The main way that we can tell if the amount of prostitution has increased or decreased in Sweden since the 1999 law is analysis of the surveys. There were surveys in 1996, 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2017. One of them was conducted before the 1999 law that criminalised men who pay for sex and the others after.
The only study that gives all of the important statistics is the Mujaj and Netscher 2014 study. Then for the 2017 statistics we have Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Sweden 2017. In addition to the surveys which ask men and women about having bought or sold sex, there are the 'youth studies' on page 26 of the Mujaj and Netscher 2014 study, information from 2003 and 2009.
I have gone into detail about all the above here.
There are three other ways that we can examine if there has been an increase or decrease in the amount of prostitution in Sweden.
- the proliferation of Thai massage parlours across Sweden
- examination of the information provided by Charlotta Holmström
- understanding the fall and rise of street prostitution in the three main cities in Sweden
I will deal with each of these three below.
the proliferation of Thai massage parlours
There has been a big increase in the number of Thai massage establishments in Sweden. There could be just as much paid-for sexual activity but now more of it is in the form of a woman from a developing country/global south using her hands to bring a man to orgasm.
On the face of it you would think that even if this was the case they could count it as a success. After all, you can no longer say that a man is buying a woman or buying a woman's body. He's not masturbating into a woman's body or using the inside of a woman's body as a workplace. Or using her as a fuck-hole (I read that on Mumsnet).
A masseur uses her hands for massage or a sexual service ('hand relief' or a 'happy ending'). Many people in service industries use their hands. You cannot accuse a man of buying her or her body because people use their hands all the time. Mind you it was always a silly argument, even when we're talking about penetrative sex. I have never bought a woman or her body: I have paid for a service.
So would they be happy? No of course not. They would want to stamp it out as they do erotic dancing and pornography. So all these arguments about buying a woman's body or a right to access a woman's interior are inconsequential. That was never the reason.
I'm making the assumption that it is 'hand relief' that is available in Thai massage parlours in Sweden. That might not be true though. Even in Britain, very often 'body-to-body' is offered. Just occasionally, full sex is on offer. There is only one Thai massage parlour in Merseyside that I know of that offers full sex and is a brothel. Perhaps it is different in Sweden.
"In 2009, the National Bureau of Investigation estimated that there were about 90 Thai massage parlours in Stockholm and vicinity, most of which were judged to be offering sexual services for sale. At the turn of 2011/2012, the number of Thai massage parlours in the Stockholm area was estimated to be about 250 and throughout the country about 450." (Swedish National Police Board, 2012: 13 (Trafficking_report_13_20130530.pdf - no longer available online)).
In 2009 there were 90 Thai massage parlours in Stockholm and in 2012 there were 250.
In 2012 there were 450 Thai massage parlours in Sweden and in 2019 there were 1,000.
Most offering sexual services for sale.
These Thai women will have been trafficked. I don't mean that they will have been coerced. I mean that they will have had their flight and accommodation in Sweden organised and paid for by someone else. That is what 'trafficking' means in most cases. So there has been an increase in trafficking in Sweden.
Sex trafficking in Sweden, according to the Swedish police
Thai massage parlours in sex trade raids"Police and the tax authorities have launched closer surveillance of Thai massage parlours in the country, suspecting that the sharp increase in their number indicates sex trafficking and tax evasion.Sex trafficking is difficult to prove and the police now hope to be able to target the rogue parlours by studying their finances, according to a report in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily.Raids on several salons in the Stockholm area revealed serious mismanagement of cash.There are currently almost 190 Thai massage salons in Stockholm."We have clear indications both in the trafficking of girls and that many deal with black money and pay unreasonably low payroll taxes," said Conny Svensson at the Tax Agency (Skatteverket) to the newspaper.In Stockholm, the number of massage parlours in operation has doubled since 1990.The police are convinced that some of them sell sexual services, including massage that ends with masturbation, but can not prove their suspicions."We also hear of and witness other, more advanced sexual services, which means that you may soon wonder if we have a brothel on every or every other street corner," said Ewa Carlenfors, head of the section against trafficking at Stockholm police, to DN."But it is very difficult for us to prove in court the customers on whom a sexual act was performed.""
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| random reviews from random parlour in Stockholm |
information provided by Charlotta Holmström
One of the reasons why some people think that the amount of prostitution has decreased in Sweden since the introduction of the 1999 law is that there is a statistic that says that in 2008 there were 600 female prostitutes in Sweden. This is compared with a 1995 estimate of 2,500 to 3,000 prostitutes in Sweden.
The 600 statistic comes from Charlotta Holmström, a Swedish academic. However, it is quite clear that she did not mean that the total number of prostitutes was 600. She wrote that there seems to be 300 women involved in street prostitution, and they have found 300 who advertise on the Internet. The total number of prostitutes working indoors would be much higher than that though.In 2008 she and her colleague May-Len Skilbrei reported this in 'Prostitution in the Nordic Countries'. The figure appeared in the 2010 Skarhed report. Anna Skarhed made it clear that the knowledge of 'people who offer sex in other arenas than on the street and the Internet' is very limited.
So it is not true that there was a 76% reduction in the number, as some people say (from 2,500 to 600). It could be true though that street prostitution was reduced by about half. That doesn't mean that street prostitutes stopped being prostitutes. Many of them will have started working indoors and many will have remained on the streets but become less visible and countable. Street prostitutes were only ever a fraction of all prostitutes, so even if it was true that street prostitution has reduced by half, that is not much of a reduction in prostitution overall, if any.
In Northern Ireland after the introduction of the Nordic model it seems that street prostitution decreased but that was more than made up for by an increase in indoor prostitution. Street prostitution has decreased in many countries that do not have the Nordic model.
Holmström is not pro-Nordic model, she has spoken out against it and has made some interesting points.
I came across the 76% drop statistic on the Nordic Model Now! site. A reference for this figure was a book by Janice Raymond. I can't find out why Janice Raymond believes this, but it seems to come from the false belief that there was a drop from 2.500 to 600.
Something similar seems to have happened with Kajsa Wahlberg. She is a Swedish police officer dealing with trafficking. She said that the number of prostitutes in Sweden decreased by 40% between 1998 and 2003. She said the number in 1998 was 2,500. That's fair enough, although it's the 1995 estimate not 1998. She then said the number in 2003 was 1,500. I can't find this figure anywhere. She seems to be the only person who has said this.
It is possible that the 2003 figure is in a document called 'National Swedish Police Board 2004' but it doesn't seem to be available on the internet. According to this Guardian article, she said that trafficking has increased in Sweden. In 2003 it was 400-600 but in 2008 it could be 1,000.
street prostitution
The numbers of women who were street prostitutes was already decreasing well before the 1999 change in the law according to a 1995 study.
There is an estimate of 650 street prostitutes in 1995, increasing to 726 in 1998. However, I wouldn't put too much faith in the latter figure. The Stockholm social services prostitution team estimates are much higher than the Stockholm police estimates. As it says in this report 'The divergent estimates of the prostitution team and the police may be due, for example, to the fact that they have observed street activity at different times of day or days of the week, and other factors'. Just goes to show how difficult to count those street girls are.
Prostitution disappeared from the streets in 1999 but gradually came back. If this disappearance was reported in the news it would have had an effect on public opinion. This comes from the document Prostitution in Sweden 2007 by the National Board of Health and Welfare. I will quote two relevant paragraphs below, from pages 33 and 46.
"The overall picture emerging from the interviews is that the sex trade virtually disappeared from the street during a brief period immediately after the law went into effect. It later returned, albeit to a lesser extent. For instance, representatives of the Stockholm Prostitution Centre say that prostitution initially vanished from the streets when the law was passed, only to later return at about half the former extent. Now about two thirds of street prostitution is back, compared to the situation before the law against purchasing sexual services went into effect."
"Beliefs about the impacts
As shown in the 1998-99 by the National Board of Health and Welfare as well as the interviews in this study, street prostitution declined or disappeared in all three major cities (Malmö, Göteborg, Stockholm) immediately after the law against purchasing sexual services was enacted but later returned, albeit on a lesser scale. According to one informant in Göteborg, those who had the opportunity (and access to the Web, mobile phones, hotels and help from taxi drivers) left street prostitution when the law was passed, while those who remained were “at the bottom of the totem pole” – about 30 women whose lives were “in an uproar” for various reasons. This informant has observed that a few new individuals have appeared in street prostitution since the law took effect, but they are usually gone very quickly after exchanging phone numbers with potential clients. The informant relates that female secondary school students used to show up on the street in Göteborg in May-June after the end of the school year. He believes the law has reduced this and other types of new recruitment of young women, but has opened a door to pimps of foreign women who are in Sweden temporarily. While, according to the same informant, Swedish-born women do not remain in street prostitution for long nowadays, migrant women from e.g., Poland, tend to linger."
This is telling us that many sex workers left street prostitution but not prostitution. The remaining ones were 'in an uproar'. I think something is lost in translation here: it seems that they were highly distressed and traumatised. In Ireland in 1993 a new law produced 'an inordinate level of suffering' according to Rachel Moran: the 1999 Swedish law has done the same. Some women go onto the streets and leave quickly with phone numbers (they are less likely to be counted). Others are more reliant on pimps.
In her book Paid For Rachel Moran wrote that the 1999 law in Sweden was different from the 1993 law in Ireland. Moran wrote that the 1993 law caused much suffering for prostitutes in Ireland. The 1999 law is different she writes because it has been proven to work in reducing the amount of prostitution. That's why she supported its introduction in Ireland. She is wrong though. She has been misled.
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