"Criminalizing clients does not protect sex workers, according to a recent study"

[ACatWhoBinds]

https://journalmetro.com/actualites/national/2606790/criminaliser-les-clients-ne-protege-pas-les-travailleuses-du-sexe-selon-une-etude-recente/amp/

As someone who's looked into the Nordic model vs. decriminalisation, this doesn't surprise me. More evidence that criminalising clients harms the most vulnerable.

Would be interested to hear views of people who do support the Nordic model though, and what your views are on the study

Thanks - it is valuable to post both sides and to have a proper discussion.

Two things jump out at me, though.

The first is that the situation described isn't the Nordic model because as the article makes clear, some forms of selling sex (particularly outdoors - the market with the most vulnerable, desperate women involved) are still criminalized for the sellers as well as the buyers, which of course is going to have an effect.

The other issue is the long-standing and absolutely horrific attitude of Canada to First Nations women, with the fact that for decades the police and criminal justice system has done absolutely nothing about the industrial scale disappearance and murder of women from these communities. I'll be interested to see some of our Canadian posters fill in the details of this, but again, I'm thinking "confounding factors".

You have a system which (a) isn't really the Nordic model, it's criminalisation of everything round prositution including some forms of selling sex and (b) takes place in the context of widespread institutional racism in the police where the women most at risk of being in the one remaining illegal aspect of selling sex (typically poor, drug addicted and often First Nations women) know that the system will do fuck all to protect them.

I don't think, personally, you can draw the conclusion that it's the Nordic model which is the factor that prevents women reporting crimes against them to the police.

I think it's more likely that the form of sex-selling they're engaged in is still criminalized, and they know the police are racist as fuck and don't give a shit about them being murdered in their hundreds. (Nor do the political classes - Trudeau makes all the right noises, but when it comes to actions... allowing pipelines across indigenous lands, sacking his female indigenous Attorney General because she asked awkward questions about the property corruption his family were involved in... The Canadian right of the Harper era were horrific, but it's a mistake to think Trudeau is the good guy in this.)

Legalised prostitution drives human trafficking. So it may be better for prostituted women and pimps, but it isn't better for women and girls who have been trafficked.

Legalised prostitution drives human trafficking. So it may be better for prostituted women and pimps, but it isn't better for women and girls who have been trafficked.

This.

I can’t provide a link but I believe that when men were asked what would stop them using women, they mostly said that publicity and the possibility of their family and friends knowing would be a deterrent , eg car number plates, photos ,local press etc.

As a Canadian, I would not say that what we have is really the Nordic model. (Though it differs by province and some are closer than others.)

With regard to indigenous women - this is brought out semi-regularly as sort of evidence that Canada it isn't just general wokeness that is the problem, the nation is evil and hypocritical in that it really hates indigenous women and somehow persecutes them.

This is really not true, and as much as I have no time for the whiner Trudeau, and didn't for Harper before him, the idea that there was some kind of action they could have taken to fix the problem that these women had is simply false. There was not some single entity or person targeting these women, or some concerted effort to avoid dealing with these women's cases while others were given the attention they needed.

The difficulty is that you have a population where there is a lot of poverty, and long-standing issues with substance abuse, broken families, and all the things that come out of that. First Nations girls are high risk in many ways - but not, for the most part. They are at high risk to run away from home, and high risk to be in the sex trade. And that means high risk of addiction, abuse, rape, and murder.

If you can show me a government that has somehow managed to get rid of problems like this in vulnerable populations, I am sure governments everywhere would like to know about it.

It is true that the police have not always pursued these cases - for women from all kinds of backgrounds - as carefully as they ought to have, and in a few instances have missed connections and patterns that would have seen seen had they been more diligent. Some of that is probably about not valuing the people involved much, but it can also be a matter of becoming rather hardened to the fact that life on the streets is dangerous and has a high turnover, and a lot of nice young women are lost. It's a problem that affects police forces but also people in social work, ER nurses, and other similar kinds of jobs.

For those that support the Nordic model, I'm interested in where you draw the line for what you criminalize men for? And if you aren't going to criminalize women, how do you effectively stop prostitution?

So would it be allowed for women to do genuine (non-sexual) escort work? Because if so, then escort agencies are allowed and legal. I'm fairly sure that men would be sleeping with the escorts in that situation, regardless of whether that's supposed to be happening, and it would be very difficult to catch them or prosecute anyone.

Is massage allowed? Then how do you stop certain women from offering "extras", "happy ending"? By criminalizing men? But how are you going to catch men to prosecute them? They would just deny that anything but a massage occurred presumably.

Could women offer domination services? I had one reply previously that women are still objectified by domination. OK, but objectifying women isn't illegal. You can objectify women in e.g. comic books all you want and sell them and make a profit. So is "objectification" enough to stop a woman from earning a living through dominating men?

Of course, even if you did criminalize the women as well as men, it could still be difficult to catch people if you aren't talking street prostitution.

Are you saying that making women criminals stops prostitution? I don't think anyone thinks that completely abolishing prostitution is a realistic goal, do they?

It would be great if we could reduce the number of women who are forced into it, who do it because they have no other choice, who are groomed into it as children; and the impact it has on people who aren't involved.

Lets sort out the basics before we start with the whataboutery.

Why is “eliminate the demand” in inverted commas. What is wrong with telling men that using trafficked women and children makes them disgusting human beings. We know that legalising prostitution increases demand, (and with it the demand for trafficked women and children) .

IMO Any discussion of prostitution "models" comes back to this.

Why is prostitution sniggered at in mainstream comedies?
Why is it glamourised in movies (Pretty Woman)?
Why is any serious discussion banned from polite dinner tables?

If we can shame people into wearing seat belts and reducing their speed on motorways, why, oh why, is there no similar campaign around using prostitutes?

[I know the answer is because women and children are worth less than men's enjoyment....but the question is worth repeating]

Sorry, I should have credited @UrsulaVdL for asking the question in the first place.

"I don't think anyone thinks that completely abolishing prostitution is a realistic goal, do they?"

Sure, but the Nordic model looks like pretty much decriminalised prostitution, (with the industry thriving pretty well), as long as you aren't picking up prostitutes from the streets. So in theory it's naughty, but in practice you aren't going to get punished for it.

But if it's not really much different to decriminalization, why make a fuss over it? Because you are prosecuting kerb crawlers? But we can already do that. Because you put resources into women leaving prostitution? You can already do that.

"There was not some single entity or person targeting these women, or some concerted effort to avoid dealing with these women's cases while others were given the attention they needed."

It is men as a class targeting these women, all women. They are the buyers and the perpetrators of violence, particularly sexual towards women. That's where the danger and risk comes from.

The problem is that it's portrayed as random, isolated incidences, no pattern. But that this group features overwhelmingly in the low socio-economic group, with all those social ills associated with it, with police and policing consistently failing these women isn't actually random. It's the result of consistent failure to recognise and deal with those problems, and that isn't random.

If the "Nordic model" is so great, why is it not supported by the following local and International orgs? All the below all support complete decriminalisation of prostitution:

Amnesty International
The World Health Organisation
Human Rights Watch
UNAIDS and UNFPA
HIV Scotland
National AIDS trust
Freedom United (world's largest anti-slavery org)
ILGA (International LBGT assoc.)
PICUM (this is a Dutch based org concerned with the rights and safety of migrants in Europe)
GAATW (Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women)

As well as orgs made up of prostitutes themselves which include Scot-Pep, IUSW, Umbrella Lane and the English Collective of Prostitutes.

There are two sides to the "Nordic model" debate, and a lot of organisations (including health, HIV/AIDS, human rights, anti-trafficking, immigration and prostitutes themselves) which do not support it.

For example, here is a report from the UN HIV and the Law Commission here re sex work. The "Nordic/Swedish model" is mentioned on Page 38:

hivlawcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FinalReport-RisksRightsHealth-EN.pdf

The report I posted above was published 13 years after Sweden began using the "Nordic model". In those 13 years, it reveals only 2 clients have been convicted of buying sex and they received a low fine. It says "Workers to not consider themselves to be victims and are almost always unwilling to testify against their clients.".

Another quote: "The Swedish State Criminal Dept warns that the sex trade may now be more violent."

That makes sense to me. Criminalising the purchase of sex isn't going to deter the clients who really would potentially be violent. If a man isn't going to care about the legal consequences of a violent crime such as assault/theft/rape he isn't going to care about a purchase of sex law is he?

Despite only 2 being convicted (in the first 13 years of the law), the report also says that trying to police and enforce the law is so expensive it leaves resources for Social Work scarce because the funding has to be siphoned to policing.

I also just searched Google for "Stockholm escorts" and found numerous results for Swedish sex workers with contact details. So it's still clear the sex trade in Sweden is still going strong and the demand is still there.

While "criminalise the client only" might sound good on paper and in theory, it isn't a magic bullet and for various reasons there are many people and orgs who don't support it.

@UrsulaVdL

... because they have been captured by men that hate women. Obviously

Yes, very much so.

Amnesty's recommendations to their members to vote in favour of a policy advocating for complete decrim were written by a pump, FFS.

Gotta agree with Ursula above. Buying sexual access to people is not ok. Amy more that murdering people is ok. Society's laws and mores should reflect that.

I guess the devil is in the details about how, though.

"Would you be happy for your son to tell you that buying trafficked women and children is OK."

Trafficking is illegal in all UK jurisdictions, and supporting decriminalisation does not mean supporting trafficking.

"Amnesty's recommendations to their members to vote in favour of a policy advocating for complete decrim were written by a pump, FFS."

False: www.amnesty.org.uk/douglas-fox

Amnesty Int. did a live webchat with mumsnet here once and they answered questions which include the "was your policy written by a pimp" etc. Link here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/1986689-Live-webchat-with-Amnesty-International-Tuesday-4th-Feb-11-12pm

Amnesty Int. make their views on trafficking very clear:

Source- from the live Mumsnet webchat. See link above.

"Amnesty believes that any human trafficking, including into forced prostitution or any other non-consensual sex, should be criminalised as a matter of international law. Traffickers should be prosecuted, and those who have been trafficked should be protected. We have a long and proud record of work against trafficking. Here in the UK we led the campaign to have the UK government to sign up to the European Convention Against Trafficking, a campaign win of which I’m immensely proud. Our consultation document on sex work makes it very clear that we are against trafficking and our work on this will continue."

Noone is saying trafficking is ok or should be tolerated.

"Decriminalisation drives demand which drives trafficking."

Source? Or is this just your own speculation?

"If your feminism supports the Pimps you are doing it wrong."

Incase you missed it, I provided a link where Amnesty Int. have made it clear their policy was not "written by pimps". On the webchat the spokesperson for Amnesty Int. also confirmed they do not "work with pimps for any reason".

www.amnesty.org.uk/douglas-fox