can someone explain the 'harm reduction' approach to prostitution

[MightyNice]

. . . in a way that makes sense, particularly from a human rights point of view, because it just looks so short-sighted and contradictory - as in, we know harm occurs so let's condone it because, I don't know, why?

prompted by this which I don't understand either

The idea is that by legalizing prostitution and bringing in regulations you can protect women who work as prostitutes from some of the worse excesses such as trafficking and contact with organized crime. And give them greater access to legal recourse in the case of rape and assault by getting rid of a barrier to reporting (i.e. fear of being prosecuted themselves).

I don't know if this has actually worked anywhere. I'm most familiar with the situation in the US where legal prostitution in some jurisdictions is most certainly not correlated with a good life for prostitutes.

Personally I don't think the particular laws are the issue. The issue is that we see women as the sex class and care less about them than we do about men. While this is the case, whether prostitution is legal or illegal, our systems and institutions will find ways to let men off treating women like objects and ways to belittle and degrade women for being treated horribly by others.

so is it just an assumption that decriminalisation or legalisation will reduce harm because it removes links with criminal activity (don't the same criminals just stop being pimps and become legitimate businessmen) or is there evidence (obviously not Nevada or Netherlands but maybe somewhere) that it does actually reduce incidences of violence, infection, underage activity etc?

The evidence is very much to the contrary - as is logic.

If you legalize abuse of one (privileged) group over another (non-privileged) group, you don't end up with 'harm reduction' you just end up legalizing harm.

Donna Hughes is very good on this. www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/demand_for_victims.pdf

Have you read some of the other responses in that series e.g. this by Stella Marr?

www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalized-prostitution-safer/nevadas-legal-brothels-are-coercive-too

The harm reductionists or as Beachcomber rightly says, legalisers, seem more about denial than anything real.

Where you have 'harm reduction' AKA as legalized prostitution, you have trafficking.

It is as simple as that. We see it in Amsterdam, Germany, Nevada, and the areas of Australia where prostitution is condoned. www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/turn_look.pdf

Sorry, I know I'm not really answering your question but that fact is that to support legalized prostitution is to prop up trafficking, child prostitution, gender inequality and violence against women. They are part and parcel of the same thing.

The people who exploit prostituted women, be they buyers or sellers, do not turn into nice guys overnight just because you make the institution of prostitution legal.

I disagree fundamentally with the article in the OP.

MightyNice - this article articulates how I feel. It is nothing to do with stigmatizing prostituted women. Quite the contrary - perhaps it could help you articulate how you see the issue.

The enormity of the sex trade throughout the world is overwhelming, but the only way to proceed is to acknowledge the violence and exploitation for what it is and create remedies accordingly. Legalization will only benefit traffickers and pimps and compromise individual women and the status of women in the long run. In the words of one survivor of prostitution: "Legalization will not end abuse; it will make abuse legal"

well that's exactly how I feel and my mind is pretty closed, I can't get other (other than abolition) approaches to 'fit' but would like to understand them

only partway through first link (v interesting, thanks, will continue in a minute) but yes, that is what I don't understand - the logic of acknowledging the harm that the industry causes but seeking to reduce that harm by officially sanctioning it, when we know how the illegal activities just sort of exploded in the netherlands (and Germany)

Basically it's because harm reductionists don't care about harm to women in prostitution. Their real aim is to make life easier for pimps and men who pay for sex.

Hiding behind the "we're doing it for the women", is a dishonest stance.

I don't think it's that overt is it?

it is dishonest mostly because it creates an impression that there are safe, clean ways of prostituting people, sorry women and girls and a few men some of whom pose as women - despite the state of Amsterdam, the massive increase in illegal activities they purported to tackle like trafficking (which happens within national borders as well as across them of course) yet how many Dutch women avail themselves of the 'free choice to work' thing and become prostitutes?

also dishonest because its proponents are usually very quick to point at failings of the Swedish model and conveniently overlook Nevada and the Netherlands and Germany

I don't know about Australia, do they test the men for diseases there?

''also dishonest because its proponents are usually very quick to point at failings of the Swedish model and conveniently overlook Nevada and the Netherlands and Germany''

Oh definitely. A couple of cities in the Netherlands have closed their tipplezones (red light districts full of prostitutes who work on the streets) because instead of regulating street prostitution, cutting down exploitation, reducing crime and providing a safer environment for prostitutes, it did exactly the opposite.

Legalised prostitution is supposed to cut down on rape but Nevada has the 4th highest rape rate in the entire US.

I didn't know that.

I also didn't know there was (still) a belief that legalising prostitution would have an impact on, would reduce incidences of rape within the general population - how is that supposed to work? Sounds like the sort of thing we believed in early modern times.

It is just like gambling.

If you create areas where gambling/casinos are encouraged, what happens is you get a proliferation of gamblers and casinos. Alongside this, due to there being a proliferation of gamblers, you will also get people holding private poker evenings and other non-declared gambling activities. And you will also get people who might not have considered gambling to be an acceptable activity deciding to join in because they are being sent the message that gambling is an OK thing to do.

And of course the casino owners are delighted because they get state protection for their activities of bleeding people dry of their money.

The dynamics of prostitution are very similar. Except of course a million times worse because the product is human beings. People seem to forgot that the institution of prostitution is about money. Men pimp out women and girls because they can make a lot of money from doing so. They can make a lot of money because there is a big market for sexually abusing human females.

Legalizing the activities of these predators won't protect women - it will just make it easier for the predators to operate and make money.

Notice how much of the Donna Hughes paper I linked to is about money, markets, she even talks about prostitution in terms of a country's GDP - that is how big a business it is. What is happening in Germany is terrifying - local councils are becoming dependent on tax revenue from brothels and pimps and the pimps are putting pressure on the government to advertise prostitution 'jobs' in job centres and to withdraw a woman's unemployment benefit if she refuses the 'job'. The government has said that they will not do this but there is nothing to stop them from doing so legally.

The whole German thing is interesting. Germany is another poster child of the pro-prostitution crowd because of it's 'liberal and modern' view of sex, but by refusing to let brothels advertise 'jobs' in their equivalent of job centres and thus refusing to sanction women who won't work as prostitutes, they're declaring prostitution a job like no other.

I wonder if people who are pro-prostitution believe it would be reasonable to withdraw unemployment benefits if a woman refused a job working as a prostitute? If not, why not? After all, according to them prostitution is just another job and all prostitutes need is a bit of respect and acceptance.

I have asked prolegalizing people that question before. Generally they won't be drawn on it and tend to witter on about 'choice' and prostitution not being everybody's cup of tea but one that is a jolly money spinner for many.

In other words they take refuge in the happy hooker myth and refuse to be drawn on their hypocrisy and the links between prostitution and trafficking/exploitation. It is all just Belle de Jour and Pretty Woman.

I believe there is some doubt about the validity of the figures regarding trafficking for sex work. Certainly, trafficking is bad and should be stopped as far as possible, whether those being trafficked become sex workers or slave labour in the catering or agricultural industries.
As to the job centres/cutting off people's benefits if they do not want to take up sex work, I don't think anyone should be forced to take a job they would really hate: has anyone any case histories on (for instance) a vegan refusing to work in an abbatoir or butchers' shop? How about a recovering alcoholic not wanting a job in a pub, or someone refusing to work for a debt collection agency because they disapprove of its tactics/reputation?

solidgoldbrass wrote - "I believe there is some doubt about the validity of the figures regarding trafficking for sex work."

I've heard a figure of 70% of prostitutes in Amsterdam are victims of trafficking. The Dutch Police calculate this figure using various factors including the fact that so many of the foreign prostitutes do not have the required identity papers.

Vesuvia: I think in some cases the figures are being conflated for people who have been traffiicked ie working in the sex industry against their will, and people who are illegal immigrants working in the sex industry but not forced to do so.

Prostitution is legal in the UK and the Operations Pentameter 1 & 2 showed there were reletively few cases of trafficking (in the true sense of the word) here.

Following the shock of the Ipswich murders police forces reviewed how they dealt with prostitution. In the area I live in the streetscene was about all the police had any idea of. Indoor prostitution presented negligable problems so they had no idea of what it consisted of.
Fortunately, the police and the local services which provide help for prostitutes work together and have pretty much cleaned up the outdoor scene by offering fast tracking to methodone programs (most of the street workers are drug dependent here) but have also offered advice and practical help in other areas. The majority of them have moved on and made new lives.
They keep a close eye on the indoor scene and are quick to pick up on any hint that there may be criminal activity. If prostitutes have been attacked or have a complaint against a punter they can report it, it will be taken up and the prostitute will be treat with dignity and respect.

There are clinics and support for people working in the sex industry, and women use them freely, can talk confidentially and if they suspected there was an underage girl, somebody working against their will, have a route to have it reported to the police.

Drugs, are illegal here and I think back to when HIV first hit the headlines. Edinburgh held the view that a needle exchange scheme be allowed. Glasgow on the otherhand believed by offering needle exchnge it was condoning and promoting the use of illegal drugs and refused to set up one. Result was Edinburgh had a much lower incidence of HIV and AIDS.
They both have different stances on the sex industry, Edinburgh tolerates and has a pragmatic approach, Glasgow an abolishonist stand on the subject. Even though they are 2 cities 40miles apart there are a huge difference in the ratesof murders, assaults and other crimes against prostitutes. Edinburgh has the lower.

Beachcomber raises a point about casinos. Casinos are a regulated form of gambling and though there are those who are addicted and end upin debt there are many who never visit them and many who go there and act responsibly. They have to obtain a licence issued by the local councils and they are very heavily taxed on their profits, you can also put yourself on a 'ban' list and bar yourself from all gambling venues.
By far the biggest problem with gambling is the unregulated, online gambling which seems to be saturating my TV adverts at the minute. The money often goes offshore, there are no limits on how much you can spend, some may be connected to organised crime and it's people gambling in secret, sometimes drunk and not monitored as they are in a casino and could well be children, or spending the cash of elderly vulnerable relatives.
There is gambling which goes on outside of both. My brother has a few of the lads round once in a while and they'll set up a few games of poker. Stakes are 10p and to date no one has killed another player, had any long term falling out or gone bankrupt through them.

MsAnnTeak you make it sound as if the prostitutes in your area are now working in hooker nirvana, which I suspect to be very far from the truth.

I don't see how the HIV comparison holds. You can provide services for prostitutes to access to protect their health without legalising prostitution.

IMO legalising prostitution is all about making it easier for men to access sex and has very little to do with actually making life better for women. It sends the message to men that its OK to use prostitutes, it must be, because they aren't exploited, criminalised etc. Its all about soothing men's consciences.

Bollocks to that. If men exploit women via sex, we should say so. Not make them feel that its OK because the women may be very marginally better off than they were when prostitution was criminalised.

Don't think it can be Nirvana but there have been measures put in place for harm reduction which is what the OP was mainly about and there has been a significant reduction in street prostitution with the women exiting (unless the services are lying and their results aren't as great as they are leading us to believe?)

As I said prostitution is legal here. I brought up the HIV as there were 2 differing schools of thoughts a, took a stance that it would be promoting drug abuse so did nothing, it was about not sending out the wrong message which they felt was more important and b, took the pragmatic approach, reducing harm and death. The drugs are bad message has been screamed out for years, they're cheaper and more widely available than back in the 80s and far more children have access to them. At what point do you think society will never abuse drugs ?

Re: Nevada having the 4th highest rape rate in the US, could it be the case that it has the highest declared rape rate in the US? What I mean is that sexual assault statistics don't correlate with actual incidence because of the fear of prosecution in many areas. Could it be that although the legalisation hasn't reduced rape rates, or perhaps just hasn't reduced them enough, they aren't actually any higher than other areas, but rather more reported?

Of course society will probably always abuse drugs. And scum will probably always use prostitutes. That doesn't mean we should make it easier for them to do so.

We can make life better for prostitutes without making it easier for the men who use them. Shouldn't that be the aim - help prostitutes deal with potential for harm (which is significant even in places where prostitution is legalised) without condoning the actions of the men who abuse them? Because using prostitutes is abusing women.

Prostitution may be legal, but the majority of associated activites (soliciting, running a brothel) aren't.

I recently dated, very briefly, a detective from Ipswich. He used to have a 'necessary evil' harm reduction even Belle de Jour type view of prostitution before he joined the police but exposure to the women involved and their histories and vulnerabilities changed his mind. But he likes and values sex and I always find it difficult to reconcile how anyone can purport to enjoy sex on one hand and endorse the commodification of it on the other. Especially when the majority of the supply have been sexually abused in earlier life.

Wish I'd asked him if his colleagues also support the Swedish way of doing things.

Still think it is closer to slavery, especially the 'it will always go on, people will always do it'.

The question I always ask men (and its nearly always men) who say there is nothing wrong with prostiution is "would you be happy if your daughter were a prostitute? Would you tell your friends that this was her job" Funnily enough, it normally shuts them up.

Interesting posts Mighty Nice and Boss of Me. It would seem that there is a high level of segmenting and "othering" going on for men who on one hand say they love and respect women but either endorse or are meh about prostitution. Asking whether they would be content for their mothers, daughters, sisters or wives to "choose" this as a career forces them to de-segment their views, which makes them uncomfortable at the very least.

In my view, harm reduction as it relates to prostitution is legitimate only in so much as it involves supporting prostituted women to be as safe as possible in the circumstances and be supported should they decide to leave prostitution. I don't buy the bull that providing condoms encourages prostitution - it gives women at least some means of protecting themselves from infection and pregnancy. Similarly, I don't believe needle exchanges encourage drug use - just reduce the risk associated with using dirty needles.

But, I'm aware that the term "harm reduction" has been stretched when it comes to sexual exploitation to often include dodgy assumptions that "allowing" prostitution reduces the risk to non prostitute women (nope, no evidence at all of that,) and that legalising and regulating prostitution reduces risks for prostitutes (nope, haven't seen any evidence of that either.)