As Family First has seen fit to try to resuscitate the debate over prostitution law reform, I thought I’d provide an alternative perspective that defends our own liberal regulatory regime. Britain is contemplating these repressive ‘reforms’, so here’s the other side of the story, from Sweden’s The Local.

In Sweden, sex work was legal until 1999, although brothels, sex work advertisements and profiting from sex work weren’t. In that year, their government criminalised punters who pay for sexual services, but what has that meant in practice?

Street soliciting seems to have gone down, but sex workers rights organisations say that this is an illusory situation. Many sex workers have gone underground, or else are online. Pro-reform Swedish feminist Petra Ostergren is similarly sceptical about prohibitionist claims:

“We have no data that indicates that prostitution overall has decreased, even if some data showed an initial fall in street prostitution“. She is backed up by a new report from the National Board of Health and Welfare, which admits that it can’t say whether the law has reduced the number of prostitutes:

“It is impossible to show any simple causal links between…legislation and changes in prostitution,” the report states.Östergren thinks that prohibition has also harmed safe sex services such as condom supplies to sex workers.

Sex Workers and Allies Network head Isabella Lund agrees:

 Prostitutes are hardly likely to cooperate with authorities when to do so could result in their clients’ being arrested, she says.
“Our business demands that we stay away from the police because our clients have been criminalized,” Lund argues.

Lund compares it to Sweden’s similarly conservative prohibitionist approach to drug policy:

“It is similar to the way we deal with the drug issue - we don’t have needle exchanges. We don’t mind sacrificing some prostitutes or drug users if it helps us create the perfect society,” she says.

I do mind. I am opposed to violence against women and anyone who works in the sex industry. There is no such thing as an “acceptable” sacrifice of sex workers through a prohibitionist policy. It’s like saying prohibitionist anti-abortionists who dismiss the deaths of impoverished women through illegal backstreet abortions where proper public health-provided facilities don’t exist. Come to think of it, it is exactly like that second scenario, and for analogous reasons.

Recommended:

“Swedish prostitution: gone or just hidden?” Local Sweden: 10.01.08:  http://www.thelocal.se/9621/20080110/