There are many ideological debates that rage in our culture today. One which might seem more obscure, but actually touches on vital issues to do with human dignity, is the issue of prostitution.
The fact that prostitution is so divisive might be news to some. It is an activity that, in Britain at least, largely goes on behind closed doors, and when we do hear about it in the news, it’s usually a voyeuristic window into a celebrity scandal.
The most intense debate on the issue occurs between differing feminist groups. It isn’t unusual these days to see the refrain ‘sex work is work’ awash over Instagram accounts, yet the same mantra produces a plethora of angry Twitter threads, denouncing its message as violence against women.
What is agreed on all sides is that the present system is failing individuals and it's time Britain reformed its prostitution laws. But why do we believe the ‘Nordic Model’ (which criminalises the purchase of sex, but not prostitutes themselves, and helps victims to exit the sex industry) is the best way forward? Here are three reasons why we think it is the best solution…
1. The Nordic Model recognises that prostitution is harmful and cannot be made‘safe’.
“There’s an epidemic of violence against sex workers.” (Niki Adams, English Collective of Prostitutes)
Rather than the ‘happy hooker’ myth that is often promulgated across media platforms, the evidence suggests that prostitution is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.
For example, research for the Scottish Government in 2016 found that “most respondents who provide services and support to those involved in prostitution emphasised a range of risks and adverse impacts associated with prostitution in the short and longer term in relation to general and mental health, safety and wellbeing and sexual health.”
The level of harm endured in prostitution significantly outweighs what would be experienced in other workplaces. Prostitution cannot be said to be ‘just another job’ when it entails physical violence: 61% of women surveyed reported experiences of violence from buyers of sexual services. A comparative study of prostitution in nine countries with over 850 subjects found that 71% had been physically assaulted.
One women’s health project has also found that the majority of women involved in prostitution who came to the project recorded symptoms related to sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive tract infections or other health complications. These consequences are so serious that mortality rates are estimated to be 12 times higher among women involved in prostitution than the national average. [i]
That is to say nothing of the psychological harm caused to women involved in prostitution, which is estimated to be comparable to military veterans suffering from PTSD.
The innately harmful nature of prostitution is precisely why some advocate for it to be decriminalised, as they argue that the creation of safe venues would improve conditions for ‘workers’. They also argue that decriminalisation would ensure that more individuals would report violence to the police because they no longer face fear of criminality.
However, the evidence for such assertions is scant.
In the Netherlands, where prostitution was legalised in 2000 in order to ‘regulate’ criminal activity, evidence suggests that organised crime and illegal prostitution continued alongside the legal sector, including sex with underage individuals and violent sex acts.
In Germany, a psychologist describes the situation since the law changed: “Since the law destroyed any questioning of the harm in men buying women for sex, the acts are becoming increasingly dangerous, violent and degrading. Buyers pick from a long list of sexual acts, most of which could easily be defined as torture…These acts cause extremely deep, enduring and traumatizing harm to the women.”
In New Zealand, which decriminalised prostitution in 2003, the Prime Minister admitted in 2012 that the reform had failed to meet its aims of reducing underage prostitution. There are also reports of continued violent attacks, and evidence shows that many of those working in brothels continue to feel reluctant to report violence to the police.
Closer to home, the Holbeck area in Leeds is a ‘managed’ area for prostitution where loitering, kerb crawling and soliciting are effectively legalised during set hours. Despite reports of an increase in women reporting concerns about dangerous clients, there have also been reports of increased rates of rape, sexual assault and one woman was even murdered in 2015.
The Nordic model, decriminalising the provider of sexual services, means that those in prostitution will be more able to approach the police and report incidents of abuse, because they are no longer subject to criminal sanctions themselves.
2. The Nordic Model acknowledges that prostitution is not a free‘choice’
“The best available evidence absolutely bears out that, you know, by and large, women do not choose to be in prostitution. Those few exceptions should not be forming the policy goals here.” (Laura Timms, East London Rape Crisis Centre)
Whilst some say they enter prostitution as a free choice and do not find it to be a negative or detrimental experience, it is more often a lack of choice that forces people to enter prostitution.
In 2019, the Conservative Human Rights Commission held an inquiry into prostitution in England and Wales. They found that “the overwhelming majority of those in prostitution would not meet the threshold for establishing free choice – most describe their choice to enter prostitution as dictated by their circumstances.”
Organisations working with people in prostitution acknowledge this. One frontline support worker stated, “throughout my career I am yet to meet a woman who made a conscious choice to enter prostitution without an external force such as poverty or relationships being at play.”
Whilst the glamorised stories we more commonly hear in the media often paint prostitution as an empowering business decision, this is not the reality for most women. Rebecca Perry from Safe Exit writes:
“Through my experience, the women we’ve worked with, we’ve never met a woman who has consciously made a decision that that is the career choice that she’s obviously decided for. It’s something that she’s found herself within, and there’s no point within her experience where she can actually pinpoint the moment that she entered, because it’s such a continuum. So I think for that reason, that evidences the fact that it’s not a choice; it’s a coercion. It’s something out of desperation.”
Amongst the most common factors that lead women to enter prostitution is childhood abuse. Home Office data has shown that 45% of those in prostitution report an experience of sexual abuse, and one study found that as many as 72% of participants had suffered some form of childhood violence, including emotional, physical, verbal and sexual violence. The evidence also suggests that many people enter prostitution at a young age, sometimes under the age of 18, whether through coercion, drug use, or experiences of childhood violence. This makes it incredibly difficult to exit. According to one study, many interviewees were "unable to remember life before prostitution" and, as such, found it much more difficult to "form a new role and way of life".
“The women that we work with report to us experiences, extreme experiences, of child sexual abuse from an incredibly young age, from literally the day they were born. They have extremely problematic lifestyles. Again, it’s a continuum. There’s no point at which they can say, ‘that event occurred and caused this and triggered this behaviour.'” (Rebecca Perry)
High numbers of women in prostitution have experienced coercion from a partner, relative or pimp (with rates of violence at a much higher rate than elsewhere in society). This can include the use of threats or violence, including physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse, in order to maintain control over a woman in prostitution. One study in 2012 found that as many as 50% of women surveyed had experienced coercion.
Alongside this is prevalence in drug and alcohol abuse. Several studies have found that between 50% and 95% of women in street prostitution are addicted to Class A drugs. Michelle Kelly, a survivor of the sex industry, summarises her experience of this destructive cycle — one common to many in prostitution:
“My reasons for this apparent ‘free choice’ were, however, driven by an abusive relationship and a Class A drug addiction. I was also still suffering the long-term trauma of childhood sexual abuse. That a high percentage of child abuse survivors enter prostitution is no coincidence; we learn the limits of consent from a young age. I wasn't so much paid to have sex so much as to stay silent about being abused, and to lie and pretend this was ‘a job like any other’. Maintaining this dissonance had detrimental effects on my health and wellbeing. Here is another not-coincidence; prostitutes have rates of PTSD similar to that of war veterans.” (Michelle Kelly)
This is not empowerment; it is exploitation. Describing experiences like these with words like 'choice' is utterly misleading. It is deeply problematic when we start to consider something exploitative as ‘just another job': language matters.
“When a society changes the language it uses to describe things, it changes the way those things are perceived. So, by reframing abuse and exploitation of vulnerable young women into something perfectly normal and innocuous, prostitution has been reconstituted into simply another option in the labour market.” (Dr Jacci Stoyle, secretary of the Cross-Party Group for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in the Scottish Parliament)
Although some advocate for decriminalisation based on arguments about autonomy, opponents of the Nordic model need to explain why the desires of a few should override the genuine harms suffered by many others, without the possibility of escape. How can a truly compassionate society place a desire for individual freedom over the desperate needs of women in circumstances of abuse, addiction and exploitation?
3. The Nordic model reduces human trafficking
“The tolerance of the EU and its member states for the system of prostitution allow for men’s use of and control over women’s body and sexuality, and fuels trafficking in women for sexual exploitation....The question is about having the political courage to recognise that prostitution is intrinsically a form of violence, an obstacle to equality between women and men, and a violation of human dignity.” (European Women’s Lobby)
Prostitution is inextricably linked with the issue of human trafficking. Many of the women and children who have been trafficked here were imported to provide sexual services. Across Britain, 63% of all females referred to the National Referral Mechanism (for victims of human trafficking) have experienced sexual exploitation.
Evidence obtained by the APPG on Prostitution in 2018 found that there were 212 active police operations in the UK into sexual exploitation cases. They found it was overwhelmingly foreign national women being exploited in brothels in Britain. The Leicestershire police visited 156 brothels, encountering 421 women, between 2016-2017: 86% of the women in the brothels were Romanian. Northumbria Police visited 81 brothels between 2016-2018: 75% were from Romania. In Greater Manchester, police identified 324 new brothel addresses between 2015 and 2018, all of which were in the hotspot areas for modern slavery in Greater Manchester.
You can’t deal with human trafficking without also addressing prostitution. Part of this will involve increasing prosecutions of smuggling gangs and people traffickers; but we also need to reduce the demand for trafficked women and girls.
If there are no ‘buyers’ for sexual services, there will be no ‘market’ where it is profitable to traffic individuals for sexual exploitation. The Nordic model is the only model that explicitly tackles demand for paid sex.
Some in the pro-decriminalisation lobby argue that the issue of prostitution and human trafficking should be kept separate, but evidence clearly demonstrates that one facilitates the other.
In fact, legalising prostitution makes trafficking much harder to police. Several studies have found that those countries that have legalised or decriminalised prostitution have higher levels of trafficking than those that have not done so.
In New Zealand, the decriminalisation of prostitution has led to a barrier in identifying and assisting victims of trafficking because the police now have less contact with those who work in the sex industry, as it is now seen as a legitimate business.
Similarly, in Germany police officers have reported an “explosive increase in human trafficking from Romania and Bulgaria” and described Germany as a “centre for the sexual exploitation of young women from Eastern Europe, as well as a sphere of activity for organised crime groups from around the world.”
In the Netherlands, one report about combatting trafficking in the sex industry concluded that “the legalization and regulation of the prostitution sector has not driven out organized crime. On the contrary, fighting sex trafficking using the criminal justice system may even be harder in the legalized prostitution sector.” According to a police study, between 50% and 90% of all those involved in prostitution in Amsterdam have been coerced into it, even in legal establishments.
Legislation that solely targets those purchasing sex from victims of trafficking specifically, are simply ineffective. A recent comparative analysis of six countries across Europe concluded the following: “criminalising the purchase of sex only where there is proof the person is a victim of trafficking or procuring is inoperable from an enforcement point of view and ineffective in relation to the wider goal of acting as a deterrent and reducing demand.”
The only effective means of reducing the demand for victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation is to criminalise the purchase of sexual services, regardless of whether the individual has been exploited or has willingly entered into prostitution.
Not for sale
It is time that our laws were overhauled. They are ineffective, they ignore the significant harm caused to women in prostitution, and they fuel the trafficking industry, leading to the widespread sexual exploitation of women across the UK by organised crime groups.
Prostitution is not an ‘employment option’ anyone should be advocating for. It significantly increases harm to already vulnerable individuals, facilitates coercive abuse, and places many at further risk of violence from consumers.
The evidence is clear: prostitution is a decision many women make in desperate circumstances, and has clearly associated harms. The Government should do all it can to reduce its levels overall.
The most effective route to achieve this aim is the Nordic model. Following its introduction in Sweden in 1999, reports have shown a decrease in overall levels of prostitution, a reduction in on-street prostitution and a significant reduction in the numbers of men saying they have paid for sexual services, from 13.6% in 1996 to 7.5% in 2014.
On the other hand, prostitution in Germany exploded post-legalisation, and it has become an attractive destination for so-called ‘sex tourism’: according to the CPHRC Consent Report, estimates suggest that the rate of prostitution is thirty times higher than in Sweden. Street prostitution in New Zealand also increased by 400% following the change to the law.
No model is perfect, but it is only the Nordic Model that can protect the many vulnerable women in prostitution whose experience has been profoundly harmful and exploitative, and we strongly recommend its introduction.