I am proposing an amendment to the criminal justice and immigration bill on on the subject of prostitution. It will allow the criminal prosecution of men who use prostitutes and give the power to communities affected by prostitution to declare themselves "zones of safety" where action against punters can be initiated. The bill will be debated on January 9.
The way in which prostitution is tackled now and has been through most of history is by targeting the women selling sex. It doesn't work. Prostitution exists because of the demand from men. Making paying for sex illegal will begin to tackle the demand.
The amendment will permit local authorities, or the police, to make areas of towns into zones of safety. All that would be needed would be demand from residents or evidence that prostitution has contributed to an increase in crime in the area.
The people who live in areas which have become red light districts often find they cannot end the degradation of their environment which ensues, with women being harassed by men on the streets or in cars, people finding condoms or drug paraphernalia on the streets and alleys throughout the day, with the added dangers of theft and mugging. The local authority or the police, with the authority of the secretary of state for communities, can then designate that area as a zone of safety.
When the area is made a zone of safety there will be notices making this clear. Then if a man is found paying for sex in that area, he can be arrested and the police or the local authority can apply to a magistrates' court for an order against him. The order would bar him from doing so again. He would get an order, similar to an asbo, to forbid him from buying sex. If he did so again, anywhere in the country, and was traced, he would have committed a criminal offence and could be fined or given a community punishment.
Thus a man found buying sex would not immediately be criminalised but would receive a stern warning and would know that he risked a conviction. In Sweden there is no penalty at all for the women and I think there is a strong case for moving to that approach. They recognise that prostitution is a product of sexual inequality. I agree but we have not had the decades of feminist-led debate in this country on this subject which Sweden had.
I have not copied the Swedish approach exactly: any purchaser of sexual services can be prosecuted, of whatever gender. When a human being is bought it is the buyer who is doing the wrong thing and who needs to be stopped. In many societies there are people who will sell themselves or their organs because they are desperate, but it is generally the buyers who are prosecuted rather than the victims. The same should occur when the purchaser is buying the right to use them sexually.
Just as residents often feel they have no choice or control over what is happening around them, most of the women who sell themselves have little or no choice. A shockingly large number have been trafficked for sexual exploitation and are effectively slaves, others have been groomed into the "profession" as teenagers by pimps who control their lives. Most are addicted to drugs. Policy should not target them for criminal action, but should help them rebuild their lives.
The people who have the most choice are the men. And good quality international research shows that policies which seek to control the actions of men can work. Sweden reports a dramatic reduction in trafficking since it changed the law to make men who buy sex criminals.
There is now a growing trend in Europe to impose bans as a way to combat sexual trafficking. Even states which have traditionally had a permissive approach to prostitution are reining back. The Amsterdam local authority is taking action to close a third of the windows where women sell themselves, and the street tolerance zone has been dropped. They have learnt that these policies increase sex tourism, people-trafficking and criminality.
Opponents of this approach claim New Zealand's decision to legalise prostitution offers a better model. I do not accept it as a good comparison. New Zealand is too far away from the main markets for sex traffickers to generate profits in the way they can in Britain. As a small country, where people know each other well, there are strong social forces that protect prostituted women from the violence that is all too often their fate in Britain. Unfortunately, we are more like Holland where legalisation led to a massive growth in criminality, trafficking and violence associated with the sex trade.