Prostitution propositions

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7735908.stm

I don't believe in evil for the most part. The acts of murder and rape can be products of a damaged or desperate mind, responding in a horribly wrong way to the world they are experiencing. Sex-trafficking on the other hand, is the one thing that makes me spitting mad. It is hard to discount the word evil when describing a man who takes women and girls from their families and friends promising them a better life, only to brutally sell their bodies for his own personal gain.

With that in mind you would think I would welcome the government initiative to make it illegal to pay for sex with someone who is being controlled and is a prostitute against their will. Unfortunately, I believe anything which drives prostitution further into the shadows – and that is where the clients will want it to go if they think they're playing russian roulette with a hefty fine or rape charge – will make prostitution more dangerous for all the woman who find themselves involved in it. I believe it is right that anyone who pays for sex with someone they know to have been trafficked should face a rape charge, for that is exactly what they are doing. Not knowing the mindset of someone who pays for sex, I can only speculate that this might be an incentive not to ask any questions and just get in and out without any chit-chat. It is of course quite possible that this is what clients do anyway, and perhaps an explanation of why they need to pay for sex in the first place.

So how do we tackle the problem then?

Please be advised that the section of text below is in massive writing not because I believe it requires extra emphasis but that I didn't know how to fix it (sorry)

It is clear to me that you cannot tackle the issue of prostitution without tackling drug abuse. The statistics I could find suggest that 75-80% of prostitutes are addicted to drugs. A serious drug addiction makes it nigh impossible to hold down a job, so a £50 a day habit needs to be supported by prostitution or crime. I say needs, but if you could get the drug locally for free at a government sanctioned “shooting gallery” then there would be no “need” and somewhere near three quarters of prostitutes would have no reason to sell their bodies for cash.

(and relax)

Drug users are not necessarily bad people. They are just people who were sad, bored or ignorant at one point in their lives, made a really bad decision and found themselves imprisoned in an addiction to which their was no means of escape. No community is going to want a “shooting gallery” in their midst, until you explain the benefits that is. In Widnes, where there was an experimental heroin prescription policy, the local Marks and Spencer's was so delighted by the 90% drop in shoplifting that they donated £5000 to the project.

Read a remarkable article on the Widnes project here:

http://www.drcnet.org/guide2-95/liverpool.html

Okay, so now that you've quartered the prostituting population, what to do about trafficking? Looking at the situation from a cold, practical perspective, if prescribing heroin to existing addicts quarters the supply of prostitutes for their paying clients, how is demand going to be met? Would trafficking even increase to fill the gap with exploited, non-addicted girls and women from overseas? I don't know the answer to this, but I feel the key to ensuring this doesn't happen is to establish a difference between “good”, tolerated providers of prostitutes and those who are controlled by pimps and traffickers.

I suspect the only way to draw a solid line between the two groups is to introduce some sort of licensing arrangement whereby government can lay down the guidelines for what would be an acceptable organisation providing sex for sale. My own instincts on this would be that support staff should be voluntary or be on flat-rate pay without commission and that they should be entirely female and that social work and police – again female – should have full access to records, accounts, and interviews with the women employed. Once any such system is established, it would then be acceptable to me to have severe punishments for clients using unlicensed providers of prostitution.

Where prostitutes are identified who are being controlled, we should be looking to rehouse these women or girls out of the area in which their pimp operates - with friends and colleagues if necessary - in return for information leading to arrests. If women are concerned that grassing would put them in danger then it is our responsibility to make sure that all resources are made available to ensure that they can be reassured.

I believe this latest government initiative is yet another example of tinkering around at the edges of policy in the fear that there would be a public backlash against the sensible solution. It is the governments duty to do what is right for its people, not what is popular. If a proposal is unpopular, then it is the governments duty to explain as best they can why the proposal would work for the benefit of all (except pimps and traffickers, although surely they would be happier doing something else with their lives. They are still human aren't they? I'm not quite sure.)