An impressively coherent resolution on the decriminalisation of prostitution and sex work has come from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which aims to promote and protect sociological research and teaching on significant problems of social life. They took this resolution in early October, which is written for the US context – one of the world’s hardest for people who sell sex. So despite the horrible reductionism and man-hating from people like Melissa Farley and Swanee Hunt, some mainstream folks understand the difficult complexity of this social problem and how to begin breaking it down: how pleasing.
WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work negotiated between consenting adults perpetuates violence and social stigma against sex workers, including by law enforcement, and prevents trafficked individuals from seeking medical care or protection from law enforcement and holding custody of their children; and represents one of the most direct forms of discrimination against women, trans individuals, and other gender minorities;
WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work denies sex workers basic human and civil rights, including healthcare and housing, extended to workers in other trades, occupations, callings, or professions;
WHEREAS the decriminalization of prostitution would lead to safer working conditions and better health for both the worker and client, and allow workers to report nonconsensual activities to law enforcement without fear of being arrested;
WHEREAS the decriminalization of sex work would allow sex workers to enjoy their lives and livelihood without having to hide, and thereby seek and receive the same legal protections enjoyed by workers in other trades, work, occupations, or professions against crimes such as sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape;
AND BE IT RESOLVED that the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) supports occupational support and sexual self-determination for adults engaged in sex work;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVEDthat non-consenting adults and all trafficked children forced into sexual activity (commercial or otherwise) deserve the full protection of the law and perpetrators deserve the full punishment by the law;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports international AIDS relief that allows access to reproductive health for sex workers and renounces anti-prostitution legislation such as the APLO, or Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath, which prevents U.S. aid from being allocated to health organizations that provide medical support for sex workers;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports non-profit organizations that supply housing and other resources to trafficked individuals in the sex industry without mandatory, moralistic, ‘therapy’ or diversion programs;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports: (1) bipartisan legislation to decriminalize prostitution (2) public education regarding the costs of policing sex workers and (3) normalization of the occupation.
Newsweek has released a report on Melissa Farley’s nasty new study on men who buy sex of all kinds, which was financed by the Hunt Alternatives Fund as part of their 10-year plan to End Demand for buying sex. Now the latest Trafficking in Persons Report reveals that End Demand is also part of US government policy, which means that some of the big spending – $109 million last year – on anti-trafficking programmes is going to anti-client projects. US Trafficking magnate Luis CdeBaca attended the Hunt planning meetings, so this development is hardly a big surprise. I recently wroteabout a World Gender Warin the form of campaigns against male sexuality: desire, penetration and the penis itself: an international trend, but money from a rich philanthropist certainly puts the US in charge.
The theory that if men stopped buying sex no one would offer it anymore is a breath-taking over-simplification of the many different services and desires involving money and sex and the multitude of social and cultural conditions involved. How people now selling sex as a livelihood would earn their living if clients disappear is never mentioned – which is disturbing. I appreciate that campaigners are talking long-term and utopically, but to never address economic and employment issues seriously? I hope they do not feel that preventing women from selling sex means saving them from a fate worse than death.
This notion of demand fails to square with some well-known client types, such as the one Thomas Rowlandson portrayed here around 1800, described by the Wellcome Library as A prostitute leading an old man into the bedroom and taking money from him, implying that her services will act like a tonic and preserve his state of health. I guess Farley didn’t manage to find any men like this to talk to.
Here is the End Demand statement from this year’s TIP, ridiculously called a Fact Sheet, when it is only a moral aside revealing the government’s wish that culture would change. Yes, they wrote the phrase new innovations.
Prevention : Fighting Sex Trafficking by Curbing Demand for Prostitution
A growing understanding of the nature of trafficking in persons has led to new innovations in addressing demand. Corporate standards for monitoring supply chains and government policies for eliminating trafficking from procurement practices are making new inroads in the fight against modern slavery. But the fact remains: if there were no demand for commercial sex, trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation would not exist in the form it does today. This reality underscores the need for continued strong efforts to reduce demand for sex trafficking by enacting policies and promoting cultural attitudes that reject the idea of paying for sex.
Policies to Address Demand for Commercial Sex
Governments can lead both in practice and by example by implementing zero-tolerance policies for employees, uniformed servicemembers, and contractors paying for sex. If paying for sex is prohibited for those who work for, or do business with, a government, the ripple effects could be farreaching. Through their massive procurement, governments have an impact on a wide range of private-sector actors, and policies banning the purchase of sex could in turn reach a significant part of the private sector as well. At the same time, governments have the capacity to raise awareness of the subtle and brutal nature of this crime by requiring training of employees, contractors, and subcontractors about how individuals subjected to sex trafficking are victimized through coercion. Too often, trafficking victims are wrongly discounted as “consenting” adults. The use of violence to enslave trafficking victims is pervasive, but there are other more subtle forms of fraud and coercion that also prevent a person from escaping compelled servitude. A prostituted person may have initially consented, may believe that she or he is in love with her or his trafficker, may not self-identify as a victim, may not be operating in the vicinity of the pimp, or may have been away from the pimp’s physical control with what seemed to be ample opportunity to ask for help or flee. None of these factors, taken alone or in sum, means that she or he is not a victim of a severe form of trafficking. Ensuring that these facts are part of the required training for every government employee and everyone who does business with or on behalf of a government is an important step in shifting attitudes about commercial sex.
Moral Leadership in the Future of this Struggle
Strong policies are critical for ridding countries of all forms of modern slavery, but ultimately for encouraging a broader cultural shift in order to make meaningful progress in reducing demand for sex trafficking. This can only be achieved by rejecting long-held notions that regard commercial sex as a “boys will be boys” phenomenon, and instead sending the clear message that buying sex is wrong. Lawmakers have the power to craft effective antitrafficking legislation, but they also have a responsibility to represent values that do not tolerate abuses of commercial sex. Business leaders need to cultivate a corporate culture that leaves behind outdated thinking that turns a blind eye to the sex trade, including the adoption of codes of conduct that prohibit purchasing sex. And leaders in civil society – from teachers to parents to ministers – must foster the belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to reduce the demand for sex trafficking. It is especially important to reach young men with a strong message of demand reduction to help them understand the exploitation involved with commercial sex and combat the glamorization of pimp culture. It is every person’s individual responsibility to think about their contributions to trafficking. Laws and policies, partnerships and activism will continue to be critical to the struggle against modern slavery, but it will also be the day-to-day decisions of individual men and women that will bring an end to sex trafficking and carry forth a message of freedom for all.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington DC June 2011
I suppose in a dictatorship it might be possible to write a law aimed at punishing traffickers where no meaningful evidence was required. Then arrests and convictions could shoot up and prisons be full of men who might or might not have had bad intentions or done anything wrong. But despite the unpleasant rhetoric and complete lack of interest in evidence evinced by some of Sweden’s Gender-Equality Warriors, the Swedish legal system operates as (in)effectively as those in other contemporary democratic-style states. This was made obvious in police comments on the difficulty of convicting men for buying sex and now here on the subject of convicting traffickers.
The story below attempts to explain why there have been so few convictions of traffickers, but the impossibility of getting the law’s wording right is obvious. Legal language is often tortuous, but this quality is exaggerated when it attempts to pin down ultimately indefinable states of mind: Note, in the key paragraph (in green below) the use of coercion, deception, abuse, vulnerable. defencelessness, dependent, improper means, controls, exploit. The meaning of each of these key words changes completely according to context and moment and easily mean different things to migrant (or victim), smuggler (or perpetrator) and rescuer.
The story comes from Ireland, where some legislators who want to penalise the buying of sex sent a delegation to Sweden – which absolutely everybody does, it’s the in thing, but all they usually do is talk to government representatives in Stockholm, who tell them what the visitors could have read online without taking an expensive junket. Note that this entire analysis makes no mention of migration at all, which continues to be the fundamental issue despite protestations that it is not because now we are talking about slavery.
When one looks at the numbers of successful prosecutions for human trafficking in Sweden over the last five years, one could easily be forgiven for thinking there had been little return for its major investment in combating the crime. Between 2003 and 2008, there were just 10 people convicted specifically of human trafficking out of 133 cases brought. However, the low return is not reflective of the true impact the prosecutions have had. The ambiguous wording of the trafficking law in Sweden up to July 2010 made it exceptionally difficult to get convictions. But the authorities had good reason for not being in a particular rush to correct that ambiguity. The sentences for aggravated pimping — the crime just below human trafficking carried the same maximum sentence of 10 years as the more serious misdemeanour.
“A lot of cases end up as serious pimping instead of human trafficking, because it was easier for the prosecutors and court to have a sentence for it,” said Detective Inspector Jonas Trolle of the Swedish surveillance unit who is an expert in investigating human trafficking. “I think it was sad, because our legislation on trafficking in human beings is a very good legislation and has a lot of possibilities to get convictions, but it was too complicated for the prosecutors and courts. Therefore, prosecutors would not push strongly for the highest sentence possible for aggravated pimping.”
When that category is taken into account, the successful prosecutions shoot up. The number of reported crimes rise to 601 and the convictions rise to 127. Nonetheless, it simply was not good enough not to have clear and detailed legislation. The problem was that a successful prosecution for human trafficking required the prosecutors to prove the defendant had taken control of the victim.
“We had two trafficking paragraphs before, which did not work,” said Kajsa Wahlberg. “The second paragraph had so many tiny little things which had to be correct. For instance, it said that the trafficker must use improper means in order to recruit or transport the person but it also said the trafficker must have control. Improper means is very much related to control also. It was mixed up. It also said the trafficker must have the intention at recruitment that he is going to exploit the person.”
She cited, as an example, an instance where a Swedish man trafficked a girl from Slovakia to the southern part of Sweden. “He claimed she was his girlfriend, they had lived there and they decided to move to Sweden,” she said. “He said he proposed for her to go into prostitution and that he recruited buyers for her but that he had no intention to traffic her to Sweden when he took her from Slovakia. He said it was an idea that came up when they got here.
“So many of these types of people got loose because we could not prove intention to traffic. It was also viewed that the second paragraph did not protect children as it should. Because of the confusion, 16-17 year olds were not being regarded as trafficking… The court required directly that the trafficker must have used improper means. The paragraph did not require that.”
In the forward to the new clause which came into the Swedish human trafficking law on July 1, 2010, the authors wrote: “The requisite that describes the improper means should be given in somewhat clearer and more readily-understood meaning than they have at present.” Therefore, the relevant paragraphs were rewritten to state: “Anyone who makes use of unlawful coercion or deception, abuses someone’s vulnerable situation, abuses someone’s youth or defencelessness or abuses someone’s dependent status has used such a means that may result in liability for trafficking in human beings. “The current list of kinds of acts of trafficking covered shall be supplemented by the possibility of a person, who by some improper means controls another in order to exploit her, in him being penalised for trafficking in human beings.”
It is too early to say whether the new language will make it easier to achieve the full human trafficking convictions authorities crave. As far as Jonas Trolle is concerned, there may still be issues. “I am worried about the situation now,” he said. “They have removed the control part, but I am not sure it is easy to have sentences for human trafficking.” He has reason to be worried. Police estimate that between 400 and 600 women are trafficked to Sweden every year and of those 200 to 300 are destined for Stockholm.
Furthermore, there is concern that even the new version of the law does require the accumulation of a large swathe of evidence before a conviction can be sought. Kajsa Wahlberg admits that that often means victims might be moved on before the police can move in and arrest the trafficker.
“After surveillance for a certain period of time, you might assume there are 30 women being exploited, but you don’t go in and identify them all, because you will reveal your investigation,” she said, “We are not always sure what is going on; if all of these women are being exploited or if they have another role in the apartment. When we strike, there might only be three left because some of them are being transported back and forth and we are not always clear of each and everyone’s role. We can interrogate the three, but we don’t know about the other 27.”
They will keep trying to get this right, though, we can be sure of that.
Recently I wrote about a man-licking-women video that supposedly depicts a man who does sex for money and feels oppressed by the job. The only sex we are shown, though, is oral, with the man kneeling on a floor between the outspread knees of women on their backs on a bed. The video, part of a campaign by the non-democratic European Women’s Lobby, has provoked interesting comments on my blog, not least from men who say the video’s message is not easy to grasp.
It seems the actual subtext of the video is that older and fat woman are disgusting and undeserving of sexual pleasure. matt
What the creator of this video did not realize was that clients love to lick women including the mature providers. Pohaku
It is a big boost for a man’s ego if so many women want to have sex with him, even if they are older women. Kris
The depiction of women who are older or a little bit curvy as disgusting? Talk about misogynistic. Erik
Oh, please. A job described as Help Wanted: male to lick anonymous pussies for $xx per hour, supply your own toothpaste and kneepads would have applicants lined up out the door. There would be plenty of candidates if it was a volunteer gig. ewaffle
Okay, bizarre choice of ad. That turned me on. Randy
These are just extracts; go to the comments directly if you are interested. The point is, the video itself, as opposed to the propaganda surrounding it, is open to a myriad of interpretations – some of them quite the opposite of what the EWL intended. Which is good.
The European sex worker rights movement objects to the characterisation of their lives in this way, of course, calling it anti-sex, woman-hating, sexist, discriminatory. But even more importantly, everyone asks how a campaign can be called Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution when several EU member states permit some sorts of sex work and prostitution (see this example from Italy’s Comitato per il Diritti Civili delle Prostitute). The issue is that the EWL receives public money – your taxes – from an EU programme called Progress, established to support financially the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. I first questioned this use of public funds in April, so I am glad to see that the following question was submitted to the European Parliament on 1 July (note the EU’s executive body is called the European Commission):
Can the Commission explain if EU funds have been used directly or indirectly to finance an abolitionist “Campaign to put an end to prostitution in Europe” and “Together for a Europe Free from Prostitution”, promoting a “Europe free from prostitution” and calling on “individuals, national governments and the European Union to take concrete actions”, substantially on the basis of the Swedish model of legislation on the issue and with the aim of abolishing prostitution, which is presented as a form of violence against women? Have notably Progress funds been used for this? If so, can it explain how EU funds can be used to promote a certain legislative model, notably on a matter where Member States have different policies and sensitivities on the matter? If EU funds have been directly or indirectly used, if a campaign is launched to legalize prostitution and sex work or to promote a different legislative model, would the same EU funds be eligible for it? If not, why? Will the Commission request that EU funds are given back, if the campaign is funded without the Commission knowledge?
I edited a couple of words to make the English more understandable to an international audience; see the original form submitted at the bottom of this entry.
The current commissioner for Home Affairs is Cecilia Malmström (Swedish), and although she has not said anything publicly so far about the EWL campaign, she is getting close with recent pronouncements on sexual exploitation of children and modern slavery (where she mentions someone who was forced to have sex with 65-70 men a day, every day during five years, just as though it was the most typical story). I will keep my eye on her, both as an anthropologist of Europe and an anthropologist of Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, here is the original form submitted to parliament.
Last October an historic decision was made in Ontario, Canada – suggesting that Canadian laws are antiquated, endanger people who sell sex and violate their civil rights. Immediately, opponents began crying about all the scary things that would happen if decriminalisation came to pass.
Here is an interesting report on last week’s events in an appeals court, in which the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network clearly supports sex worker rights. I added links to rights organisations.
From June 13–17, 2011, five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal heard arguments about the constitutionality of Criminal Code provisions relating to adult prostitution. This was an appeal of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision from September 2010, when Justice Susan Himel struck down the communication, bawdy house and living-onthe-avails provisions of the Criminal Code because she found they forced sex workers into more dangerous situations and contributed to a greater risk of violence and other threats to their health and safety.
Besides the applicants in the case (namely Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — all current or former sex workers) and the Attorneys General of Ontario and Canada, seven groups were granted intervener status in order to assist the court with the issues before it. The seven interveners included a coalition of the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League; a coalition of organizations that included the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the B.C. Civil Liberties Association; a coalition of PACE, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society (or “SWUAV” — both sex worker organizations in Vancouver) and Pivot Legal Society; a joint intervention from Maggie’s (Toronto sex worker organization) and POWER (Ottawa sex work organization); and a joint intervention from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE).
In their appeal, the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario argued that the purpose of the prostitution-related provisions in the Criminal Code was to eradicate prostitution by discouraging sex work, an argument forcefully countered by Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall who represented the applicants. The Attorney General of Canada also argued that the law was not the cause of, nor did it facilitate, the harm sex workers face — an argument that did not seem to persuade the panel of judges.
Among the interveners, the coalition of PACE, SWUAV and Pivot was particularly compelling because it represented the perspective of street-based sex workers, upon whom the communicating provision has had a tremendously harmful impact in terms of safety and health. Counsel for PACE, SWUAV and Pivot as well as Maggie’s and POWER also decried the “asymmetrical” or “Swedish” model, whereby clients and employers of sex workers continue to be criminalized but sex workers are not. This argument, also endorsed by the Legal Network and the BC-CfE, submits that the asymmetrical approach fails to lessen or eliminate the risks to sex workers exacerbated by the current provisions. Under an asymmetrical regime, sex workers would continue to be prevented from screening their clients by negotiating in advance the terms of their transactions, since it would still be illegal for clients to engage in these communications. Also, sex workers would still be prevented from working indoors, where the work is safer, because the bawdy house law would apply to clients and others found on the premises. Additionally, it would still be illegal for sex workers to hire a bodyguard or a driver, since these persons could be criminalized by the living-on-the-avails provision.
The Legal Network and the BC-CfE argued that, in addition to the violence to which sex workers are subject as a result of the law, they are also prevented from taking precautions to negotiate and practise safer sex. The communicating provision, for example, hampers sex workers’ ability to negotiate condom use. Even more broadly, the criminalization of prostitution hinders sex workers’ access to health-care services, including HIV testing, education, prevention, care, treatment and support.
The impact of the prostitution laws on the health and safety of sex workers was a central theme at the Legal Network’s Symposium on HIV, Law and Human Rights held June 9– 10, where sex workers Émilie Laliberté (Stella) and Nikki Thomas (Sex Professionals of Canada) and lawyers Elin Sigurdson (SWUAV) and Alan Young were featured speakers. The timely discussion helped inform the pressing issue of “next steps” in the event of a positive or negative decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada. The road ahead is long, but one thing is certain: there is no shortage of passion, commitment and activism from sex workers and their colleagues to change the law to protect and promote the human rights of all sex workers.
Back in March people in Canada contacted me to ask about Gunilla Ekberg’s claim, in talks given there, that there have been 3500 men found guilty under the Swedish law against buying sex (sexköpslagen) since it was passed in 1999. Why would Ekberg make a mistake about something that can be verified on the website of the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ)? The total is 757 over eleven years.
Until recently, the maximum penalty for those convicted of buying sex was six months in jail or a rather small fine. No one was ever jailed, as far as I can tell; jail-time is not mandated when penalties are minor. Therefore, the nearly unanimous vote in the Swedish parliament last month was about making it possible for a convicted person to go to jail, as a year-penalty pushes the crime upwards in importance. Perhaps one could say, then, that this apparently fierce vote was more about making the original 1999 law more coherent: if you seriously believe something is a crime, then you don’t want it to be never punished. If you see what I mean.
Numbers of convictions for buying sex in Sweden by year, 1999-2009
Source: BRÅ
Is this a large or small number of convictions? How many men were detained by the police but the case dropped? That information isn’t available. Activists and scholars tend to focus on the law’s rhetoric and presumptions, but it is never easy to put such a law into practice. Consider the document BRÅ published in 1999 on the subject of these difficulties from a policing point of view:
Evidential difficulties are the most common reason for the discontinuation of police investigations into suspected offences of this type. The most difficult thing to prove has been that the parties have entered into an agreement that sexual services will be provided in exchange for payment. It is an offence without a complainant and even though the prostitutes are obliged to give evidence, this obligation is limited since they are not obliged to reveal that they have themselves participated in an act of prostitution. Even if the prostitutes might consider giving evidence about the incident, it has been deemed difficult to reach them to obtain their co-operation in investigations since they often have no fixed address or telephone number.
So although the Swedish parliament recently raised the maximum penalty from six months’ incarceration to a year, the difficulty of getting convictions remains.
Page de présentation: Ici se trouvent plusieurs textes sur la loi suédoise contre l’achat de sexe. Ce modèle legislatif, aussi connu comme la pénalisation du client, est devenu célèbre à cause des prétentions du gouvernment suédois sur son efficacité comme méthode d’abolir la traite humaine, l’explotation sexuelle et même la prostitution. Ces prétentions n’ont pas été prouvées par l’évaluation gouvernementale publiée en juillet 2010. Depuis deux ans et demi j’habite en Suède, où j’ai publié quelques critiques de l’évaluation et du mouvement anti-prostitution dans divers médias. Merci à Thierry Schaffauser pour traduire ces textes.
Il faut de tout dans le filon de la recherche sur la traite, donc je ne serais pas surprise que les nouveaux arrivants sur les questions de la prostitution et de l’industrie du sexe sautent sur un modèle statistique qui tente de prouver que la loi anti-prostitution suédoise fonctionne. Ils ont fait connaitre cette chose après que le gouvernement ait publié son évaluation sans-méthodologie-ni preuve- de la loi criminalisant l’achat de services sexuels.
Niklas Jakobsson et Andreas Kotsadam, de l’Université de Göteborg, l’ont fait sur un blog, avec «Le droit et l’économie de l’esclavage sexuel international», un document de travail – un terme que les universitaires utilisent quand ils n’ont pas encore publié un article dans un journal universitaire. Les journaux envoient les soumissions des contributeurs pour être examinées par des gens dans le même domaine, le processus, appelé examen par les pairs, est généralement à double insu, ce qui signifie que ni l’auteur, ni le critique ne connaisse le nom de l’autre. Ceci n’est pas toujours nécessaire avec une publication universitaire “document de travail” (je ne sais pas si cela a été réalisé avec ce papier ou non).
Les auteurs ont échangé brièvement avec moi, Louise Persson et d’autres sur le blog de Niklas Dougherty, peu de temps après que Louise et moi avons publié un article critiquant l’évaluation du gouvernement sur le Svenska Dagbladet. Niklas a demandé certaines des informations affirmées par les auteurs, soulignant la grande erreur qu’ils ont commise lors de l’acceptation erronée de chiffres danois sur la prostitution de rue – des données qui ont été discréditées au Parlement danois l’an dernier ainsi que dans les médias récemment. Je trouve inconcevablement irresponsable que des chercheurs désireux de se présenter comme «scientifiques» utilisent des données connues comme fausses.
Sur le blog de Niklas (voir les commentaires ), j’ai confronté les auteurs pour échouer de ne pas reconnaître que les «données» qu’ils prétendent utiliser sont intrinsèquement fausses et donc inutilisables. J’ai dit
C’est un fantasme de croire qu’on peut parler de «données» quand il n’y a pas d’accord sur ce qui doit être compté. Certains projets de comptage appellent toutes les femmes migrantes vendant du sexe des victimes de la traite. D’autres appellent tous les sans-papiers des victimes de la traite. D’autres encore appellent toutes les femmes qui vendent du sexe des victimes de la traite. Les chiffres proviennent de petites ONG et des services de police qui utilisent des définitions différentes et souvent admettent être confus.
Je fais aussi exception de ce qu’on me donne de preuves de lieux minuscules, et super-homogènes comme Bergen (Norvège). La recherche nordique est sur des lieux très petits avec des histoires très récentes et courtes d’immigration, la migration clandestine étant encore plus faible. Il est trompeur et ridicule de comparer les «données» de ces sites avec l’ensemble des grands pays ayant des antécédents de migration longs et variés.
La réponse défensive (et inexpérimentée) a été de m’accuser d’être anti-science. Cela n’a aucun sens. Le principe est ici connu partout comme- Entrée de mauvaises données, mauvais résultats (Garbage in, garbage out): peu importe à quel point votre modèle statistique est joli ou quelle machine de luxe vous avez pour croquer les chiffres si les informations d’origine que vous mettez sont de la foutaise, et je suis loin d’être la seule à le penser. La «science» que nous voulons voir est honnête.
Voici l’examen par les pairs, que les auteurs auraient reçu si leur document de travail avait été envoyé à Paula Thomas, une mathématicienne et analyste des statistiques au Royaume-Uni (et si vous êtes intimidés par la langue, regardez le dernier paragraphe).
Commentaires sur le droit et l’économie de l’esclavage sexuel international
1. Le vecteur X_i
Seules les informations à titre indicatif sont données pour ce qu’elles sont. On nous dit (p12) qu’elles comprennent la population, le PIB, la part de la migration (est-ce seulement l’immigration?), Les saisies d’héroïne et une mesure de la primauté du droit. Il semble qu’il y avait d’autres choses dans le vecteur, mais nous ne sommes pas informés de ce qu’elles sont.
Mais ici les principales faiblesses sont de trois ordres: –
(A) L’utilisation de données catégoriques
Les données catégoriques sont, à mon avis, dangereuses, car: –
(I) Elles imposent des jugements de valeur.
(II) Plus sérieusement elles occultent l’ampleur d’un problème tout en apparaissant le clarifier.
(II) sont mieux illustrées à partir des chiffres du crime. Le Service de Police London’s Metropolitan a un système de cartographie du crime excellente. Cependant elle a quelques faiblesses, et celle qui est pertinente ici est l’utilisation de données catégoriques (heureusement cela est atténué par l’utilisation de chiffres réels aussi). Ma propre région est passée d’au dessus de la moyenne pour le cambriolage résidentiel en mai 2010 à faible pour Juin 2010 sur la base qu’il y avait trois crimes de moins! Ai-je besoin d’en dire plus?
(B) L’absence de toute tentative de modéliser (la traite Delta), qui est le changement dans la traite au cours du temps.
(C) L’absence de clarté quant à la façon dont les variables de pondération beta_0 et beta_1 ont été choisies. En particulier le doute doit entourer beta_1 puisque c’est une pondération unique pour un vecteur d’ensemble et que les éléments du vecteur ont des unités différentes, de sorte que certaines analyses dimensionnelles auraient dû être effectuées.
Il serait très utile s’il y avait une section appropriée «méthodologie» pour expliquer les processus utilisé pour obtenir les résultats cités.
2. Le modèle utilisé
Le modèle est un modèle de régression logistique de la formule normale pour ce qui est: –
z = beta_0 + somme (de i = 1 à n) (beta_ {i} x_ {i})
Normalement, ce modèle ne s’applique que lorsque les données sont modélisées par une distribution binomiale.
Une question doit alors être, est ce que les données sont ici une distribution binomiale? Il s’agit pour les auteurs du rapport de le justifier.
Je remarque aussi l’utilisation d’un «terme d’erreur normalement distribuée.” Quelle erreur ce terme exprime t’il? Et comment?
Un autre point est que la variable «z» n’est pas utilisée directement. Le calcul de probabilité est: –
P (event = oui) = 1 / (1-e ^-z)
Ce qui indique comme point qui saute aux yeux que la traite n’est pas un approprié z.
L’événement de la variable z donne la probabilité qu’un événement doit être oui ou non. Puisque la traite est seulement sur une base individuelle oui / non (c.-à-d que le niveau de la traite n’est pas oui ou non), le modèle est suspect.
Les conseils probables aux rédacteurs du journal: l’article n’est pas publiable sans révisions majeures.
Louise Persson et moi même nous sommes plaintes bruyamment à deux reprises dans les media suédois francaissur l’absence totale de principe scientifique et de méthode dans l’évaluation du gouvernement de sa loi criminalisant les clients des travailleurs du sexe. Anna Skarhed n’a jamais répondu, ni personne d’autre qui aurait pu vouloir défendre le rapport publié en juillet. Or, il s’avère à présent qu’en décembre Skarhed a admis ouvertement à un journaliste du Conseil national suédois pour la prévention du crime qu’ellene s’était jamais souciéede scienceou de méthodologiepour le moindre.
Certains se sont opposés à la validité scientifique de notre enquête. Très bien, mais à mon avis, nous avons pu montrer que la loi a eu un effet conformément à son objectif: montrer que nous ne voulons pas de la prostitution dans notre société.
[En del har haft invändningar mot vetenskapligheten i vår utredning. Det kan man ha, men enligt min syn har vi kunnat visa att lagen haft effekt utifrån syftet: att visa att vi inte vill ha prostitution i samhället.]
Il est incorrect de se référer à un effet quand aucune recherche n’a été faite pour savoir s’il en existe au moins un, mais le sens de Skarhed est clair: Lebutdel’évaluation diten’a jamais étéd’évaluerquoi que ce soitmaisplutôtde démontrerune idéologie: unestratégie typique pour mettre Fin à la Demande. Il s’agit donc de double langage orwellien de déclarer que quoi que ce soit ait été en fait enquêté ou évalué. Tout ce qu’ils ont fait ne fut que prétendre du semblant, et de dépenser de l’argent public.
Cela devrait faire la une des journaux ! Même si je sais que beaucoup de suédois s’opposent à ce genre d’arrogance philistine, ce n’est pas si facile de démonter une politique une fois qu’elle a été intégrée par la bureaucratie et forme une part de l’identité nationale. Cependant, il y a des indications que plus de gens que d’habitude sont fâchés – sur lequel je reviendrais, plus tard.
Un nouvel examen de l’interdiction de la Suède d’acheter du sexe a fourni peu de preuves que la politique de prohibition a fonctionné, écrit Laura Agustín, mais peu de politiciens ont osé faire remarquer ses échecs évidents.
Tous les Suédois savent que la célèbre loi contre l’achat de sexe – sexköpslagen – est une patate chaude. Peu de politiciens ont commenté d’une façon ou d’une autre sur l’évaluation de la loi annoncée le 2 juillet, et seul un fonctionnaire du gouvernement a affirmé qu’elle prouve que la loi est un succès. Étant donné que le rapport a été vivement critiqué comme vide de preuve et de méthodologie, mais plein d’idéologie dans sa mission même, le débat a été curieusement muet, même pour la période de l’année.
A une autre période de l’histoire la loi contre l’achat de sexe aurait pu être considérée comme une pièce mineure de la législation sur un problème social simple. Peu de gens meurent, sont mutilés à vie ou perdent leurs maisons et leurs emplois à cause de la prostitution ici; d’autres menaces à la sécurité et au bonheur national peuvent paraître plus pressantes.
Mais une faction féministe promeut l’idéologie que les prostituées sont toujours, par définition, les victimes d’une violence contre les femmes. En tant que victimes, elles ne peuvent pas être des criminelles, ainsi ce côté de l’échange de sexe contre de l’argent n’est pas pénalisé, tandis que ceux qui achètent sont les auteurs d’un crime grave. Cette idéologie, une opinion minoritaire dans d’autres pays, prédomine chez les féministes d’État suédoises qui prétendent que l’existence du commerce de sexe est un obstacle majeur à la réalisation de l’égalité de genre. Un tel dogme est étrange, étant donné le très petit nombre de personnes engagées dans la vente de sexe dans un État-providence qui ne les exclut pas de ses services et avantages. Il n’est pas illégal de vendre du sexe en Suède, seulement de l’acheter.
L’évaluation s’est appuyée lourdement sur les données à petite échelle de la prostitution de rue, parce que c’était plus facile à trouver. Nul doute que la plupart des travailleurs du sexe sont allés ailleurs après que la loi est entrée en vigueur, et personne ne sait où ils sont allés. Mais les évaluateurs ont soutenu leur cause en affirmant que la prostitution de rue a augmenté au Danemark, où il n’existe pas de loi, en utilisant les informations d’une ONG de Copenhague dont les données ont été gonflées puis exposées au Parlement l’an dernier. La prostitution de rue est connue, en tout cas, pour constituer une petite partie, et en diminution, de l’ensemble de l’industrie du sexe.
Le rapport admet que «la prostitution sur Internet» était difficile à rechercher, mais présente une mauvaise compréhension de la multiplicité des entreprises, des emplois et des réseaux qui caractérisent l’industrie du sexe. Demander aux fonctionnaires de police et aux travailleurs sociaux ce qu’ils pensent sur ce qui se passe n’est pas un substitut pour une vraie recherche, et aucune étude universitaire ne prétend connaître l’ampleur de la prostitution ici. Un rapport du gouvernement de 2007 a admis qu’il était difficile de trouver quoi que ce soit sur la prostitution en Suède.
L’évaluation ne rend pas compte de la façon dont la recherche a été effectivement réalisée – sa méthode -, mais est plein de documentation sur l’histoire suédoise et sur pourquoi la prostitution est mauvaise. Seuls 14 travailleurs du sexe ont été effectivement sollicités pour avis sur la loi, dont sept avaient déjà cessé de vendre du sexe. C’est un affichage plutôt pathétique.
Plusieurs commentateurs de la presse ont saisi l’occasion pour attaquer la loi elle-même, puisque, malgré les affirmations régulières du gouvernement que la majorité des Suédois soutiennent la loi, l’opposition est féroce. Dans la blogosphère et autres forums en ligne, les libéraux, libertaires et membres non-conformes des principaux partis résistent sans relâche à une vision réductrice de la sexualité dans laquelle les femmes vulnérables sont toujours menacées par des hommes prédateurs.
Mais la plupart des politiciens se sentent sans doute peu de bonne volonté à venir se plaindre d’une législation désormais symbolique de Mère Suède. L’Institut Suédois a fait de l’abolition de la prostitution une part de la marque de la nation, ce qu’ils appellent un “paquet multi-facettes pour rendre la Suède attrayante pour le monde extérieur.” L’IS, qui prétend représenter le pays le plus «socialement libéral » de la planète, célèbre l’égalité de genre et l’amour gay avec Ingmar Bergman, la haute technologie et les forêts de pins.
La Suède se classe incontestablement à un rang élevé sur plusieurs mesures d’égalité de genre, comme le nombre de femmes qui travaillent à l’extérieur du foyer, leurs salaires et la durée du congé parental. Mais d’autres politiques considérées comme faisant partie de l’égalité de genre sont beaucoup plus difficiles à mesurer: le changement culturel, comment les gens ressentent la différence sexuelle et, surtout, l’effet d’une interdiction d’achat de services sexuels. Il n’est donc guère surprenant que l’évaluation du gouvernement ne présente pas de preuve que les relations entre les hommes et les femmes se sont améliorées en Suède en raison de la loi. La principale recommandation de l’évaluation est de rigidifier la punition infligée aux hommes qui achètent du sexe.
Il y avait quelque chose de nouveau cependant dans le positionnement sur la loi de la ministre de la Justice à la presse internationale – une allégation selon laquelle elle a été prouvée efficace pour combattre la criminalité organisée, notamment celle appelée traite sexuelle. Ne citant aucune preuve, le rapport affirme qu’il y a moins de traite en Suède parce qu’elle est maintenant «moins attractive» pour les trafiquants.
Ces déclarations naïves soutiennent que, sans une demande pour le commerce du sexe, il n’y a pas d’offre, ignorant la complexité des moyens dont les marchés du sexe contre argent fonctionnent dans des cultures avec des concepts différents sur la famille et l’amour, réduisant un large éventail d’activités sexuelles à une notion abstraite de violence et écartant les nombreuses personnes qui confirment qu’elles préfèrent vendre du sexe à d’autres moyens de subsistance.
En ce qui concerne la lutte contre la traite, il n’existe aucune preuve. Les statistiques continuent d’être une source de conflit dans les débats internationaux, car les différents pays, institutions et chercheurs ne s’entendent pas sur ce qui constitue réellement la traite. Cela n’aide pas que le féminisme intégriste refuse d’accepter la distinction entre traite des êtres humains et le passage clandestin humain lié à la migration du travail informel, telle qu’elle est consacrée dans la Convention des Nations Unies sur la criminalité organisée.
Le gouvernement suédois n’a rien prouvé avec cette évaluation, et la plupart des politiciens suédois se tiennent tranquilles, car il est évident qu’ils le savent.
A lot of people never wanted the Olympics to come to London and are unhappy about what all the ‘development’ means in easterm areas of the city – thus the negative graffiti on a countdown meter in the photo. The boroughs most directly affected by the games know by now that there is no need to panic about 40 000 prostitutes or victims of trafficking descending: there have been too many debunkings, on this website and numerous others. People do wonder if they ought to be Doing Something though. One of these boroughs, Waltham Forest, has invited me as an expert witness to a community meeting to be held next week, on the 27th – perhaps I will see some readers there?
A report called The 2012 Games and human trafficking: Identifying possible risks and relevant good practice from other cities came out not long ago, and seems to say that everything is possible but nothing is actually known about trafficking to events like the Olympics. Just to be on the safe side, though, a special unit of the police have begun raiding flats in the Olympics’s boroughs.
Scotland Yard has been accused of endangering sex workers after it emerged that officers were targeting brothels in London’s Olympic boroughs as part of a coordinated clean-up operation ahead of the 2012 games. The Yard’s human exploitation and organised crime command (SCD9) was launched in April last year, bringing together expertise in the fields of clubs and vice, human trafficking and immigration crime. The command incorporates a team dedicated to tackling vice-related crime in the five Olympic host boroughs: Waltham Forest, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Greenwich.
Figures recently released to parliament by the Home Office show SCD9 carried out 80 brothel raids between January to August 2010 in the five boroughs. There were a further 20 raids in Westminster and 13 in Camden – the two boroughs expected to play host to the majority of tourists who come to the capital for the games. In contrast, in the remaining 25 London boroughs, there were just 29 raids over the same period.
Similar vice crackdowns have taken place in other countries hosting major sporting events. The London initiative comes amid disputed claims that increased numbers of sex workers will try to work in the capital during the Olympics. But the probation union, Napo, claimed the crackdown would have unintended consequences. “Attempts to remove sex workers from the Olympic boroughs will be only a partial success,” said Harry Fletcher, Napo’s assistant general secretary. “The strategy will drive the trade underground and prohibition merely distorts the laws of supply and demand. As a consequence, the trade will be more dangerous for women. Policy initiatives should address real problems, such as housing, health and safety, and not be based on flawed ideology which distorts the market and endangers the women.” Figures from the Open Door agency, a health clinic based in East London, appear to partially confirm Napo’s claim. The agency reported that there has already been a significant displacement of sex workers throughout Newham, with a decline of 25% in referrals to health clinics since the previous year. Napo said it appeared the women had not stopped working, but were moving to other areas where they could be more at risk of rape, robbery and assault.
The decision by police to target brothels has been controversial. SCD9 specialises in helping people being held against their will or who have been trafficked to work in the sex industry. But critics say it is driven by a mistaken belief that this applies to many women in the brothels. Two high-profile Metropolitan police operations, Pentameter 1 and 2, resulted in 1,337 premises being raided. This led to 232 arrests under Pentameter 1 and 528 under Pentameter 2. More than 250 women were removed and 37 took up services from support projects.
“Research shows no increase in trafficking of women during international sports events,” said a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes. “Figures on the numbers of women trafficked into the UK have been exposed as false, yet they are still used as an excuse to hound sex workers. Prohibition has never done anything but drive sex workers underground and into more danger. Is the government prepared for further tragedies like Ipswich and Bradford?”
The Met said so far it had not seen any evidence of an increase in trafficking of sex workers in the five Olympic boroughs, but pledged that its officers would continue to try to assist victims and seek the prosecution of those responsible. “We do not believe that tackling vice drives prostitution underground and have not seen evidence of this,” a spokesman said. “Brothels will always need to advertise, which assists us in developing our intelligence picture in this area.”
Did the Olympics affect London’s sex industry? As everyone now knows, speculation about the relationship between big sports events and sex trafficking continues despite evidence that no...
Anyone with romantic ideas about Europe’s sophisticated tolerance of all matters sexual is due for disenchantment. A Europe free from prostitution is the name of the European Women’s Lobby’s campaign, which I find questionable because they receive public funding from the EU yet several member states permit and regulate at least some forms of selling sex. But the EWL have always had a political commitment ‘to work towards a Europe free from prostitution, by supporting key abolitionist principles which state that the prostitution of women and girls constitutes a fundamental violation of women’s human rights, a serious form of male violence against women, and a key obstacle to gender equality in our societies.‘
Then last December the European Parliament passed new rules against traffickingthat included the recommendation ‘to discourage demand, Member States should also consider taking measures to establish as a criminal offence the use of services of a victim, with the knowledge that he/she has been trafficked.’ This is a perfect example of the slide between anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution.
However, France has responded positively to the idea and is now the latest country to put criminalising clients of sex workers on the mainstream political agenda. Note that sponsorship of the law comes from both left- and right-wing parties (this is usual). And that France has prohibited indoor prostitution (maisons closes/brothels) for 65 years and persecutes migrant sex workers regularly outdoors. Forget the romantic cliché.
A parliamentary commission of French MPs on Wednesday recommended treating the clients of prostitutes as criminals who should face fines of up to £2,500 or prison. The Socialist Danielle Bousquet and Guy Geoffroy of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP said that 80 per cent of the estimated 20,000 sex-workers in France were foreigners and victims of slavery or trafficking. [Note from LA: this claim from a UN report in 2009 has never been and cannot be substantiated.]
“To penalise clients is to make them understand that they are participating in a form of exploitation of the vulnerability of others,” said their report. Roselyne Bachelot, the social affairs minister, said she supported the proposals. “There is no such thing as freely chosen and consenting prostitution. The sale of sexual acts means women’s bodies are made available for men, independently of the wishes of those women.”
While proposals for a law could be drawn up this month, it is unlikely to reach parliament before next year. In France brothels have been illegal since 1946 and pimping is against the law as is paying for sex with a minor. But prostitution is not outlawed. Mr Sarkozy toughened prostitution rules in 2003 while interior minister in a controversial law forbidding women to loiter in prostitution hang outs in revealing clothes. Sex-workers’ groups in France regularly stage demonstrations demanding a proper legal status. A recent survey found six out of ten French men and women wanted brothels to be legalised. . .
At an event at the British Academy in London the other day I used the term Extremist Feminism to describe the sort that convicted a man for buying sex in Sweden although evidence was lacking to show he had bought it, on the ground that he should have known that someone must have paid. The court assumed the female playmates in a hotel room to be prostitutes because of their appearance and their foreign-accented English. Dismal stereotyping of women going on there – not so different from the comment about disreputable women made with impunity by a hotel magnate in Luxor. Extremist also describes feminists who evaluated the sex-buying law without doing any actual investigation but declared it a success on purely ideological principles. And who then proceeded to propose increased penalties for clients convicted. Extremism means assuming men have bad intentions towards women and seeing their sexualities, and in fact their bodies themselves, as inherently exploitative. Others have used extremist to refer to man-haters like Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, and people throw around ruder terms like feminazi. But I prefer not to sound like someone trying to discredit all sorts of feminism.
I usually use the term fundamentalist feminism, referring to a stream of feminism that wants to go back ‘to the roots’, by which they mean early 1960s universalist feminism, the idea that Woman can be known through a biologically female body and Women are all ultimately alike. Authoritarian Feminism is another possible term, this time putting emphasis on the tendency of fundamentalists to decree that their view is the only correct one and must be followed by everyone. Theory calling itself radical feminism in the 1960s has moved in a direction Orwell might have called Big Sister Feminism, where no disagreement is brooked. This particular feminism happens to hold power in Swedish government bureaucracy. It is State Feminism (coming from government employees empowered to set policy on women and gender), but there is no reason why State Feminism should have to be extremist; this is just how history has played out in Sweden. This view of women and men exists in every country I have lived in, and that is quite a few. And my, how many extremist feminists wish it would play out the same way in their countries! Here is the review of the BA event from Something Dark, in which government attempts to censor and silence were discussed in detail.
A UK academic organisation, the Onscenity* research network, hosted a seminar at the British Academy, London, on 1 February to draw attention to increasing state regulation of sex in relation to media, labour and the internet.
Julian Petley, professor of screen media and journalism at London’s Brunel University, chaired the seminar, and introduced it with his own presentation, “Censoring the image”. Petley is a veteran advocate of free speech, and he once again demonstrated his detailed grasp of a broad range of censorship and free speech issues in the United Kingdom.
Petley began his delivery with the sobering declaration that there were many UK laws limiting freedom of speech; he then tabled an overview of these laws, their history and their socio–legal impact today. He drew particular attention to the evolution and problems of the Obscene Publications Act (OPA), various child protection laws, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008.
He pointed to how the typology of child sexual abuse imagery adopted by the UK legal system regarding the mildest category, “level 1” – which refers to “images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity” – had led to “controversy”, for example, by allowing for “police bullying” of galleries exhibiting the work of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe [see the feature articles concerning Mapplethorpe from page 28 in SomethingDark webmagazine issue 1, beginning with “Twenty years later: Mapplethorpe, art and politics”; see also our Latest News entry of 9 July 2010, “Further viewing – the art of Robert Mapplethorpe”].
Regarding the CJIA 2008, specifically the sections criminalising simple possession of “extreme pornographic material”, Petley repeated the oft-quoted charge of critical specialists by stating the law was so vague and subjective that it is impossible for anyone to know whether a great body of material will be regarded as illegal or not. He summarised the approach of regulators as one that tends to “collapse” the offensive into the harmful, “as if being offended is the same as being harmed”.
The first speaker, Martin Barker, professor of film and television studies at Aberystwyth University, in his presentation “The problems of speaking about porn”, outlined the difficulties faced by individuals, including academic researchers, in dealing with themes of sex and pornography due to the stigma often attached to critics of heavy-handed regulation by the advocates of such regulation.
Barker referred to “the politics of disgust” and summarised the results of a survey he had conducted on print media coverage of issues concerning pornography. He said tabloid press coverage of “pornography” had increased since 2000 but had fluctuated within this trend, and consisted of two attitudes: (a) a “prurient fascination”; and, (b) an exaggerated morality that proclaimed certain categories of sexually oriented material as kinky and unacceptable.
Revealingly, Barker spent more time on broadsheet coverage, particularly on a steady increase in their use of the term “porn” as a metaphor with a range of negative connotations. He maintained the evidence suggested that the individual and subjective, emotional response of disgust automatically authorises commentators to adopt a simplified, morally superior position when dealing with complex issues such as pornography, and that “the politics of disgust” was driving public discourse and regulation.
Yaman Akdeniz, formerly at the University of Leeds but now an associate professor of law at Istanbul Bilgi University, outlined his work in legal campaigns to reduce the growing censorship of the internet by the Turkish state. He emphasised his concern at the potential for a “domino effect” that would see developing countries seize upon internet- and website-blocking policies, either already implemented or proposed, in developed Western countries such as the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia as justification for furthering their own, already relatively severe, censorship of the internet.
Turning his attention to the case being made for restricting internet access in the Western world, Akdeniz stressed the increasing prominence of arguments claiming that child protection demanded more robust, state-enforced internet regulation and censorship that targets all forms of sexual content, not just child abuse material. He cited an article in the Guardian newspaper from December to illustrate the pro-censorship argument being furthered in the United Kingdom, in this case as advocated by the UK parliamentary under-secretary of state for culture, communications and creative industries, Ed Vaizey.
Laura Agustín, a consultant anthropologist and author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007), focussed on attempts to regulate sexuality and society based on exaggerated claims regarding the extent of human trafficking in the international sex industry. She had recently counselled lawyers for Julian Assange of Wikileaks notoriety, who sought her advice on Swedish rape law in preparing their client’s defence against extradition to Sweden. Agustín, who has lived and worked in Sweden, criticised “state feminism” in the Scandinavian country, describing it as “extremism” that “has gone too far”. She went on to discuss Sweden’s “sex purchase law”, which criminalises those who pay for sexual services – a law that, using unsound and concocted, ideologically driven research, was last July evaluated by the Swedish government as having significantly reduced prostitution and prevented trafficking. It is a law that has been marketed with some success to other countries, including the United Kingdom.
Agustín narrated her experience as a panelist at the BBC World Debate Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped?, held in Luxor, Egypt, on 12 December 2010, which she likened to a “religious revivalism” meeting for “the rescue industry”. This industry, she maintained, bases much of its fervour on enthusiastically publicised – but bogus – statistics on the numbers of trafficked women. She emphasised the fact that sound and genuine research on the subject does not exist, but this does not deter the rescue industry from what is, in effect, a misguided and unrealistic attempt to eradicate prostitution globally, with damaging social consequences at ground level in individual countries [see Laura Agustín’s blog entry, “BBC World Debate on Trafficking Online: Sex, lies and videotaping”].
Clarissa Smith, senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, rounded off the seminar with a summary of the issues and the work that lies ahead in contributing towards the realisation of a more mature society.
Onscenity is a research network dedicated to developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. It draws on the work of leading scholars from around the world and is working to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and to coordinate a new wave of research in relevant fields. The body was founded in 2009 with funding from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). “Sex and Regulation” was Onscenity’s second seminar.
Talking about human rights and pity goes nowhere with some people who want to end prostitution. What about how much it costs to jail them, then? Do the taxpayers of Harris County, Texas, really want to be spending $2.3 million a year housing and feeding sex workers? Do all Texas taxpayers want to use $8 million for this? It is inconceivable. This story quotes women who sell sex in order to buy drugs about their repeated arrests and how they feel about a new programme to help them get unaddicted. What’s missing are the figures on just how much the rehabilitation costs in money (leaving self-esteem, rights and all other humanist values aside), and how they calculate that cost. Such rehabilitation programmes are not for everyone, whether they are addicted to a drug or not, but it seems obvious that everyone in a prohibitionist context should get a chance to try it.
Houston: Every year, millions of tax dollars in Texas are spent on prostitutes. The money goes for housing hundreds of them in Texas prisons and Harris County jails. The 11 News I-Team found Texas has tougher laws for prostitution than most states, which can mean prostitutes can be charged as felons. That qualifies them for prison.
But the I-Team found one relatively new program in Houston that may be a far more cost-effective way to prosecute prostitutes. In researching the story, the I-Team talked with three former prostitutes about their previous lives and the punishment they faced.
“Do what you do, it’s over in a few minutes and you got this money,” said Loisteen Phillips. “You can go anywhere to find a customer,” she said of her time spent selling her services in Houston.
“If he looked like a treat, we tricked him,” said Alfonette Thomas.
“(It’s) the oldest profession on the face of the earth,” said Kathryn Griffin Townsend. Townsend and Phillips said they were repeatedly arrested. “Many times,” said Phillips. She said she had over 20 arrests.[The Harris County jail] became a home away from home for me, a revolving door,” Phillips said.
They were hardly alone. At the county jail recently, there were 130 inmates charged with prostitution. Assuming that number is constant for a year, and with each alleged prostitute costing just under $50 a day to care for, Harris County taxpayers are therefore spending some $2.3 million a year on them.
Then there’s the state prison system. The 11 News I-Team found that Texas is one of only seven states where prostitution can even get you time in prison (the other states besides Texas that make repeat offenses a potential felony are Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Illinois and Michigan).
The I-Team checked Texas prison data and found that in 2009, the state held over 300 female prostitutes at a total estimated cost to taxpayers of nearly $8 million a year.
“Three or more prostitution convictions, we’ll send you to prison five or 10 years. No other state even thinks about that,” said State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “I had no idea how severe the penalties were,” said former prostitute Townsend, who moved here from California. “I was terrified,” she said about getting sent to prison. She said she actually did spend one year in a Texas facility. It convinced her that she wanted to quit prostitution.
But here’s the thing: each of the women told the I-Team that prostitution wasn’t their real problem — drugs were. “I wanted my high, I wanted my drug,” said Thomas. Townsend agreed. “Drugs had become the pimp,” she said. Probation officers and court employees said it is the common denominator when they work with prostitutes. “The ladies are in prostitution to support their drug habit,” said Bernadine Gatling, with Harris County Community Supervision.
But as the I-Team found at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, there’s now a new way to prosecute prostitutes. It’s called the STAR court (Success Through Addiction Recovery). The court launched in 2003, and its aim was to exclusively handle addicts, male and female, getting them into treatment — not jail — so they hopefully wouldn’t come back. Of the women who began showing up in front of the STAR court judges, one thing stood out: the majority of them were, or had been, prostitutes. But now, instead of being sent back to jail, they’re getting drug treatment — closely supervised by a judge, who they have to report to weekly. The court has a vastly different decorum than what you might expect.
One of the judges who rotates through the court, Denise Bradley, smiled as she greeted the women, one after another, as they reported their progress to her in various recovery programs. After one woman told the judge about her arrest on cocaine charges and her ongoing substance abuse treatment, Judge Bradley told her: “You’re doing great, we’re very proud of you.” Then, the courtroom erupted in applause from the other offenders, as well as court personnel. “It’s so night and day from what it would be in a regular criminal court,” said Townsend. She went through the STAR program and said it saved her life. Phillips said the same. “They have people who come teach you about how to get a job, how to be a lady, how to talk, how to recognize your defects of character,” said Phillips.
The court staff who runs the program told 11 News it doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure beats just sending them to jail over and over and at a fraction of the cost. “I have quite a few ladies that are doing very well,” said Gatling with Community Supervision. Bradley agreed. “I’d say it’s one of the most effective uses of taxpayer dollars that occur here in the courthouse,” she said. Currently, the program can help only a fraction of the women prosecuted in Harris County for prostitution.
Louise Persson and I have twice complained loudly in the Swedish media about the complete absence of scientific principle and method in the government’s evaluation of its law criminalising clients of sex workers. Anna Skarhed never replied, nor did anyone else who might be expected to want to defend the report published in July. Now it turns out that in December Skarhed admitted quite openly to a reporter from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention that she never cared about science or methodology the slightest bit.
Some have objected to the scientific validity of our investigation. Which is fine, but in my view we have been able to show that the law has had a effect in accordance to the objective: to show that we don’t want prostitution in society.
[En del har haft invändningar mot vetenskapligheten i vår utredning. Det kan man ha, men enligt min syn har vi kunnat visa att lagen haft effekt utifrån syftet: att visa att vi inte vill ha prostitution i samhället.]
It is wrong to refer to effect when you have done no research to find out if one even exists, but Skarhed’s meaning is clear: The goal of the so-called evaluation was never to evaluate anything but instead to demonstrate ideology: a typical End Demand strategy. So it is Orwellian double-speak to claim anything was actually investigated or evaluated. All they did was pretend, and spend public money on it.
This should be front-page news! Although I know that many Swedish people object to this sort of philistine arrogance, it is not so easy to dismantle a policy once it has become embedded in bureaucracy and forms part of a national brand. However, there are indications that more people than usual are annoyed – about which, more later.
Interested folk (not just academics, I am urged to say) are invited to a seminar on sex and regulation at the British Academy in London on 1 February 2011 from 1400 to 1700. The seminar focuses on the regulation of sex in relation to three key areas: media, labour and the internet.
Speakers
Laura Agustin, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007)
Yaman Akdeniz, author of Internet Child Pornography and the Law (2008)
Martin Barker, author of The Video Nasties (1984), Ill Effects: The Media-Violence Debate (2001), and The Crash Controversy (2001)
Julian Petley, author of Censoring the Word (2007) and Censorship: A Beginner’s Guide (2009) will introduce and chair the event.
Nearest tube: Charing Cross (Cockspur Street exit), Piccadilly Circus (Lower Regent Street exit)
Buses: Piccadilly Circus, Lower Regent Street, Haymarket, Trafalgar Square
Wheelchair access: The British Academy has access for most wheelchairs.
The seminar is organized by the AHRC funded Onscenity research network. If you would like to attend, let Feona Attwood know before 20 January: f.attwood [at] shu.ac.uk. She will confirm you have a place.
You would scarcely know that selling sex on your own is legal in England from reading this story about a town in the Midlands. Residents get annoyed by the sight and sound of interactions between street workers and punters, and contradictory laws make pleasing everyone impossible. But note how this particular ‘prostitution campaign’ is aimed at stopping it, at moving prostitutes on – to where? To nowhere.
How is this possible if it is legal to sell sex? Because a lot of other activities are not legal, including kerb-crawling, owning a brothel, working in a brothel and a range of promotional activities, including soliciting, loitering and putting up cards with contact information in public places. The result is that the person standing in the street looking for customers gets moved on, over and over.
Campaigns against kerb-crawling belong to the now-common End Demand strategy, which, in its most pretentious form aspires to stop everyone on the planet from ever buying sex from other people. Other techniques include attempting to shame world-be clients about their masculinity, as Spanish billboards illustrate. Kerb-crawling is a far more modest police target which only wants to stop cars from stopping to discuss sexual transactions with people in the street. Tactics include signs like these, closed-circuit television cameras, threats to post names publicly and the occasional street operation to arrest drivers, to which the media are invited so pictures will show how active the police are. Meanwhile, the sex workers are moved on. Here is the story from Luton.
Police are hailing a four month long operation to combat prostitution in High Town as a resounding success. The number of complaints made to officers regarding sex workers and anti-social behaviour in the area have fallen dramatically say police, after an operation involving several other local authorities including Luton Borough Council, began in August. The three phased campaign was launched after mounting anger from residents.
It included an observation stage where officers talked to sex workers followed by high profile police action and publicity aimed at deterring kerb crawlers. The latest phase of the campaign, which lasted eight weeks, came to an end last week with the metal lamp post signs and billboard at Dudley Street being removed.
Regular patrols aimed at deterring and arresting kerb crawlers has seen the number of vehicles fall and far fewer people loitering on street corners. . .
. . . we think the three phase approach has really worked to deter the problem and at the last High Town meeting, residents said that they were keen to see the signs and billboard used elsewhere should it be necessary. Obviously, the sex trade has been and will continue to be, a longer term problem so the partnership is still actively responding to residents’ concerns. Where we’ve heard of sex workers loitering at new locations we’ve visited the affected residents, started observations and redeployed street cleaning services to remove litter and needles.
The Luton News exclusively revealed in September how Operation Turtle had seen police step up patrols in High Town asking sex workers to move on, issuing warning letters to kerb-crawlers and adding their details to the police Automatic Number Plate Recognition database so they could be easily identified if they reoffended. . .
Given the considerable confusion about Julian Assange’s sex with a couple of women in Sweden, perhaps what I wrote last year about Swedish rape law can be clarifying.
As regular readers know, I’m trying to figure out how the lovely utopian goal of Gender Equality landed us in a future I never expected, where ‘progressive’ and ‘feminist’ could be associated with policies that position women as innately passive victims. Activists interested in sex-industry legislation usually cite Swedish prostitution law as the fount of all evil, with its criminalisation of the buying of sexual services. This law is a cornerstone of an overall Swedish policy to foment Gender Equality, and so is rape legislation that has led to bizarre statistics commented on in this story published in Sweden’s English-language daily The Local.
Rape is a complicated crime. A research project funded by the European Commission’s Daphne programme reveals that Sweden leads Europe in reports of rape. At 46.5 per 100,000 members of the population, Sweden far surpasses Iceland, which comes next with 36, and England and Wales after that with 26. At the same time, Sweden’s 10 percent conviction rate of rape suspects is one of Europe’s lowest.
The report’s comparative dimension should probably be ignored. Instead of assuming that there are four times as many rapes in Sweden as in neighbouring Denmark or Finland, as the figures suggest, to understand we would have to compare all the definitional and procedural differences between their legal systems. It is significant that Sweden counts every event between the same two people separately where other countries count them as one. Most of Sweden’s rapes involve people who know each other, in domestic settings (Sweden report here).
The countries reporting highest rates of rape are northern European with histories of social programming to end violence against women. In Sweden, Gender Equality is taught in schools and reinforced in public-service announcements. Should we believe that such education has no effect, or, much worse, an opposite effect? Raging anti-feminist men think so, and raging anti-immigrant Swedes blame foreigners. Amnesty International says patriarchal norms are intransigent in Swedish family life. Everyone faults the criminal justice system.
In contemporary Sweden, women and girls are encouraged to speak up assertively about gender bias and demand their rights. Public discussions have revolved around how to achieve equal sex: Gender Equality in the bedroom. We can consult okejsex.nu, an official campaign whose homepage shows pedestrians obliviously passing buildings full of scenes of violence, suggesting it is ubiquitous behind closed doors. Okejsex defines rape as any situation where sex occurs after someone has said no.
In many countries, and in many people’s minds, rape means penetration, usually by a penis, into a mouth, vagina or anus. In Swedish rape law, the word can be used for acts called assault or bodily harm in other countries.
That may be progressive, but it’s also confusing. You don’t have to be sexist or racist to imagine the misunderstandings that may arise. If younger people (or older, for that matter) have been out drinking and dancing and end up in a flat relaxing late at night, we are not surprised that the possibility of sex is raised. The process of getting turned on – and being seduced – is often vague and strange, involving looks and feelings rather than clear intentions. It is easy to go along and actively enjoy this process until some point when it becomes unenjoyable. We resist, but feebly. Sometimes we give in against our true wishes.
Sweden is also proud of its generous policy towards asylum-seekers and other migrants who may not instantly comprehend what Gender Equality means here, or that not explicitly violent or penetrative sex acts are understood as rape. That doesn’t mean that non-Swedes are rapists but that a large area exists where crossed signals are likely, for instance, amongst people out on the town drinking.
Discussions of rape nowadays use examples of women who are asleep, or have taken drugs or drunk too much alcohol, in order to argue that they cannot properly consent to sex. If they feel taken advantage of the next day, they may call what happened rape. The Daphne project’s Sweden researchers propose that those accused of rape ought to have to ‘prove consent’, but attempts to legislate and document seduction and desire are unlikely to succeed.
What isn’t questioned, in most public discussions, is the idea that the problem must be addressed by more laws, ever more explicit and strict. Contemporary society insists that punishment is the way to stop sexual violence, despite evidence suggesting that criminal law has little impact on sexual behaviour.
We want to think that if laws were perfectly written and police, prosecutors and judges were perfectly fair, then rapes would decrease because a) all rapists would go to jail and b) all potential rapists would be deterred from committing crime. Unfortunately, little evidence corroborates this idea. Debates crystallise in black-and-white simplifications that supposedly pit politically correct arguments against the common sense of regular folk. Subtleties and complications are buried under masses of rhetoric, and commentaries turn cynical: ‘Nothing will change’, ‘the police are pigs’, immigrants are terrorists, girls are liars.
Is it realistic or kind to teach that life in Sweden can always be safe, comfortable and impervious to outside influences? That, in the sexual sphere, everything disagreeable should be called rape and abuse? Although the ‘right’ to Gender Equality exists, we cannot expect daily life to change overnight because it does.
Could a visible police presence help to prevent trafficking? Some people say that every bit helps, but it’s hard to believe that handing out leaflets and stickers will discourage any real bad guys. Put some punters off? Possibly. Cause a lot of young women to hide indoors while the police are walking by? Definitely. Note that the big catch described in the operation shown below was a 16-year-old who police suspected of being a prostitute, who said she was sightseeing and whom they forced to go home to her parents. It is hardly a trafficking story, and the cop’s swaggering, gum-chewing imitation of John Wayne doesn’t help. I do think outreach can be useful in raising awareness about some social problems, but the police need some advice in thinking this one through.
On Thursday night, a team of 20 police under the supervision of Pol. Col. Worawong Tongpaiboob –the Superintendent of Human Trade Suppression, Region 2, and Pol. Maj. Nipon Jarernpon –a Deputy Superintendent, visited Walking Street to distribute leaflets, stickers and information regarding the Human Trade Crime Suppression Plan to local people and tourists. The police need help from all of Pattaya’s communities to solve the problems of Human Trafficking Crimes, such as Prostitution, Child Labor, Child Beggars and Child Prostitution more effectively. As Pattaya is a World Class tourist attraction, the number and variety of tourists here draws many criminals to the city.
Human Trafficking statistics in Pattaya are very high, as the city is full of bars, discos and many other adult entertainment venues. Communities must realize that Human Trafficking is one of the worst crimes one person can commit against another, causing great pain to those who are enslaved.
While visiting Walking St., the police found a 16 year old girl sitting with a foreigner in a bar, behaving suspiciously like a prostitute. She was detained and questioned, but claimed that she was only visiting Walking Street for a night of sightseeing. The police warned her about the outcome of the path that the police deemed she was walking on, and contacted her parents to take her home.
In September an Ontario judge struck down three provisions of Canadian prostitution law as causing sex workers’ lives to be riskier than other citizens’. If attempts to delay this new regime fail, soon three activities considered criminal by the law up to now will be allowed: operating brothels, soliciting and living from money earned by someone selling sex. The central government is decrying this decriminalisation, which applies only to Ontario, claiming all manner of dire consequences will ensue:
irreparable harms to the public interest
distinctions in the operation of the Criminal Code between Ontario and the rest of Canada
profound and immediate consequences upon communities, neighbourhoods and women engaged in prostitution in this province
legal uncertainty across Canada
the movement of prostitutes to Ontario from other jurisdictions
more drug trafficking, violence, garbage, noise and traffic from johns
red light districts will emerge
prostitutes’ lives will be in danger
authorities will be powerless to protect residents in vulnerable neighbourhoods
more prostitutes will likely be exploited by pimps
police would be forced to abandon all ongoing investigations
human trafficking, prostitution of minors, extortion and assault will go undetected
four pimps expressed concern that organized criminals will get involved in street prostitution and guns and gang violence will follow
a youth worker said pimps were making preparations to come out of retirement.
an increase of numbers of women on the street would make it easier to camouflage underage prostitutes among them
Canada will be plunged into a social experiment unprecedented in this country that will profoundly and irreversibly alter the status quo
In other words, they are afraid of Change. They are fantasising all the scary things that could happen, but they cannot provide any evidence that they will happen. Since the status quo on prostitution is dysfunctional in so many ways everywhere, an experiment based on sound judicial reasoning seems like a good idea. The government’s argument
that the laws that exist, exist to protect people and protect communities . . . We don’t want people to be lured into this area. We don’t want communities to be dealing with this. These laws have been on the books for a reason and for a long time.
is a weak argument. Think of some of the terrible laws that have been overturned as societies interested in social justice realise they are unjust. New Zealand, which decriminalised the sex industry in a comparable way some time ago, has not been plunged into social chaos, and I suppose Canada belongs to the same socio-legal universe as that country (settled by British migrants, originally, for one big thing).
The predictions, compiled from a number of Canadian media sources, would seem to indicate that this issue will end up in a higher, national court – which is presumably what the sex worker-complainants wanted.
Note on bawds: the Ontario law preserves antiquated language, so the brothel-ban is on bawdy houses, soliciting is known as communicating and avails are what no one is allowed to ‘live off’. The fact that these terms still describe the law was in itself a reason to consider revising it – not for the sake of updating language per se but because the concepts behind them indicate a social context that has changed. I did so appreciate Judge Himel’s analysis of the history of the laws.
An impressively coherent resolution on the decriminalisation of prostitution and sex work has come from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which aims to promote and protect sociological research and teaching on significant problems of social life. They took this resolution in early October, which is written for the US context – one of the world’s hardest for people who sell sex. So despite the horrible reductionism and man-hating from people like Melissa Farley and Swanee Hunt, some mainstream folks understand the difficult complexity of this social problem and how to begin breaking it down: how pleasing.
The 
