The government’s review of the law on prostitution has not been universally welcomed: I’m going to be kind to it, for the most part. I think there are some really good recommendations here, for instance, that it should be possible to prosecute a first offence of kerb-crawling, and that there should be greater powers for the police to close down premises. The review also suggests there should be more rigorous enforcement of the existing law – again, I agree.
Where the review has got it wrong, I think, is in being over-cautious about criminalising paying for sex. Ministers (including the Solicitor General Vera Baird) looked at the example of Sweden, where paying for sex is an offence, but have decided that wouldn’t work here – basically, because prostitution is too popular. Read the review if you don’t believe me. I think that is a serious failure of political courage – I agree with Fiona Mactaggart about it. And it’s this failure which has put the government in an awkward position because what it is proposing is making it a strict liability offence to pay for sex with someone who is ‘controlled’ by another.
The government sees that as an attempt to protect trafficked women – but I’m afraid it’s nonsense. It’s not that I feel sorry for the poor man who can’t tell whether a woman has been trafficked or not. The problem is this: why should one man get away free because the woman he pays for sex – perhaps insisting on not using a condom – happens to stand on her own feet, while another is prosecuted because some man is in the background about whom he knows nothing? It’s too random, and too arbitrary. And why should the penalty be so low, at only £1000 maximum, when some of these men will know they’re exploiting a trafficked woman? It doesn’t make sense. Yes, there’s been talk around this review of charging with rape those men who do know they’ve used a trafficked woman – but that’s not actually a recommendation of the review.
I’d be in favour of criminalising all payment for sex – and charging knowing exploiters of the trafficked with rape.
Consider this- a man pays a prostitute and only sits and talks to her. Or he pays her to watch him masturbate. Has a crime been committed if no physical contact has been made?
Next- what about paying a woman to talk dirty in order to get a sexual thrill. If the woman is present is it a crime? If she is on the end of the phone? Or on TV?
Impossible to prosecute. More stupid posturing from harperson and the other man haters
By no means impossible to prosecute – just perhaps unfair.
What I’m interested in is that this looks like it is intended to achieve conflicting policy goals, but achieves neither: both to reduce human trafficking, and to reduce the volume of prostitution.
The odd thing is that there are probably much more direct ways to achieve the latter goal: a social wage to reduce supply, and propaganda campaigns to reduce demand.
The former can probably be better achieved through regulation of the market – licensed, inspected brothels, and extremely heavy penalties for running an unlicenced brothel.
As a former fellow-alumnus to Fiona McTaggart, I can only say that she talked nonsense as a student in the 1970s and still talks nonsense today. Prostitution laws certainly need a thorough review ( see the ease with which lapdancing clubs can set up shop ) but anything proposed by Ms McT can be discarded as worthless.
Your view on Dacre’s nonsense was
‘Second: Eady J at no point in his judgment says that there’s “nothing wrong” with what Mosley did. The judgment is – as it should be – about legality, not morality. Dacre’s charges of amorality and relativism are simply wrong.’
so is
‘I’d be in favour of criminalising all payment for sex’
about legality, or morality? I’m just curious….
About social policy I think, Scunnered. I don’t stick strictly to legality in this blawg; I do politics, morality, a bit of everything as well as law. But I think Eady stuck pretty firmly to law in that judgment.