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Decriminalising prostitution was supposed to keep sex workers safe – instead, it is more dangerous (23 July 2018) 

I have also visited red light districts in many developing world countries, including South Africa and Asia where the same well meaning but misplaced liberalism has led local authorities to decriminalise prostitution.

At the international Aids conference in Amsterdam this week the myth of the “happy hooker” is once again being propagated, complete with a “sex workers opera”.

If you legalise and celebrate prostitution, the argument goes, you give prostitutes the “agency” they require to lead healthy lives. Prostitution, or “sex work” as it is now flatteringly called, becomes a job “just like any other”.

What the liberal analysis ignores is the market. Prostitution is seldom a simple transaction between two consenting adults. It’s a racket run for profit. Pimps, brothel owners, gangs and organised crime syndicates are behind every red light zone from Holbeck to Harare.

Their public face is a slightly more respectable lobby of sex profiteers, such as those running escort agencies and  strip clubs. They put themselves forward in the media arguing that the safest way to run prostitution is to legitimise it. Many of the so called “sex workers collectives” you my see quoted from time to time are funded by this end of the business.

Even in Amsterdam’s famous red light district, the original ‘tolerance zone’ on which so many others have been modelled, the writing is on the wall. A third of its window brothels in which women are displayed like pieces of meat, are closing down after the city’s mayor admitted its presence was attracting drug dealing, pimping, trafficking and violence.

In Britain, it is a new approach known as the “Nordic model” that politicians are looking to. This is because strong data from Sweden where it was first introduced in 1999 suggests it gives prostitutes the agency they need to seek help, while at the same time restricting demand for prostitution generally and trafficking in particular.

The Nordic model is spreading fast and has been introduced in France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Norway and Iceland. Even Nevada, the only US state where prostitution is legal, is now considering closing its bordellos. In Germany too, where brothels offer “a beer, a burger, and bang all you can”, policy makers are questioning the logic of legalisation.

Unlike many on the liberal left, they do not accept that prostitution is inevitable and pretend it is “just another job”. Instead they have instituted comprehensive exit programmes to assist women to leave prostitution for good.

People tell me it sounds “judgmental” to ask someone if they wish to exit prostitution. Yet everyone of the many women in prostitution I have interviewed over the years has been desperate to get out.

Article from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/23/decriminalising-prostitution-supposed-keep-sex-workers-safe/
