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Interview: Laura Watson

On February 26th this year, the European Parliament voted in favour of legalizing selling sex but criminalizing its purchase. This is indicative of a growing international movement towards criminalizing the client, or ‘shifting the burden’; first adopted by Sweden in 1999, this has become known as ‘the Nordic model’. Supporters say it will decrease demand for prostitution while protecting the rights of individual women.

However, The English Collective of Prostitutes, a network of activists who advocate for the rights of sex workers, are strongly opposed to this increasing support for the Nordic model. For Laura Watson, a spokeswoman for the organization, the only way the safety of sex workers can be guaranteed is complete decriminalization. Their manifesto powerfully asserts the way that both current UK laws and the Nordic model ‘criminalize sex workers, divide us from our families and friends, make us vulnerable to violence, and set us apart from the rest of the community — separate is never equal.’

In the UK, it is currently legal to exchange sex for money, but Laura tells me that laws which criminalize certain activities in the sex industry inevitably endanger the sex worker. “Everything you can do to keep yourself safe is illegal. So, for example, working together in a house, if there are two or more people inside, that’s illegal. The laws are very draconian.” Women are forced out of the relative safety of brothels onto the street, or away from their colleagues and security networks: it is very difficult to protect sex workers when part-criminalization preserves stigma and prevents equal treatment in our legal system.

In light of the EU vote, the UK is being urged by many to adopt the Nordic model. However, its central premise is not entirely new. “Kerb crawling is currently illegal, and so we already know the effects of criminalizing clients… basically, police crackdowns disperse women into dangerous and isolated areas”. Police crackdowns are perhaps the most harmful consequence of the part-criminalization of the sex industry. Often, crimes such as ‘controlling prostitution for gain’ conceal an agenda which works to eradicate sex work from our communities at any cost. “The Ipswich murders, in which five women were killed, happened in the wake of a police crackdown.”

This is the central criticism of systems which criminalize clients: their attempt to decrease demand drive the sex industry ever further underground, so that services are used by clients who are more determined, unconcerned about breaking the law,  and more likely to be disrespectful, derogatory or violent. Aggressively targeting clients also results in a culture of non-collaboration with the police among sex workers, for fear of losing business. It is therefore clear that if we cannot prove that criminalizing clients has led to an increase in violence, these laws have certainly not increased protection or relations with the authorities, as is often claimed.

Advocates for Nordic-style legislation often claim that it reduces demand for sexual services. Some official reports have indicated that Sweden’s laws have cut prostitution in half. However, this is an assertion which has been disputed; others contend that sex work in Sweden is simply less visible, and that a reduction in sex work is merely a reduction in street work, so that the majority of prostitution is now conducted online or in private apartments. One report by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare asks “Has the extent of prostitution  increased or decreased? We cannot give any unambiguous answer to that question… it is difficult to discern any clear trend”

Its supporters claim that if prostitution was decriminalized entirely, exit services which allow women to leave prostitution would be compromised, because the industry would be considered a more legitimate choice. However, Laura is quick to dispel this myth: “In fact, criminalization means that you can’t leave prostitution, because if you have a criminal record it’s incredibly difficult to get another job. We are also campaigning for services which allow women to leave prostitution if they wish.”

One of the most important issues to consider in legislating prostitution is human trafficking, which is often used by anti-prostitution campaigners as evidence of the intrinsic problems with the sex industry. However, the extent of trafficking in the UK is uncertain, due to inadequate research, and multiple cases of repeatedly inflated statistics, as comprehensively detailed here. While no one is disputing that trafficking is a problem which must be confronted in the sex industry, the ECP and other campaigners see trafficking as another excuse for social cleansing. In Laura’s experience, “victims of trafficking are not getting help and are instead targeted for arrest and deportation, which is despicable. Anti-trafficking efforts are used to raid brothels and target immigrant women.” She gives an example of anti-trafficking raids in Soho, in which “No victims of trafficking were found. But two hundred police officers, with dogs and riot gear, raided the flats…dragging women out in their underwear, smashing the place up. The idea that this is how we should treat victims of trafficking is a complete sham, and a cover for their real agenda.”

The English Collective of Prostitutes campaign for adoption of total decriminalization, a model which has been tested in New Zealand since 2003. My conversation with Laura so far has indicated that the biggest impediment to sex workers’ safety is social stigma attached to their profession. We discuss a successful case of sexual harassment brought by a sex worker in New Zealand, in which a tribunal ruled that ‘Sex workers are as much entitled to protection from sexual harassment as those working in other occupations’: I ask her if she thinks such a ruling would be possible in the UK. “I think that it would be very unlikely to happen here. It’s a largely criminalized industry currently and is very stigmatized as a result. The fact that such a conviction could happen demonstrates that in New Zealand, things are definitely moving forward.”

Attempts to eradicate the sex industry entirely, consciously or unconsciously, whether under an anti-trafficking or womens’ rights agenda, have often had disastrous consequences for the safety of sex workers. The UK’s 80,000 sex workers are among the most vulnerable women in our society: around 70% of women in prostitution are single mothers who do not receive social benefits. My conversation with Laura has convinced me of the need to forget abstract morality and listen to sex workers themselves, to scrutinize laws which, in her words, “currently do everything they can to sabotage whatever you’re doing to keep yourself safe.”

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