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How New Labour puts prostitutes at risk

red letter | 18.12.2006 15:26 | Gender | Health

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How New Labour puts prostitutes at risk online only
by Esme Choonara

The recent brutal series of murders of women in Ipswich has brought the question of prostitution and violent crime to the foreground.

The police are keen to stress how seriously they take these murders, but police and government policy consistently make life more dangerous for prostitutes.

One of the main driving concerns of government policy is to clear prostitution off the streets. The home office strategy paper, published in January this year, states that “street prostitution is not an activity that we can tolerate in our towns and cities.” One of the four stated aims in the paper is to reduce street prostitution. Much of this policy translates on the ground into harassing women (who make up the vast majority of prostitutes) through Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) and other criminal justice enforcement.

This means that much violence against prostitutes goes unreported. A survey of prostitutes in Glasgow found that 88 percent of women had experience at some level of the criminal justice system. Women who are worried about being arrested, have warrants out for them, or have had an Asbo served on them are much less likely to report assaults or come forward as witnesses.

Prostitution is notoriously dangerous for women. Estimates suggest that a prostitute is murdered somewhere in Britain around once every two months. Women working as prostitutes are 12 times more likely to be murdered than other women. On top of this prostitutes face a very high risk of assault and rape.

The increasing use of Asbos against prostitutes puts them in more danger. A report last year for the London Assembly was highly critical of the use of Asbos against prostitutes. It showed that Asbos simply shift prostitution from one area to another.

It also cited a case study which points out that when an Asbo excludes a prostitute from an area it cuts her off from vital local health and support services. Such exclusion also splits up groups of women who previously would look out for each other. Prostitutes who break Asbos are at risk of prison, whereas prison sentences for soliciting and loitering were actually abolished in 1983.

In some areas there has been a shift away from criminalising prostitutes to criminalising the people who use prostitutes – the kerb crawlers. The problem with this is that as it pushes men who use prostitutes to become more secretive, it pushes prostitutes looking for work into more secluded and dangerous areas, and often means women have to work alone and have less time to decide whether they want to get into someone’s car or not.

The government has rejected proposals for tolerance zones – areas where women could work more safely and with more support and access to health care and other services. There are debates to be had about how such zones operate in practice and they don’t necessarily deal with many problems that prostitutes face. But all the evidence suggests that such zones are safer for women.

Edinburgh had an unofficial tolerance zone for many years. In 2001, the last year of the zone, there were 11 reported attacks on prostitutes in the city. In 2002, after the closure of the zone there were 31 reported attacks. In the first half of 2003 that rose to 54 attacks in just six months.

Despite a current fashion for talking about “sex work” as if it is a career choice, prostitution is not a happy option for women. In reality, most women turn to prostitution because of poverty. Every survey in the last ten years confirms that the majority of prostitutes have a drug addiction. Many have suffered sexual abuse. Over 30 recent studies carried out in different towns and cities of England found that most women involved in prostitution got involved before the age of 20. Over a third of these women had been in care homes.

Socialists want a society without prostitution. We want a world in which sex is not a commodity and women are not forced through poverty or addiction to sell their bodies. But while prostitution exists we should support all attempts to make it safer for the women involved. This also means challenging the hypocrisy of the government and the police.


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Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

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18.12.2006 23:03

Well in the Socialist utopia there will be 'toleration zones'.

Perhaps there can be in your street or in your neighbourhood, perhaps you'll open up the car park of your offices as a toleration zone.

Perhaps the socialist model includes children being exposed to used needles, condoms and prostitutes on their street outside their homes. Just ask the people in Edinburgh how 'tollerant' they were with this

Perhaps is just a symptom of of the rabis socialist worker agenda that they would blame all the ills of the world on New Labour - got a news flash for you guys - this problem has existed for hundreds of years and there isn't a simple solution.

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Heads up

19.12.2006 00:34

New Labour politicians should wear condoms so they don't give prostitutes nasty diseases.

durex


Edinburgh

19.12.2006 14:43

My family and friends who live in Edinburgh had no problem with the relative protection offered to prostitutes there. They are much more concerned with the increase in violence since then. Non-sex workers would be solicitied in the red-zone, but since everyone knew the sex-zone it reduced dramatically the non-workers who were solicited in the rest of the city and few women who weren't soliciting would enter that area for that reason. In Edinburgh, the police herded the streetwalkers into a mostly industrial area which was well lit and covered by CCTV. That has to be preferable to working in areas like Leith Links where girls are exposed and unprotected.. Although the zone has ended and the girls dispersed, most working girls there did and still work in 'massage parlours'. Decriminalisation isn't a perfect solution as it still leaves the girls to the tender protection of male gangsters but it is better than criminalising them.

Either the Swedish model - where men are prosecuted rather than the workers, or the Dutch model, where workers are afforded full police protection and civil rights, have to be better than the dismal and patchy UK model.

dan


Prostitution must be eradicated not tolerated

20.12.2006 01:22

Edinburgh has the largest and most visible prostitution industry in Scotland with domestic as well as international trafficking to the city - all because of Edinburgh city councils tolerant attitude towards prostitution. But tolerating prostitution is tolerating sexual abuse.

Targetting the perpetrators of this abuse, while providing targetted support for the women trapped in it, as Sweden does, is the only rational approach to ending this dreadful industry.

Mhairi McAlpine


eradication is unrealistic

20.12.2006 13:20

Mhairi,

Prostitution can't be eradicated through legal means, there hasn't been a single society free from prostitution. Perhaps through economic improvement and education but even then, some people would still choose to work that way. I asked the only working girl I ever met and talked to why she chose her work and she said 'it's better than being a chambermaid in a hotel'. If you can remove the male violence from the profession then there is nothing contemptable about her choice.

Edinburghs prostitution industry is less dangerous to both the workers and to passers-by than Glasgows. Remember also the reason why Edinburgh liberalised, it was when Edinburgh was the AIDS capital of europe. By driving the women undergound you would be removing them from the few beneficial services available to them. By criminalising their clients you may indirectly drive the women underground.

I'd agree though that the Swedish approach would make more sense than other cities in the UK. I don't know if the brothels in Edinburgh are inspected like in the Netherlands but I would hope that they are.

dan
- Homepage: http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/outofrange/l_lettertoajohn.asp


eradication is unrealisttic

20.12.2006 14:28

Mhairi,

Prostitution can't be eradicated through legal means, there hasn't been a single society free from prostitution. Perhaps through economic improvement and education but even then, some people would still choose to work that way. I asked the only working girl I ever met and talked to why she chose her work and she said 'it's better than being a chambermaid in a hotel'. If you can remove the male violence from the profession then there is nothing contemptable about her choice.

Edinburghs prostitution industry is less dangerous to both the workers and to passers-by than Glasgows. Remember also the reason why Edinburgh liberalised, it was when Edinburgh was the AIDS capital of europe. By driving the women undergound you would be removing them from the few beneficial services available to them. By criminalising their clients you may indirectly drive the women underground.

I'd agree though that the Swedish approach would make more sense than other cities in the UK. I don't know if the brothels in Edinburgh are inspected like in the Netherlands but I would hope that they are.

dan
- Homepage: http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/outofrange/l_lettertoajohn.asp


Sexworkers Critique of Swedish Prostitution Policy

20.12.2006 15:16

Petra Östergren

The law against procurement of sexual services (promotion or deriving profit from prostitution) and a recent law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services introduced in 1999 are the two main ways the Swedish state sees itself as "combating" prostitution. Swedish politicians and feminists are proud of the state's prostitution policy. They insist that it has positive effects. Sexworkers are of a different view. Most of the female Swedish sexworkers I have interviewed voice a strong critique of their legal and social situation. They feel discriminated against, endangered by the very laws that seek to protect them, and they feel under severe emotional stress as a result of the laws...

Due to the law against procurement, sexworkers are forced to lie in order to rent premises, or alternatively they have to pay exorbitant rent. Either way, they constantly worry about being discovered. They also report often having to move (when discovered) and being treated badly by landlords and "rent pimps". Some women prefer to make contact with their customers on the street. Other sexworkers find this too humiliating.

Most of the women I have spoken to wish to be able to work together with others. This is to ensure safety and to support each other. They find it unfair that they cannot do this and feel scared when they have to work alone.

This law also makes it difficult for sexworkers to cohabit with a partner since it is illegal to receive any of a sexworker's income. It is hard for a sexworker to have a family at all since sexworkers are considered to be unfit parents and therefore can lose custody of their children if it emerges that they sell sex.

dan
- Homepage: http://www.petraostergren.com/content/view/44/67/