Sex: My British Job. Channel 4

Wow the Catholic Church's position is pretty stark. Not a single mention of effects on the prostituted people. The insignificance of them is palpable. I am so glad that raping a child or adolescent is considered scandalous. It must be such a relief for those having been raped.

And equally I am so relieved that pimps bear a greater burden of guilt. I am sure it keeps them awake at night

sabrina sorry to be pedantic. When you said "However, the report agrees with wino on one aspect - that legalisation & regulation could have a beneficial effect on those women working within the regulation." in talking about the LSE report, I think it is more accurate to say that they said that whether or not legalisation and regulation would have a beneficial effect on those women working within the regulation is outside the scope of the study. I know you know this, I just wanted it to be clear to anyone else that the study did not consider those factors.

But, as if by magic, the problems of estimating anything about prostitution immediately disappear when the outcomes suit your viewpoint wino?

This is your most idiotic post yet but very closely tied with your last response to when where you demonstrate clearly that you haven't got a fucking clue about interpretation of legislation - added to the large bucket of things wino hasn't got a fucking clue about.

It's genuinely amazing to see you return to have your ass handed to you on a plate time and time again . Your perception of your intellectual abilities is so far off the mark it makes me wonder how you make out in real life.

Wino your posts re far too long. And quite dull.

Prostitution increases following legalisation - that is an economic fact wino. LSE have no axe to grind either way (read their conclusions!) but they still find that prostitution and trafficking increase following legalisation.

Cold-yeah I have seen that before

It appears then that the numbers produced by CATWA from Newspaper reports are almost certainly a very large exaggeration of the actual case-but that suits the political agenda of CATWA (which is to claim that legalization/decriminalization leads to an expansion of the illegal industry).

Numeracy is not CATWA’s strong point-or to be fair-it is not the strong point of the Newspapers which seem to comprise much of their “research”. For instance Mary Sullivan in Making Sex Work (2007) says p138”Recent research into Australia’s sexual behaviour found that one in six men had paid for sex, while for women the figure is negligible.

Under Victoria’s legalized prostitution regime there are approximately 3.1 million purchases of ‘sexual services’ per year-that is in an adult male population of 1.8 million. This means that in Victoria that have used women in prostitution could be as high as 1.7 sexual services per adult male each year”.^ (she cites three sources IBIS World Business Information Pty Ltd Personal Services n.e.c in Australia reports(1998-October2005) , Sexual Services in Australia (May 2006) and Parliamentary debate (assembly) of 25th May 1999 (1191-1211).)

Well let’s look at the sources; in the assembly debate 25th May 1999 there is a mention of the 60,000 figure made by Mr Hulls (Niddrie) p1194 “It is estimated (emphasis added) that 60 000 Victorian men visit brothels every week. I notice that the honourable member sitting up the back who shall remain nameless seems somewhat surprised by that number. ……It is interesting to note that some 60 000 Victorian men visit brothels every week and the industry turnover is $360 million a year. It is a substantial industry.” Then on p1201 we have Mr Haermeyer (Yan Yean) “As the honourable member for Niddrie pointed out, each week some 60 000 men visit brothels” Then on again p1205 we have in a speech by Mr Savage (Mildura) “…Each week about 60 000 Victorian men spend up to $7 million on prostitutes, with the largely legalised industry turning over about $360 million a year”. So no clue there as to source of these estimates-except that it is an estimate and before May 25th 1999-it’s pretty obvious these in turn are quotes from The Age (see below). One has to remember that debates do not represent a contribution to the evidence but represent the opinion of the speaker, which is often (and depressingly) no better informed than anyone else.

The same figures have been bandied about before, so in 2002 we find (Sullivan and Jeffreys 2002 Legalization the Australian experience Violence Against Women 2002 8: 1140) say on p1142 “Each week, 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalized industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4,500 workers”(citing Curbing crime in the sex industry (Editorial). (1999, May 7). The Age, p. A18) and again Sullivan and Jeffreys (undated) Legalizing prostitution is not the answer: the example of Victoria Australia CATWA (www.catwinternational.org/Content/Images/Article/95/attachment.pdf)

P3 “Each week 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalised industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4500 prostituted women and girls (The Age, 28 Feb, 1999). When one considers that Victoria’s population is around 3.5 million people, these figures attest to how mainstream buying the right to sexually abuse a woman has become in the state.”

So it looks like here is an example of circular citation (sometimes cycled through Parliament in an attempt to give the citation added authenticity) and that the original source of these figures is an article in The Age from February 28th 1999. The figures are obvious guestimates-if there were 60,000 men visiting prostitutes per week then a spend of $7M per week would imply $116 per visit-which is plausible for an hour for a brothel prostitute back in 1999. And $7M per week is indeed about $360M per year and 60,000 per week would amount to approximately 3.1 million purchases of ‘sexual services’ per year. Where does the 4500 estimate for those in legal brothels come from? According to Mary Sullivan (Sullivan 2007 op cit p139 ) it seems to come from “Forbes’ more recent research found that by the end of the decade the figure had risen to near 4,500” (citing The Age December1st 1999). We have no idea how the “research” that lay behind this estimate was conducted.

So how have the numbers cited with such certainty been arrived at if it was not a proper survey? It is pretty obvious they are back of the envelope calculations, taking 4500 legal brothel sex workers (itself an estimate-probably a guestimate)-guessing the number of clients each might see a week (12-15) to arrive at 60,000 and multiplying by the average brothel fee-et voila.

However is the 60,000 plausible? The population of Victoria was in fact 4.7M in 1998 (www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/CA25687100069892CA2568880028A236/$File/32352_30%20June%201998.pdf)The number of males aged between 20 and 70 is 1.48M so 60,000 is 4% of Victorian men using sexual services every week, if it is really true that one sixth (16%) of Australians has ever paid for sex that would imply men who had ever paid for sex use prostitutes do so about once a month-which seems improbable-so that should have given a numerate person pause for thought- that the numbers cannot be simultaneously true. (Indeed the source of the 16% had ever paid for sex also states that 1.9% had paid for sex in the past year Rissel, CE, et al 'Sex in Australia: Experiences of commercial sex in a representative sample of adults' in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 27(2):191-197 at p191)

The error is of course that the 4500 (even were that estimate true) are not all active every week and some only work occasionally when they need money or they need to supplement other income. (This number was probably arrived at by multiplying a guess of the number of brothels by a guess of the number of workers they employ-the error is that some women work at multiple brothels leading to double counting and an overestimate in the total).

This illustrates the problems of using calculative methods to estimate population size of sex workers or clients. (for a discussion see Willcox A et al 2009 Tackling the demand for prostitution: a rapid evidence assessment of the published research literature Research report 37 The Home office (UK) webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/horr27c.pdf pgs2-4 where they note(p4) “estimates of the proportion of UK males who buy sex and the estimated average frequency of visits to prostitutes vary widely. The great disparity between estimates of previous prostitute use is likely to stem from the stigmatised nature of the behaviour, and the different methodologies employed in measuring it. Survey approaches generally produce markedly lower estimates of client numbers than calculations derived from the supply side. While surveys are prone to under-reporting, and perhaps also over-reporting, calculative estimates from the supply side rely on successive and compounding calculations, and hence more assumptions.”)

So in short-the numbers quoted by for the expansion or the size of the prostitution industry by CATWA are based on nothing more than newspaper reports, speculation and wishful thinking and are simply cannot be taken as reliable.

Wino

You are out of your depth and it shows

when
You don't seem to remember your own posts. Read your post of Thu 10-Oct-13 14:50:31-you say "I don't know if there are any commercial transactions that include the gratification of the buyer as a legal purpose and requirement."
Read the act-the purpose is outlined in section 3-would you be good enough to point out where gratification is mentioned as a purpose-its not

WhenTheRed - in fact Ruhama in Ireland does a lot of work to help women involved in prostitution and trafficking and is an organisation started by nuns who worked with the women on the streets.

coldwinter - no, I for one do not want to see men's entitlement to buy women's bodies for sex enshrined in law. No way.

"Each week 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalised industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4500 prostituted women and girls (The Age, 28 Feb, 1999). When one considers that Victoria’s population is around 3.5 million people, these figures attest to how mainstream buying the right to sexually abuse a woman has become in the state."

Is that really what we want to create?

www.catwinternational.org/content/images/article/95/attachment.pdf

The Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission’s found that 20 per cent of that state’s legal brothels were staffed exclusively by Asian-born women.

According to a 2010 CSIRO-published report, over 54 per cent of women in prostitution in Western Sydney were born overseas. A study done in Western Australia in the same year found 29 per cent of women in prostitution were from non-English speaking countries. In Sydney’s brothels, 53 per cent of women are from Asia.

Yes legalisation means there is no trafficking

Inwino conveniently ignores the economic analysis by the London School of Economics that in countries where prostitution is legalised, human sex trafficking increases. So legalisation would be of no benefit to the women most damaged by prostitution (those who are trafficked).

The report concludes that legalisation has two effects: the scale effect leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, and thus an increase in trafficking. The substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked prostitutes in favour of those legally resident. However, their quantitative empirical analysis shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect - thus an overall increase in trafficked women following legalisation.

However, the report agrees with wino on one aspect - that legalisation & regulation could have a beneficial effect on those women working within the regulation. But -and it's a big but- you have to accept higher numbers of trafficked women as a consequence... Obviously, also, it should be mentioned here that studies into legalisation in Nevada, for example, have shown that women in legal brothels are not better off. Far from it, in fact.

It is also interesting to note that the LSE report makes no judgement on whether prohibition would be a good thing - it states both sides. It is just an empirical, economic analysis. It acknowledges that further study is warranted - unlike any of wino's flag-waving pro-legalisation lobbyists.

Coldwinter

Not so-I did not rubbish the Home office statistics-I merely pointed out their ultimate source and showed that prohibitionists had been misquoting and generalizing from the bleak experience of street prostitutes to encompass all prostitutes-which is dishonest.

You say there is "And there is lots of evidence to show Australia and NZ are not full of happy hookers"-there may well be evidence -perhaps you could point me in that direction? ( waits for usual CATWA stuff)

You also say "The majority are there because they have no other choice"-sorry-not so-the detailed reports show that it may be true for some for the majority that is not true.

Youmake

Yes I do have sympathy-as you say " any rape/abuse/drug dependency/violence is too much" the question is how to minimize that.

And as for c and p ing-I am merely trying to show that there is evidence that the prohibitionist case-as far as it relies on so called evidence-is flawed-to do that I have to cite proper studies.

Of course you are entitled to your views-what you are not entitled to is to distort the facts

You rubbished the Home Office statistics upthread. And there is lots of evidence to show Australia and NZ are not full of happy hookers. The majority are there because they have no other choice.

Whenthe red
You are wrong again (Thu 10-Oct-13 14:50:31) when you say I don't know if there are any commercial transactions that include the gratification of the buyer as a legal purpose and requirement about the NZ prostitution reform act.

What you are quoting from is from section 4 0f the act “interpretation” (see www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2003/0028/latest/DLM197815.html) . It is very common in Acts of parliament to define the terms used in the act-so this is the definition-as I said . The purpose of the act is outlined in section 3
Purpose
• The purpose of this Act is to decriminalise prostitution (while not endorsing or morally sanctioning prostitution or its use) and to create a framework that—
• (a) safeguards the human rights of sex workers and protects them from exploitation:
• (b) promotes the welfare and occupational health and safety of sex workers:
• (c) is conducive to public health:
• (d) prohibits the use in prostitution of persons under 18 years of age:
• (e) implements certain other related reforms.
You are deliberately trying to misinterpret the definition of prostitution as the purpose-that is solely for the gratification of the client. We all know that prostitution is the exchange of sex for money.

Very sensibly the act contains provisions for its review (see Part 4 of the act) para 42 which set up the eleven member Prostitution law review committee-setting out its terms of reference and section 42 the composition of this committee.
• The Prostitution Law Review Committee must consist of 11 members appointed by the Minister of Justice.
(2) The Minister of Justice must appoint—
• (a) 2 persons nominated by the Minister of Justice; and
• (b) 1 person nominated by the Minister of Women's Affairs after consultation with the Minister of Youth Affairs; and
• (c) 1 person nominated by the Minister of Health; and
• (d) 1 person nominated by the Minister of Police; and
• (e) 2 persons nominated by the Minister of Commerce to represent operators of businesses of prostitution; and
• (f) 1 person nominated by the Minister of Local Government; and
• (g) 3 persons nominated by the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (or, if there is no New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, by any other body that the Minister of Justice considers represents the interests of sex workers).

The committee members (after nomination) were:
Paul Fitzharris O.N.Z.M. – nominated by the Minister of Police (Chairperson)

Paul Fitzharris retired from the NZ Police in 2001 as an Assistant Commissioner. During the latter part of his career he was Acting Deputy Commissioner. He has been a member of the Legal Aid Review
Panel, and conducted a number of reviews for government agencies in respect of emergency management, search and rescue and a review of the Cook Islands Police. He is a board member of Orana Wildlife Park, Christchurch. He is currently the Acting Chair of Land Transport New Zealand and Patron of New Zealand Neighbourhood Support.

Catherine Hannan – nominated by the Minister of Justice
Catherine Hannan, DOLC, is a Sister of Compassion. She has a background in education,development and the social sciences and is currently on the team at the
Suzanne Aubert CompassionCentre, popularly known as the Wellington Soup Kitchen. Sister Catherine is Chair of the Board of
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, an agency for development, justice and peace. Her particular interest is human rights.

Debbie Baker – nominated by the Minister of Justice
Debbie Baker is the manager of Streetreach, a confidential support service for those involved in prostitution. She has a wide knowledge of the sex industry through working with those in the industry
both in England and in New Zealand. Streetreach has been in operation in New Zealand since 2000 and is an initiative of The Life Centre Trust, a charitable trust based in Auckland that exists to make
life better for those in the community. Ms Baker joined the Committee in June 2007, filling a vacancy held since May 2006.

Matt Soeberg – nominated by the Minister of Health
Matt Soeberg has a strong background in public health policy. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Health Inequalities Research Programme, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences,
examining ethnic and socioeconomic trends in cancer survival rates. He is also a senior analyst at the Cancer Control Council of New Zealand. He has worked for the Special Programme on Environment
and Health, World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe. Mr Soeberg has also worked at the Auckland Regional Public Health Service, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and the Ministry of Health. His interests are in social epidemiology, public health policy and law, health inequalities and health impact assessment.

Sue Piper – nominated by the Minister of Local Government
Sue Piper was a Wellington City councillor for nine years and a member of Local Government NewZealand's National Council for three years. In 1995, she was a member of the NGO Co-ordinating 36
group preparing New Zealand's NGO presentation at the 1995 Conference on Women. Ms Piper is currently the Executive Director of the Wellington Region Foundation. She is also the Chair of the
Local Government Commission and a board member for Quotable Value.

Karen Ritchie – nominated by the Minister of Commerce
Karen Ritchie has been working for the NZ Aids Foundation for the past four years. Her experience in the sex industry spans many years as a tax paying worker and small business owner. In May 2006,
Ms Ritchie spoke at the Harm Reduction Conference in Vancouver about her personal experience of criminalisation and decriminalisation whilst in the industry. She is the founder of the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust in Auckland, which assists with funeral costs for those who have
passed on from an HIV/AIDS related illness.

Mary Brennan – nominated by the Minister of Commerce
Mary Brennan has over 20 years experience in people management, including ten years in restaurant management in both New Zealand and the UK. For the past ten years Ms Brennan has managed
brothels. She has developed and written a user friendly job description and interview booklet for sex workers. Her main areas of interest are training, communication and human rights. Ms Brennan now
works as a private sexuality consultant.

Sue Crengle – nominated by the Minister of Women's Affairs
Dr Sue Crengle has a Bachelor of Human Biology, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery,and Master of Public Health from Auckland University. She has medical specialty qualifications in
General Practice and in Public Health Medicine. Dr Crengle has previously worked as a Medical Officer Special Scale in Auckland Sexual Health Services. She is currently employed as a Senior
Lecturer in Te Kupenga Hauora M?ori, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. She is also the Director of T?maiora M?ori Health Research Centre.

Catherine Healy – nominated by the New Zealand Prostitutes' CollectiveCatherine Healy B.A., Dip Tch. is National Co-ordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective. She has sat on a wide range of expert committees, and is frequently sought by national and
international groups for advice on issues affecting sex workers.

Lisa Waimarie – nominated by the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective
Lisa Waimarie has worked for the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective for 10 years, initially joining theorganisation as a volunteer, and then becoming the Regional Coordinator of the group's Dunedin
branch. She has also been the Coordinator for a local HIV/AIDS support group. Both of these organisations are part of a larger collective called the Working Together Group, a collective of Dunedin HIV/AIDS education, prevention and support groups that work together to organise annual events aimed at promoting community awareness of this issue. Ms Waimarie was the Event Coordinator for the Working Together Group for seven years.

Jan Jordan – nominated by the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective
37 Dr Jan Jordan is currently Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington. She became interested in researching prostitution over 20 years ago while studying
women's involvement in crime in nineteenth century New Zealand. Dr Jordan later compiled a book of interviews with women working in the contemporary sex industry (Working Girls, Penguin Books,
1991). Since then she has conducted a small research project with the clients of sex workers and compiled a literature review on the New Zealand sex industry for the Ministry of Justice (2005).

Former Committee Members
The position currently filled by Debbie Baker was previously occupied by Alan Bell, the then Director
of ECPAT NZ Inc, and prior to that by Susan Martin of ECPAT who sadly died soon after resigning in
2004.

I go through all this as you seem to believe that there was no proper evaluation of the act and that it was all pimp-punter propaganda and biased.

The Committee reported in 2008 and their report may be viewed here (www.justice.govt.nz/policy/commercial-property-and-regulatory/prostitution/prostitution-law-review-committee/publications/plrc-report/documents/report.pdf) .

One of the statutory requirements was to assess the numbers of sexworkers when at the commencement of the act as well as the efct of the act on numbers (since there were fears that decriminalization might lead to an explosion in the number of sexworkers (those fears turned out to be unfounded). The law review committee commissioned other research to inform its deliberations

(a) The impact of the prostitution Reform act on the Health and Safety of sex workers commissioned from the Department of Public Health and General Practice, University of Otago, Christchurch (which can be seen here (www.otago.ac.nz/christchurch/otago018607.pdf)

(b) Key informant interviews with NGOs brothel operators and community groups and a literature review of overseas models of prostitution law reform commissioned from the Crime and justice Research centre of Victoria University which can be seen here (www.justice.govt.nz/policy/commercial-property-and-regulatory/prostitution/prostitution-law-review-committee/publications/key-informant-interviews/documents/report.pdf)

(c) Gathering of information from government agencies and local authorities by the Ministry of Justice

You try to rubbish all this by claiming it is all biased-are you seriously saying that the wool has been pulled over the eyes of a catholic nun, an ex-Assistant commissioner of police and the rest by the NZCP?

Why do I keep “banging on” about the situation in NZ (and also Australia) and Denmark. The reason is that in these countries that serious attempts have been made to assess the shape and form of prostitution in a rigorous way. In NZ almost one third of the estimated prostitutes in that country provided answers to questionnaires and a number were interviewed which enabled both quantitative qualitative information to be gleaned.

Why is this important? This then enables one to know (for instance) whether (as is claimed by Glennie Fri 04-Oct-13 22:16:30) 90% of prostitutes want out (the answer is while some do especially street prostitutes many don’t) whether Grennies claims that (Thu 03-Oct-13 06:07:01) Where I live 95% of the women in prostitution are on class A drugs.-this is only approximately true for street workers or if they were coerced (the majority are not) or whether There might be one or two "happy hookers". But the vast majority are not(not so-the majority as Minnehaha says fall between the extremes-with a weighting towards the happy end). The results are similar from Australia and from Denmark.

Once you have the facts then a proper debate can begin.