evidence.
The Commission says that fewer prostitutes are murdered in Nordic model countries, but there is no Nordic model country where murder rates have dropped. The last sex worker to be murdered in Sweden was in the 1980s, many years before the introduction of the law that criminalises punters in 1999.
An example given in the report of when circumstances can have a coercive effect is 'an Indian girl who elects to enter prostitution to help her unwell mother feed their children'. If you 'end demand' then that option is taken away and children can starve. Is that what you want? Isn't that a bit coercive? Telling an Indian girl that her family must starve when there are other options available?
Let's say that the Indian girl was offered a job as a maid with a nearby family. If she did that is it not equally true that circumstances have had a coercive effect? We know that there is modern slavery within domestic service. Let's say that she has two options: she can work for a local family for 10 hours a day or for the same money have sex with a man. And have time to look after the kids. You want to force her to do something because of your ideas of 'mutual intimacy'.
The best way to solve this problem would be to have good social security. If you really believe that prostitution derives from destitution then you would believe that if it would disappear all by itself with adequate social security. Why not campaign for better social security? There is no better social security than in Sweden - but there are many women do it. There are also many women in other parts of the world who are destitute who don't become prostitutes.
In Britain a woman might say that she's unwilling to live on social security and wants to become an escort. Is that an example of indirect coercion? She could continue on social security as most women in her situation will and as nearly all men have to. It's not so terrible to have to live on benefits. It's not so terrible to be just about managing, as millions do. To take away an alternative is coercive.
Especially if she's using the money to finance education or training. Or an internship. Or is saving money to start a business or a deposit for a mortgage. Or wants to continue to work in a job that she loves but is poorly paid. In our 20s we set ourselves up for life. Many of the young women in Ireland - mostly non-nationals - who have been convicted of brothel keeping have tried to set themselves up for life and instead have had their lives ruined.
Another example given is of a woman who did sex work to avoid bankruptcy. Becoming bankrupt isn't the worst thing that can happen to someone. It happens to lots of people every day. You might lose your home and your business, but most people don't own their own homes or have businesses. So you have to work for a wage and rent for the rest of your life? Join the rest of the country.
Or use the other option, before Fiona Bruce takes it away from you. Just remember that, whatever Rachel Moran says, you don't have to let anyone put his penis up your anus. You just don't have the right to work with other women for safety. Still, not as bad as when they bring in the Nordic model, then they'll double the sentence for working together for safety, like they've just done in Ireland. And all your best customers disappear: then maybe you will have to let men put their penises up your anus to keep your home and business, unlike Rachel Moran who never did that.
Occasionally there will be circumstances so serious that you have to say the woman was forced, as in the hypothetical example of the Indian girl. In these cases you would not want to remove the only solution. We can't make laws for what happens in India; they don't have adequate social security, we do.
Most cases though are not so serious, as in the case of the respondent who wanted to avoid bankruptcy. To say that in these cases they are forced isn't true, they are choosing one option, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them. If this respondent thinks prostitution should have been banned, then she thinks that she should have become bankrupt: if she thinks that then why didn't she just let herself become bankrupt and let other people decide for themselves what they want to do.
If you believe that women don't have a choice then why are you putting them in prison? Why not free imprisoned sex workers and use the money saved for social security? The Commission recommends reviewing current guidance about brothel-keeping. It doesn't conclude that women in their 20s definitely should not go to prison for brothel-keeping. It does conclude that punters should be punished. So we can tell their priorities. They are determined to punish men, but aren't too bothered about imprisoning women. They'll find some excuse for continuing to jail women, just as they did in Ireland.
One thing that I like about this report is that they use the word 'prohibition' instead of 'abolition'. Radical Feminists tend to like to use the word 'abolition'. Abolition sounds like freeing slaves in America whereas prohibition sounds like the futile attempt to ban alcohol. Or ban drugs.
One way to define different policies I found here is this: "Abolitionism seeks to ban prostitution but not to criminalise (condemn) the prostitute; prohibitionism seeks to ban prostitution and to criminalise all parties involved including the prostitute; and regulationism seeks to control and regulate prostitution activities but does not condemn the prostitute (Outshoorn, 2006: 6–8)".
If you follow this definition the abolitionists are not genuinely abolitionists because despite what they say they think young women should continue to be convicted for brothel keeping. The leaders of that movement that is; not their gullible followers who don't really understand what's happening. So from now on I will use the word prohibitionist.
The Commission also distinguish between legalisation and decriminalisation. Radical Feminists would prefer people to think that they are much the same thing whereas they are very different. Decriminalisation avoids many of the problems of legalisation. It means don't arrest women who work together.
Another thing that the Radical Feminists are not going to like so much about this report is that it doesn't say that pimps and traffickers force women into prostitution through kidnapping and violence. It doesn't say that prostitutes keep little or none of the money that is paid by punters.
Another example they give of coercion is drug addiction. Do you think addiction is going to go away just because you imprison or fine their clients? They will shoplift, which they also do anyway, and then they will go to prison even though I suppose they didn't have a choice but to break the law either. They will continue to sell sex. Demand isn't going to go down, it's only the lies of the prohibitionists who say that it did in Sweden before the 2008 financial crisis. I've written another page all about that.
The principle of consent does need to be safeguarded. It needs to be protected from evangelicals such as Fiona Bruce who think they have hit on a neat way of trying to outlaw some of the sex that they see around them that lacks 'mutual intimacy'.
UPDATE: I have now read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017). I can see that The Limits of Consent has twisted the meaning of part of a paragraph to do with risks to general and mental health.
If you read the whole paragraph on page 55 of the Scottish Government report it is quite clear that what it is saying is that opinion is divided on whether the risks derive from prostitution itself or from the legal and social factors associated with prostitution. The first sentence is "In relation to risk, a number of respondents from both campaigning organisations and the third sector raised the issue of how the context in which sex work is undertaken increases or decreases levels of risk". The next sentence is about the effect of criminalising women for working together for safety.
This Scottish Government report has much information new to me. It says that the police say that 'prostitution in public settings had reduced considerably in the last 10-15 years'. The report was published in 2016 so that means that since about 2001 street prostitution has decreased considerably. When you think that the one great triumph of the 1999 Swedish law was a reduction in street prostitution, it looks as if Scotland has achieved the same but without criminalising men who pay for sex.
So it looks as if either street prostitution would have decreased all by itself, or the Scots have had equally effective policies. Either way, criminalising men who pay for sex can't be regarded as achieving anything. It would be interesting if there was a reduction in the number of street sex workers by 50%. The Scottish report can't give us that statistic. It does say however that in the last 10 years the number of reported crimes associated with prostitution decreased by 49%.
Unlike the Swedes, the Scots are quite happy to accept that this reduction in street prostitution could be because the women have been displaced into off-street locations. "The people who used to work "on-street" therefore may now be working "offstreet" and setting up meetings online or via mobile phone." "Of the women supported by the specialist service, the majority were identified as being street-based in earlier years and then later off-street, organised by mobile phone." They don't claim an overall reduction in prostitution.
Unlike the Swedes, the Scots are quite happy to accept that this apparent reduction could be partly because street sex workers have become more dispersed and therefore difficult to count. "... there may have been a degree of dispersal or shift in the location of on-street prostitution activity resulting in lower visibility".
They estimate that 90% of prostitutes work indoors. Which means that even if you do reduce street prostitution it's not as significant as you might think, only affecting a fraction of sex workers. And only displacing them indoors (or to 'areas such as parks/car parks').
Also, foreign women work indoors, it says. So that means that if you think a reduction in street prostitution means a reduction in trafficking then you are wrong. If the Swedish police say there has been a reduction in trafficking they are guessing and they are wrong. The Scottish police are more honest: they don't have a ideology to defend.
The Limits of Consent is happy to distort part of a paragraph from the Scottish Government report, but then ignore all the useful information it has. One of the strange things about The Limits of Consent is that they don't mention the purported drop in the number of street sex workers in Sweden (or Scotland). It looks as though they think that the reduction of 50% is for all sex workers: they've just got that wrong. Just like they and most Swedish reports have got it wrong that they haven't been displaced indoors or to less visible outdoor areas. The Limits of Consent is not only biased, it is amateurish.
The main author of the report is Fiona Bruce MP.
At least this report is willing to discuss two very important issues. One is the fact that many women want to make themselves safe by working together and can then be convicted of brothel keeping. This happens in Britain, but also in all Nordic model countries: Ireland doubled the penalties when the Nordic model was introduced. The irony is that the Nordic model was supposed to decriminalise sex workers. The other issue is, can sex work be called work?
The Commission recognise that although most women enter prostitution because they need the money, it is also true that most people do their jobs because they need the money. They call this 'indirect coercion'. They don't try to make out that the two forms of indirect coercion are different because prostitutes have no control over what happens to them and can be forced to do things that they hate.
Instead, they argue that society and the law treat prostitution differently, therefore they are different. Sex is about 'mutual intimacy' and work is about payment: that's how society sees it so that's the way it's got to be. That and unspecified health risks and 'methodological reservations'. I have dealt with these issues below.
The phrase 'mutual intimacy' is important here. The Commission says 'society understands sexual intercourse as an expression of mutual intimacy'. I can understand that to Fiona Bruce and her friends in the Evangelical Alliance it must seem that way. Many would like to add 'between a man and a woman' to the end of that sentence. The Commission doesn't define the word 'intimacy'. It can't mean physical intimacy because obviously that is involved in any sex act, paid for or otherwise. It must mean emotional intimacy. So that means you have to be in love, or it must be part of a long-term relationship.
There are some people who think that sex should just be for making babies. Some people think it should be just for married (heterosexual) people. Some people think that it should be in the context of a long-term relationship. Some people think that if you meet a stranger on a Friday or Saturday night or on holiday it's acceptable, even if you don't see them again. It can be just for fun.
Which type of person is most common in Britain today? I think it is probably the last type. If sex can be for fun then it can be purchased, just like any other type of fun. For most people massage can be an expression of mutual intimacy or it can be fun: for most people it does not involve an economic transaction but for some people it does. Sex doesn't have to be one thing and it doesn't have to conform to what 'society understands' as normal.
The Commission says that 'the law treats sexual consent differently, and hands down severe criminal penalties for those who fail to obtain it'. I don't think that's true. If I start talking to a woman in a park and offer her money to come to my flat and do my housework that's one thing. If I was to kidnap her and force her to do work for me there would be severe penalties. False imprisonment and modern slavery are phrases that come to mind.
If I start talking to a woman in a park and offer her money to come to my flat and have sex that's one thing. If I were to drag her off the street and force her to have sex there would be severe penalties. That would be rape. So there are severe penalties for forcing people to work for you. Slavery is rightly considered one of the worst evils. And there are severe penalties for rape. So how can you say the law treats consent to have sex with someone differently from consent to work for someone? Obviously it's not exactly the same, but it's not substantially different.
The Commission says that work within the labour market is ordinarily understood as remunerated activity for a purpose (different from how sex is 'ordinarily understood'). Obviously, if it is within the labour market then it is remunerated. That's what 'within the labour market' means. There are many activities though which may or may not be within the labour market and remunerated. Housework is one. Massage is another. Playing a musical instrument is another.
The Commission says 'Society clearly has a completely different understanding of the ordinary purposes of sex and ordinary forms of labour'. Society has an understanding that housework is something that somebody does for themselves or for their family - without payment. It it not ordinarily understood as a human activity undertaken for gain. It doesn't have to be that way though, most people understand and accept that, and views about housework can change.
The Commission says 'A society which views sex as an act of mutual intimacy requiring free consent cannot simultaneously be a society in which consent is sold'. I don't believe society views sex as always an act of mutual intimacy. What does 'free consent' mean? She doesn't mean that women should be free to consent to payment for sex: she wants to have that freedom taken away from them. She thinks that if you need the money then you've been forced.
To reach that conclusion, you have to accept that consent to being paid for sex is substantially different from consent to be paid for housework, massage or playing a musical instrument. Or you think that 'prostitution involves wholly incomparable internal and external exposure of the body with attendant risks to mental and physical health' which doesn't make sense to me.
Is it talking about STDs? Is it talking about violence? Interviews with drug-addicted street-based sex workers show that one of their greatest stresses is imprisonment. They get imprisoned or fined and so do members of their families. Trying to avoid arrest means they engage in more risky behaviour and that's the main reason why they end up traumatised.
"Another dimension to the drugs issue for women is dealing with the reality of prison sentences for themselves, their partners, their siblings or their adult children. Prison sentences for drug related offences severely cut across family networks and reduce still further levels of support for women." O’ Neill, M. and O Connor, A.M. (1999)The vast majority of sex workers who are not drug-addicted or street-based avoid STDs and can avoid violence when allowed to work together for safety. That's not allowed under the Nordic model.
The Commission says that prostitution in general seems to affect mental health. She refers us to a 2017 Scottish Government report. I am familiar with one 2017 Scottish Government report that has little or nothing to say about mental health. There is another one that I haven't read yet. I will get round to reading it, but I bet that it only talks about drug-addicted street-based sex workers.
I have read Evidence Assessment of the Impacts of the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex: A Review (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research Scottish Government, 2017) but I haven't read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017). Neither have I yet read the other reference for mental health issues Prostitution, Harm and Gender Inequality: Theory, Research and Policy (Ashgate, 2012). One of the contributors is Melissa Farley who is known for work with drug addicts then pretending that it applies to all sex workers.
In Sweden very little money has been spent trying to help prostitutes. They discourage outreach work such as handing out condoms. The number of violent attacks on sex workers has increased by 50% in Ireland since the Nordic model came in. That's not going to help their mental health.
The Commission says that the first of the Scottish Government 2017 reports says that evidence of worsening safety for Swedish sex workers is based on small sample sizes. The implication is that the evidence can therefore be discounted. It does say that, but in Sylvia Walby's 2016 report it says that Jakobsson’s study, which was part of a larger internet-based survey with HIV Sweden, is an exception to studies on this subject that have small sample sizes. So maybe they ought to look more carefully for evidence.
The Commission says that fewer prostitutes are murdered in Nordic model countries, but there is no Nordic model country where murder rates have dropped. The last sex worker to be murdered in Sweden was in the 1980s, many years before the introduction of the law that criminalises punters in 1999.
An example given in the report of when circumstances can have a coercive effect is 'an Indian girl who elects to enter prostitution to help her unwell mother feed their children'. If you 'end demand' then that option is taken away and children can starve. Is that what you want? Isn't that a bit coercive? Telling an Indian girl that her family must starve when there are other options available?
Let's say that the Indian girl was offered a job as a maid with a nearby family. If she did that is it not equally true that circumstances have had a coercive effect? We know that there is modern slavery within domestic service. Let's say that she has two options: she can work for a local family for 10 hours a day or for the same money have sex with a man. And have time to look after the kids. You want to force her to do something because of your ideas of 'mutual intimacy'.
The best way to solve this problem would be to have good social security. If you really believe that prostitution derives from destitution then you would believe that if it would disappear all by itself with adequate social security. Why not campaign for better social security? There is no better social security than in Sweden - but there are many women do it. There are also many women in other parts of the world who are destitute who don't become prostitutes.
In Britain a woman might say that she's unwilling to live on social security and wants to become an escort. Is that an example of indirect coercion? She could continue on social security as most women in her situation will and as nearly all men have to. It's not so terrible to have to live on benefits. It's not so terrible to be just about managing, as millions do. To take away an alternative is coercive.
Especially if she's using the money to finance education or training. Or an internship. Or is saving money to start a business or a deposit for a mortgage. Or wants to continue to work in a job that she loves but is poorly paid. In our 20s we set ourselves up for life. Many of the young women in Ireland - mostly non-nationals - who have been convicted of brothel keeping have tried to set themselves up for life and instead have had their lives ruined.
Another example given is of a woman who did sex work to avoid bankruptcy. Becoming bankrupt isn't the worst thing that can happen to someone. It happens to lots of people every day. You might lose your home and your business, but most people don't own their own homes or have businesses. So you have to work for a wage and rent for the rest of your life? Join the rest of the country.
Or use the other option, before Fiona Bruce takes it away from you. Just remember that, whatever Rachel Moran says, you don't have to let anyone put his penis up your anus. You just don't have the right to work with other women for safety. Still, not as bad as when they bring in the Nordic model, then they'll double the sentence for working together for safety, like they've just done in Ireland. And all your best customers disappear: then maybe you will have to let men put their penises up your anus to keep your home and business, unlike Rachel Moran who never did that.
Occasionally there will be circumstances so serious that you have to say the woman was forced, as in the hypothetical example of the Indian girl. In these cases you would not want to remove the only solution. We can't make laws for what happens in India; they don't have adequate social security, we do.
Most cases though are not so serious, as in the case of the respondent who wanted to avoid bankruptcy. To say that in these cases they are forced isn't true, they are choosing one option, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them. If this respondent thinks prostitution should have been banned, then she thinks that she should have become bankrupt: if she thinks that then why didn't she just let herself become bankrupt and let other people decide for themselves what they want to do.
If you believe that women don't have a choice then why are you putting them in prison? Why not free imprisoned sex workers and use the money saved for social security? The Commission recommends reviewing current guidance about brothel-keeping. It doesn't conclude that women in their 20s definitely should not go to prison for brothel-keeping. It does conclude that punters should be punished. So we can tell their priorities. They are determined to punish men, but aren't too bothered about imprisoning women. They'll find some excuse for continuing to jail women, just as they did in Ireland.
One thing that I like about this report is that they use the word 'prohibition' instead of 'abolition'. Radical Feminists tend to like to use the word 'abolition'. Abolition sounds like freeing slaves in America whereas prohibition sounds like the futile attempt to ban alcohol. Or ban drugs.
One way to define different policies I found here is this: "Abolitionism seeks to ban prostitution but not to criminalise (condemn) the prostitute; prohibitionism seeks to ban prostitution and to criminalise all parties involved including the prostitute; and regulationism seeks to control and regulate prostitution activities but does not condemn the prostitute (Outshoorn, 2006: 6–8)".
If you follow this definition the abolitionists are not genuinely abolitionists because despite what they say they think young women should continue to be convicted for brothel keeping. The leaders of that movement that is; not their gullible followers who don't really understand what's happening. So from now on I will use the word prohibitionist.
The Commission also distinguish between legalisation and decriminalisation. Radical Feminists would prefer people to think that they are much the same thing whereas they are very different. Decriminalisation avoids many of the problems of legalisation. It means don't arrest women who work together.
Another thing that the Radical Feminists are not going to like so much about this report is that it doesn't say that pimps and traffickers force women into prostitution through kidnapping and violence. It doesn't say that prostitutes keep little or none of the money that is paid by punters.
Another example they give of coercion is drug addiction. Do you think addiction is going to go away just because you imprison or fine their clients? They will shoplift, which they also do anyway, and then they will go to prison even though I suppose they didn't have a choice but to break the law either. They will continue to sell sex. Demand isn't going to go down, it's only the lies of the prohibitionists who say that it did in Sweden before the 2008 financial crisis. I've written another page all about that.
The principle of consent does need to be safeguarded. It needs to be protected from evangelicals such as Fiona Bruce who think they have hit on a neat way of trying to outlaw some of the sex that they see around them that lacks 'mutual intimacy'.
UPDATE: I have now read Scottish Government, Exploring available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland via practitioner-based interviews (2017). I can see that The Limits of Consent has twisted the meaning of part of a paragraph to do with risks to general and mental health.
If you read the whole paragraph on page 55 of the Scottish Government report it is quite clear that what it is saying is that opinion is divided on whether the risks derive from prostitution itself or from the legal and social factors associated with prostitution. The first sentence is "In relation to risk, a number of respondents from both campaigning organisations and the third sector raised the issue of how the context in which sex work is undertaken increases or decreases levels of risk". The next sentence is about the effect of criminalising women for working together for safety.
This Scottish Government report has much information new to me. It says that the police say that 'prostitution in public settings had reduced considerably in the last 10-15 years'. The report was published in 2016 so that means that since about 2001 street prostitution has decreased considerably. When you think that the one great triumph of the 1999 Swedish law was a reduction in street prostitution, it looks as if Scotland has achieved the same but without criminalising men who pay for sex.
So it looks as if either street prostitution would have decreased all by itself, or the Scots have had equally effective policies. Either way, criminalising men who pay for sex can't be regarded as achieving anything. It would be interesting if there was a reduction in the number of street sex workers by 50%. The Scottish report can't give us that statistic. It does say however that in the last 10 years the number of reported crimes associated with prostitution decreased by 49%.
Unlike the Swedes, the Scots are quite happy to accept that this reduction in street prostitution could be because the women have been displaced into off-street locations. "The people who used to work "on-street" therefore may now be working "offstreet" and setting up meetings online or via mobile phone." "Of the women supported by the specialist service, the majority were identified as being street-based in earlier years and then later off-street, organised by mobile phone." They don't claim an overall reduction in prostitution.
Unlike the Swedes, the Scots are quite happy to accept that this apparent reduction could be partly because street sex workers have become more dispersed and therefore difficult to count. "... there may have been a degree of dispersal or shift in the location of on-street prostitution activity resulting in lower visibility".
They estimate that 90% of prostitutes work indoors. Which means that even if you do reduce street prostitution it's not as significant as you might think, only affecting a fraction of sex workers. And only displacing them indoors (or to 'areas such as parks/car parks').
Also, foreign women work indoors, it says. So that means that if you think a reduction in street prostitution means a reduction in trafficking then you are wrong. If the Swedish police say there has been a reduction in trafficking they are guessing and they are wrong. The Scottish police are more honest: they don't have a ideology to defend.
The Limits of Consent is happy to distort part of a paragraph from the Scottish Government report, but then ignore all the useful information it has. One of the strange things about The Limits of Consent is that they don't mention the purported drop in the number of street sex workers in Sweden (or Scotland). It looks as though they think that the reduction of 50% is for all sex workers: they've just got that wrong. Just like they and most Swedish reports have got it wrong that they haven't been displaced indoors or to less visible outdoor areas. The Limits of Consent is not only biased, it is amateurish.
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