P4P News

Sandra White (Glasgow) (Scottish National Party has laid a motion:

Challenging Man's Demand for Prostitution in Scotland:

That the Parliament welcomes the publication of the report, Challenging Man'
s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland, a collaboration between the Women'
s Support Project in Glasgow and US organisation, Prostitute Research and Education; notes with concern the evidence that men who use prostitutes regularly are more likely to regard other women as “objects” and the link between using prostitutes and sexual violence against women, and believes that the evidence presented in the report will serve to inform and shape the debate and future direction of prostitution in Scotland.

Supported by: Shirley-Anne Somerville, Joe FitzPatrick, Kenneth Gibson, Christina McKelvie, Jamie Hepburn, Bashir Ahmad, Stuart McMillan, Angela Constance, Elaine Smith, Brian Adam, Johann Lamont, Gil Paterson, Bill Kidd, Pauline McNeill

The motion was lodged on Thursday, May 01, 2008.

The mean minded motion refers to the report Challenging Men's Demand [pdf] by Melissa Farley.

A response to the Farley report drafted by some 20 academics and activists (including such familiar names as Michael Goodyear, Ronald Weitzer, and Petra Boynton) has also been submitted to the Scottish Parliament. See Farley Critique [doc file].

Update: Deplorable Report

Thanks to Donald, 30th May 2008

Margo MacDonald has proposed an excellent amendment to Sandra White's mean minded resolution:

S3M-1799.1 Margo MacDonald: Challenging Man'
s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland—

As an amendment to motion (S3M-1799) in the name of Sandra White, leave out from welcomes to end and insert deplores the publication of the report, Challenging Man'
s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland, as it lacks any academic merit, is based on material gathered after payments to respondents, is guilty of bias leading to foolish conclusions and presents the public with a simplistic view of a highly complex subject; notes the outrage expressed by 16 distinguished academics who have joined Dr Jane Scoular, Reader in Law at the University of Strathclyde, in utterly condemning the report, and notes that the academics believe that "this research violates fundamental principles of human research ethics in that there is no evidence of any benefit to the population studied…It seems highly unlikely that the participants were ever informed of the true nature of the research, which could well have influenced their response. This sort of research is dangerous".

The number of sex workers in New Zealand does not appear to have increased since legislation decriminalising prostitution became law, according to a new report.

The Prostitution Law Review Committee was set up to report on the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 three to five years after the Act came into force.

Its report, published today, was based on work carried out by the Christchurch School of Medicine and Victoria University's Crime and Justice Research Centre.

The committee, chaired by former Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Fitzharris, said an accurate count of the number of sex workers was difficult. However, a comparison between the number of sex workers in Christchurch in 1999, before decriminalisation, and 2006 - after the Act was passed - showed the total had stayed approximately the same.

Around 93% of sex workers cited money as the reason for getting into and staying in the sex industry. The most significant barriers to exiting are loss of income, reluctance to lose the flexible working hours available in the sex industry and the camaraderie and sense of belonging that some sex workers describe .

The committee said a Christchurch School of Medicine survey of sex workers found that more than 90% felt they had legal rights under the Act. More than 60% felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law.

Prior to the Act, the illicit status of the sex industry meant sex workers were open to coercion and exploitation by managers, pimps and clients. Research indicated there had been "some improvement" in employment conditions but this is by no means universal.

Generally, brothels which had treated their workers fairly before the Act continued to do so while those that did not continued to have unfair management practices, it said.

Other findings included that the majority of sex workers felt the Act could do little about violence that occurred, although a significant majority felt there had been an improvement since the passing of the Act.

Other recommendations included that the Government provide additional funding to the Ministry of Health to enable medical officers of health to carry out regular inspections of brothels.

It also said the Government should provide funding so that non-government organisations could provide services to the industry, including assistance with exiting for those that wanted to get out of sex work.

Associate Justice Minister Lianne Dalziel said the report showed the Act had had a positive effect on the health and safety of sex workers and had not led to an increase in numbers of sex workers as predicted by critics of the law reform.

German officials are drafting legislation to imprison men for up to 10 years if they obtain sexual services from women forced into prostitution, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel.

A Justice Ministry spokesman confirmed that a discussion document about the bill was under review, but gave no details. He said the parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition had agreed to clamp down on prostitution by duress.

Regular prostitution is legal in Germany, with cities zoning land for brothels. Prostitutes appear on TV and pay income tax.

But authorities are concerned that some women, typically illegal immigrants from poor nations in eastern Europe, are employed against their will by pimps who demand repayment of vast "recruitment fees."

The new rules would make it a crime for a man to commit sexual abuse in a situation where the victim is helpless. Currently it is not a crime to buy the services of a prostitute in Germany.

Spiegel said lawyers in Merkel's own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) considered the draft too weak because a customer could avoid prosecution by saying he did not know.

Legislator Siegfried Kauder said the sexual act should also be a crime if a customer carelessly ignored evidence of duress, such as bruises on a woman.

The justice spokesman said there were plans to pass the legislation before the autumn 2009 general election.

The Dutch government, previously famous for liberalism on issues of personal morality, have announced plans to criminalize the visiting of prostitutes who are not officially licensed.

The Justice Ministry said the move is necessary to force better compliance with the country's legalized prostitution policy.

At the same time, authorities will compel prostitutes to be registered in a national database before they may offer sexual services.

There are still too many problems in the prostitution sector, including human trafficking, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, when a long-standing tolerance policy was formalized.

However, registration rules that are currently only followed by brothels and some large escort agencies will now be enforced for all sex workers, all the way down to "freelance" prostitutes, the ministry said. Prostitutes will need to offer a fixed address and telephone number. Clients will be able to ask for proof of registration to avoid prosecution.

The plans follow similar moves in the city of Amsterdam, which has been harassing prostitution in its famed Red Light District for several years.

For the last few months, Luxemburg has been discussing a applying the Swedish model to the prohibition of prostitution.

In this model, prostitutes are generally viewed as victims of patriarchy and sexual exploitation. Their customer are criminalized via heavy fines or even a prison sentence.

In Luxembourg, a similar model is now planned, both CSV and LSAP (both government political parties) have proposed legislation. No fines but instead community work and/or compulsory education courses on human trafficking, especially women and children.

And a few more stories from Sweden where the fem-nazis have been allowed to run riot

Female pedestrians get road sign recognition

Gender equity hits below the belt for Swedish patients

No more hotel porn for Swedish government officials

Spy cameras are to be used to crack down on kerb crawlers as part of a new bid to repress street prostitution in the Capital.

The city council has received £200,000 from the Scottish Government and plans to spend some of it on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.

They will be placed discreetly in prostitution hot-spots and will log all the vehicles that visit them. The information gathered will alert officers to vehicles which are regularly in the area, and ultimately help them build up a case against kerb crawlers.

Officers have refused to reveal the locations being considered for the cameras and it is unclear exactly how the system will work, though they will have to ensure innocent residents are not wrongly targeted.

The initiative comes on the back of new laws brought in last year which made an offence out of "loitering" in a vehicle, with maximum fines of £1000. Persistent offenders can also have their cars confiscated.

Ruth Morgan-Thomas, project manager at Scotpep, a support group for prostitutes, said: We believe this will leave women more vulnerable by pushing them into more isolated areas. If they put these cameras up in one area it will just push the women to another one, because clients will not go there any more.

As anti-prostitution nutters try to thwart sex trade by going after customers, they said they have faced a big problem: researchers have only the crudest grasp of why men buy sex.

A group of 'researchers'—most of them young women—invited more than 100 Chicago-area men who frequently use prostitutes to talk about their attitudes and experiences.

While the survey, which is not peer-reviewed, is likely to draw justifiable criticism from some academics, the project offers a window into the attitudes of men who buy sex in Chicago.

The results show men are often deeply conflicted about their behavior, said Rachel Durchslag, director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which conducted the survey in Chicago with the Evanston-based Justice Project Against Sexual Harm.

Though most of the men interviewed said they believe there is nothing wrong with prostitution, a large majority, 83%, view buying sex as a form of addiction, according to the study.

Most men said they believed women entered prostitution freely. About 40% of men said they are usually intoxicated when they buy sex.

According to one man who was quoted anonymously in the report, For a small second after I buy sex, I feel happy, and then it's over. It's so fleeting. There's frustration beforehand, and depression afterward [because] it's so quick. Those feelings are always there. They're associated with buying sex.

The survey was designed by anti-prostitution activist Melissa Farley, who is controversial because academics have accused her of tilting previous research to support a political agenda. The Chicago study is part of an international project that includes surveys in Scotland, India and Cambodia. Critics of the Scotland survey called Farley's methods unscientific.

Durchslag said the goal of the research is to push for harsher criminal punishment for men who buy sex from prostitutes, she said. Nearly 90% of the men said that they would stop if they felt there was a likely chance they would be caught and prosecuted.

A poster to supposedly get men to think twice about paying for sex with women who may have been trafficked has been launched.

The government pilot in Nottingham and the borough of Westminster tells men sleeping with a woman forced to work in the sex industry makes them a rapist.

The poster, which will be placed in gents' toilets in pubs and clubs, will be supported by an online advertising campaign.

It shows a brothel entrance with the caption: Walk in a punter. Walk out a rapist."

It also urges men who discover a woman they believe may have been trafficked: If you're man enough, call Crimestoppers.

'Internal Trafficking' Bollox

More propaganda designed to tag all prostitution as 'trafficking'.

Based on article from the BBC

The BBC has been invited to the set of a film sponsored by the Home Office and other organisations, including the UK Human Trafficking Centre and Streetreach - a support group for prostitutes.

When completed, the film will be shown in schools across Britain to warn youngsters about the recently identified problem of "internal trafficking" in which British schoolgirls are seduced by older teenage boys who then pass them on into prostitution.

Writer and director Virginia Heath says she threaded together real events into a fictional storyline: I did a lot or research. Much of the script comes out of stories told to me directly by some of the girls, or by those who have been looking after them. The whole process of enticement can be exciting for the girl - I wanted to depict that. She's excited because she's exploring new things.

Later, we move to a student house that has been taken over by the film crew. This, explains Virginia, is where the girl, Jade, realises things aren't what they seem with her pimp/boyfriend Raz: It's a crucial turning point in the film. Raz asks Jade to 'Do something nice to my friend.' Jade knows it isn't right but she goes along with it. What Jade doesn't know is that her boyfriend owes money for drugs, and she is his way of paying off his debt. As the camera tracks them, Raz leads Jade up the stairs of the dingy house. They pause and, as an older man waits in an adjacent bedroom, he tells the confused Jade what's expected.

UK Human Trafficking Centre head, Det Ch Supt Nick Kinsella said: This is happening. We're not saying it's happening on every street corner, but it is happening. We wanted to do something for both youngsters and their families so they'd know what's going on and could take reasonable precautions. 'Internal trafficking' prosecutions can be hard to bring to court because often the girls will not give evidence against their pimp boyfriends - either out of fear or misplaced loyalty.

The authorities admit they also do not have a complete idea of the scale of the problem.

When completed, the film will form part of an education pack to be used in schools nationwide and, it is hoped, to teach youngsters not just how to avoid being drawn in, but also what to do to assist those who have. [...And to convince the general population that there is a problem that needs to be solved by criminalising buyers of sex]

Sweden has appointed a special investigator to evaluate the effects of a law that targets the buyers of sex instead of the prostitutes.

Justice Minister Beatrice Ask said the evaluation, to be completed by 2010, is warranted partly because of the growing international interest in the law, which was introduced in 1999.

There are many good reasons to prevent prostitution and the harm it can lead to for individuals as well as for society, Ask said in a statement. An investigation to thoroughly analyze these issues is both important and long-awaited.

Many countries considering a similar law are eager to find out whether it has reduced the sex trade in Sweden, or merely driven it underground.

Buying sex is punished by fines or up to six months in prison under the so-called "Sex Purchase Law." But selling sex is not a crime because prostitutes are viewed as victims.

In January, a high-level British delegation came to study the Swedish approach as Britain reviews its own prostitution laws, which prohibit soliciting and loitering for sex, but not buying sex. Norway's plans to introduce a Swedish-style prostitution law in 2009.

Swedish Supreme Court Justice Anna Skarhed will lead the investigation.

Nevada is the only state in the US that allows legal prostitution, but in its largest city, Las Vegas, prostitution is illegal. When the mayor suggested changing the law, it sparked a huge debate.

Mayor Oscar Goodman grabs the headlines whatever he says or does - and he relishes it. He is proud of Las Vegas' image as "Sin City" and happily calls it "an adult playground".

He boasts about his love of gin, cigars and pretty women and calls himself the happiest mayor in the universe.

But when he suggested legalising prostitution and creating a red-light district and a string of magnificent brothels in downtown Vegas, the mayor got his most dramatic headlines yet.

He had opened up a debate on a taboo subject: Las Vegas' illegal prostitution. Everybody knows it goes on, many businesses profit from it, but in-keeping with the city's slogan What happens here, stays here, it is rarely discussed.

It's disingenuous when people say they don't want to legalise it, says Goodman: Right now it's uncontrolled and unregulated. There's no check and balance as far as the women's health is concerned and legal brothels could be an important revenue-raising device for the city.

It is estimated that there are as many as 10,000 prostitutes operating illegally in Las Vegas, in an industry that may be worth as much as $6 billion a year.

Over 150 pages in the Las Vegas phone book advertise "escorts" and "massage", and leaflets promising to deliver hot babes direct to your room in 20 minutes are handed out to tourists openly on Las Vegas Boulevard.

There are women who get propositioned in the casinos, bars and hotels. There are women who do 'extras' out of strip clubs and who 'give pleasure' in massage parlours. Women who do what we term 'outcall'. There are women who work by print ads or on-line. And every casino host has a bevy of girls to call at a moment's notice to satisfy their high-rollers.

In fact, Nevada is the only state in the US to allow legal brothels, which stems from a 1970 state law allowing Nevada's individual counties to licence their brothels. But this only applies to counties with populations under 400,000, which excludes Las Vegas and Reno. There are nearly 30 state-sanctioned brothels in Nevada.

But some religious nutters, academics and campaigners say that all prostitution is wrong and legalising it does not stop sex trafficking or the abuse of women.

Kate Hausbeck, a sociology professor at the University of Las Vegas, has spent nearly 10 years researching both the legal and illegal sex trade in Nevada. She concludes that the best model for Nevada - and any country in the world - is the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Empower the women who do the work. Give them labour protection and the rights given other workers. Because it's a job and a choice for many women, she says.

But, when asked about Mr Goodman's idea of legal brothels for Las Vegas, she says she doesn't think prostitution will ever be legal here: There's too much money to be made from the illegal sex trade. The casinos and convention industry fear it would be a step too far .

The mean minded Norwegian government proposed on Friday to fine or jail clients of prostitutes for up to six months supposedly in a bid to stamp out human trafficking, and said the law would also apply to its citizens abroad.

Norway signalled in mid-2007 that it would make it a criminal offence to buy services from prostitutes, following the example of Scandinavian neighbour Sweden which introduced a similar ban in 1999.

The amendment will now be put to parliament for approval and if passed will take effect in January 2008, officials said.

Prostitution is currently allowed in Norway although procuring, or "pimping," is illegal. A rise in street prostitution in the capital, Oslo, in recent years has triggered calls for a ban.

Proponents of the measure say it makes sense to try to stop prostitution by punishing those who use the service rather than the women themselves, who are often poor, young immigrants.

Opponents of the ban say it will jeopardise women in the trade by driving prostitution underground where they will be even more vulnerable.

The justice ministry said the punishment could be fines on rising scale according to the offender's financial means or a jail term of up to six months, or both.

Jail sentences of a year could be imposed in aggravated cases involving adult prostitution and of up to three years where child prostitutes are involved, the ministry said.

The number of assaults on prostitutes in Edinburgh has soared in the past year. Attacks reported to support group Scotpep have almost doubled from 66 in 2006 to 126 last year, including eight reported rapes and 55 violent assaults.

Support workers say making kerb-crawling illegal has resulted in the trade becoming more dangerous as prostitutes are forced "underground".

While the figures cover the whole of last year, Scotpep says that it has become even more dangerous for vice girls since the new law came into force last October.

It comes as latest police figures reveal that a total of 24 suspected kerb-crawlers have been arrested and charged in Scotland's capital in the first six months since the legislation came into force.

Some prostitutes are said to have turned to handing out a mobile number to potential clients in order to set up meetings. Scotpep believes this new tactic has left women more vulnerable as they are meeting men in more isolated locations.

Ruth Morgan Thomas, Scotpep's co-ordinator, said: The need for cash to support drug habits has not gone away. Prostitution is being pushed further underground. Women are having to work longer hours and changing the times they work. It makes it harder for us to provide support.

Kerb-crawlers can now face a criminal record and a £1,000 fine.

High-profile police activity has been cited for driving away many men. But those most likely to be violent against prostitutes continue to use their services. Ms Morgan Thomas added: There's been a decrease in those on the street, but not the number selling sex in the city.

If British men persist in enjoying life... we're gonna cut off their bollocks

Most 'experts' in tackling prostitution in Suffolk have been invited to share their knowledge with the Government during an inquiry into the sex industry, it has emerged.

The Home Office has embarked on a six-month review looking at what more can be done to deal with the demand for prostitution in England and Wales.

The review will consider alternative approaches in other countries in a bid to identify possible new legislation.

The Home Office is planning to identify a pool of “external experts” from the police, academic institutions and voluntary organisations to act as advisors on the project - and has confirmed representatives from Suffolk will be invited to take part.

The review hopes to uncover information about the characteristics and demographics of those who buy sex, the context and settings for buying sex, the motivation for it, what deters those who procure sex -such as fear of prosecution, health-related issues and their families' finding out.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said: At the moment, we have not decided who the external experts are going to be. Experts from the Ipswich and Suffolk area will be invited to ensure representation is made from across the UK.

A decision on the panel of experts which will assist the Home Office is expected to be announced next month.

Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not "passive victims" in need of "saving" or sending back by western campaigners.

It is always refreshing to read a book that turns an issue on its head. Laura María Agustín's trenchant and controversial critique of the anti-trafficking crusade goes a step further: it lays out the matter - in this case, "human trafficking" - on the operating table, dissects it, unravels its innards, and shows the reader, in gory, sometimes eye-watering detail, why everything we think about it is Wrong with a capital W. It's a jarring read; I imagine that those who make a living from campaigning against the scourge of human trafficking will throw it violently across the room, if not into an incinerator. Yet it may also be one of the most important books on migration published in recent years.

Agustín begins by challenging the idea that there is a "new slave trade" in which hundreds of thousands of women and children are sold like chattels across borders. The US state department claims that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked for forced labour or sex worldwide every year; Unicef says a million children and young people are trafficked each year. Upmarket newspapers - which have embraced the seemingly PC "trafficking discourse" with the same fervour as the tabloid newspapers screech about fence-leaping job-stealers from Sangatte - tell us that "thousands" of women and children have been trafficked into Britain and "traded for tawdry sex", and that some of them (the African ones) "live under fear of voodoo".

Agustín says the numbers are "mostly fantasies". She does not doubt that there are instances of forced migration, or that, in a world where freedom of movement is restricted by stiff laws and stringent border controls, many aspiring migrants have little choice but to seek assistance from dodgy middlemen. Yet, having researched trafficking and sex workers' experiences for the past five years, both academically and through fieldwork in Latin America and Asia, she concludes that the figures are based on "sweeping generalisations" and frequently on "wild speculation". "Most of the writing and activism [on trafficking] does not seem to be based on empirical research, even when produced by academics," she notes. Many of the authors rely on "media reports" and "statistics published with little explanation of methodology or clarity about definitions".

Agustín points out that some anti-trafficking activists depend on numbers produced by the CIA (not normally considered a reliable or neutral font of information when it comes to inter national issues), even though the CIA refuses to "divulge its research methods". The reason why the "new slavery" statistics are so high is, in part, that the category of trafficking is promiscuously defined, sometimes disingenuously so. Some researchers automatically label migrant women who work as prostitutes "trafficked persons", basing their rationale on the notion that no woman could seriously want to work in the sex industry.

...Read full review

The stereotype of the Asian sex slave captures the Australian imagination. When Puangthong Simaplee died in immigration detention in 2001, a story emerged of a girl trafficked to Australia at the age of 12 and forced to have sex as a slave. Her story was given under duress, after the Department of Immigration had taken her into detention, during the first phases of the pneumonia that eventually killed her.

Even when the federal police uncovered the Thai woman's high school diploma, proudly displayed in her family home, and discovered she did not arrive in Australia until aged 21, the image endured of pre-pubescent Asian girls chained to beds in back rooms with barred windows.

Media reports of a thousand sex slaves working in Australia have proved unfounded. But even when the coroner found no evidence that Simaplee was trafficked, the sex industry, not the detention system, continued to be the focus of coverage of her death.

The sensationalism surrounding the sex slave issue has created a government-funded rescue industry. This has diverted the focus from actual cases of trafficking in Australia and prevented an evidence-based response to the problem.

The federal police's transnational sexual exploitation and trafficking team, with the Immigration Department, has swept through the Asian brothels of Australia's capital cities, aided by an anti-trafficking package of tens of millions of dollars since 2003. The Australian Tax Office joined in and media were invited to the raids.

Non-English-speaking sex workers became the most overscrutinised sector of the sex industry. But the "sex slaves" remained elusive and trafficking was difficult to prosecute.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission chimed in with the suggestion to make "consent" irrelevant, but even that could not create victims that did not exist.

The time has come for a new kind of response to trafficking, grounded in labour rights rather than moral hysteria. If the Federal Government wants to improve the conditions of migrant sex workers, it needs to protect their rights as workers.

Introducing a visa to allow migrant sex workers to work in Australia legally for short periods of time would pull the carpet from under the trafficking nexus by allowing women to travel here independently to work. Greater access to generic working holiday visas for sex workers from our region would enable travel for work, without having to resort to a third party or "agent".

Surprise, surprise: not a single case of 'trafficking' was thrown up after raids of all known outlets for off-street prostitution across Sheffield. A previous country-wide trawl, the Home Office claims, netted 88, but even this very small figure is bogus. It includes the 19 'rescued' in Birmingham, all of whom turned out to be immigrants, only six of whom were illegals, and none working against their will.

The police and Home Office went very quiet after these raids; as they did about raids on the Omega 'massage parlour' in Sheffield and a sister establishment in Leeds.

There is no confirmation that a single one of the 88 were actually 'trafficked' at all.

So what are the police up to? The Government's PC rhetoric - false though it is - is that all women must be being forced into prostitution. To further this propaganda, the cross-border movement of prostitutes is misrepresented as 'trafficking', which research shows to be a minuscule problem.

Now the bogus scare about a renewed 'white slave trade' is exposed as just a ruse to justify criminalising men, the latest ploy is to pick a number out of the air (5,000) for supposed domestic sex slavery of under-age girls. Now, this does indeed go on, but nobody - and certainly not the Government - knows the scale of it.

The Western Australia (WA) parliament has passed a controversial bill which will decriminalise brothels and give prostitutes basic working rights, including superannuation and workers compensation.

The bill will see the regulation of brothels and escort agencies in WA, where prostitution is legal but running a brothel is not. Nor is living off the earnings of prostitution.

WA's Liberal Opposition opposed the legislation but it passed with the support of independent MP Shelley Archer in exchange for the promise of drug, alcohol and sex education programs for Aboriginal children in the northern Kimberley region.