Taking the drugs issue out of the equation would make the rest of the problem easier to tackle. Allow doctors to prescribe heroin and crack under supervised conditions. Also declare an immigration amnesty for trafficked prostitutes. Women aren't going to go for help if deportion is the likely outcome. Further then that, I'm not sure.

Dave

You should have come along to this to hear a discussion of the subject: http://unionfutures.blogspot.com/2008/01/socialist-youth-network-discussion.html

I think much of the debate is not always helpful on the left. It tends to be ‘oh its no worse than other types of crap work’ or ‘ all women are victims and drug users’. There are a minority who earn a lot and can be choosy, the majority though are deperate, walking the streets and drug dependent or holed away , basically slaves, as trafficked women or children.
The reality is that for probably most of the women it’s not a real choice, but its not the answer to make it tougher through criminalisation of either them or the punters.

There could be issues with licensed brothels. Some women may not be trusting of what they see as state controls, even if much of it will protect them.I do think unions can play a role in this.

I do also think what is crucial is support for women to leave sex work if they want to. Then it becomes clearer how much of a real choice it is. Support through education, training, access to health services and housing. Many women are trapped because their housing is linked to their pimps. They can’t access training and can’t tell employers what they have been doing, not exactly good on a CV.

This should not be done in a heavy handed way. Probably the first thing is to find places for the women to live, away from the pimps. To support them to make choices and decisions about what they want to do, in their time, not linked to govt targets.

Those working with the women will have to be aware that they will be mistrusted. I think there are some groups around the country run by ex prostitutes, supporting women. I’ll look for some links later.

If all this is on place, if women aren’t criminalised and have this support to leave, then we can debate whether there is real choice. Would women, and men, without the pressures of a capitalist society, choose this work? Would someone freely choose to sell sex? If it was safe and well paid (and not linked to paying for a fix) then would people want to do it, if they could do something else?

Writing this just a couple of hundred metres from the Court where this trial si taing place, and just next to the Ipswich Red Light District.

Ipswich Trades Council and the English Collective of Prostitutes have a publis meeting tonight. Called, Decriminalising Prostitution. At our Trades Council yesterday we discussed the issue. A delegate, who comes form the state side of the legal area, stated emphatically that in his and his colleagues' view proposals now in parliament to enforce stricter punishments/rehabilitation on prositutes would create a nightmare of maladmistration, extra burdens for those affected, and drive the trade into a riskier udnerground channels.

This has already happened in Ipswich: fewer women on the streets, more small ads in the local newsagents (meaning the sex-workers are prone to the control of procurers). The radical feminist stand that all men buying sex should be brought before the courts was dismissed as ludicrous by the delegates (I cited a statistic which said that up to 25% of men had paid for sex at least once in their lives).

Anyway, the below is the Resolution passed last eyar by the national Trades Councils AGM (submitted by Suffolk Trades Council Federation):

This Conference recognizes that the brutal murder of five young women in Ipswich just before Xmas shocked and touched people all over the country, lifting the lid on the violent world of street prostitution.

Over the last 10 years around 60 prostitutes have been murdered in England and Wales with just 16 arrests. Recent studies have found that:

 Two-thirds of sex workers had been violently attacked by their clients, with street prostitutes at greatest risk. Sex workers, especially street prostitutes, experience violence and abuse.
 They are 40 times more likely to be murdered than other women - a reflection of our society where violence against women is endemic.
 Over 90% of street prostitutes are hooked on drugs. Women are coerced and forced into selling their bodies by pimps, traffickers and economic necessity.
 Over 70% are mothers. Poverty homelessness and debt as well as low pay force women into prostitution to support themselves and their families.

The government's consultation paper 'Paying the Price' have made no significant changes to existing law. Police 'crackdowns' have been encouraged, particularly Asbos, and, when breached, they are a criminal offence leading to fines or even prison.

We call for

o Decriminalisation not legalisation. This would abolish all laws criminalizing prostitutes without institutionalising and legitimizing it. No zones, no licensing, no legalized brothels.

o A massive expansion of drug rehabilitation schemes, aimed at getting addicts off drugs altogether.

o Support services such as counselling, safe houses; help with housing, training and jobs to provide a route out prostitution.

o A huge increase in public funding in health, housing, childcare and other services.

Conference recognizes that sex workers are workers and have the right to join a trade union though they should not be forced to sell their bodies to survive. Prostitution and violence against women will continue whilst poverty and inequality in terms of power and wealth remain within our society, breeding violence, abuse, and economic and sexual exploitation. While some measures can make life less dangerous and harmful for women involved in prostitution, there will be no lasting solutions while poverty, inequality and sexual exploitation continue to exist.

I agree with everything Andrew says (this may be a first). There are a lot of women who would rather not be sex workers, and there's a lot that can be done to help them get out of that life. Resourcing and facilitating patient, street-level, one-to-one work of this sort will do a lot more good than calling for X to be criminalised or Y to be legalised.

Incidentally, prescribed heroin would work (I think this used to be called the English system) but prescribed crack wouldn't - it's an instant hit with an instant repeat craving.

Cheers Phil. I've known a couple of heroin addicts but crack is (thankfully) outside my experience. Is there any way that crack addiction can be 'managed' or is that insurmountable?

Dave said:

"Licensing and inspection would make prostitutes safer, cut out pimps, reduce violence, trafficking, diseases and drug abuse, and the end exploitation of underage girls."

Just out of interest, how do you know?

Just decriminalising or legalising doesn't make any difference to the problems with the trade. Simply saying "there, now you won't be prosecuted" doesn't stop the traffickers and the pimps abusing women to make personal gains.

Without proper licensing and regulation of brothels while criminalising street prostitution there is no distinction that allows the means to truly rid ourselves of trafficking to the furthest degree possible. Without making sure that business owners are clean and not working with organised crime through licensing there is no way to curb the already existent problems from effectively getting an easier time.

The trouble is this country isn't ready to legitimise sex workers and so is unhappy to do anything that would actually solve the problems they face.

One strong argument for decriminalising as opposed to licensing is the experience of Nevada. At best, that's made no difference to the working conditions of many prostitutes. For some though, I think it's made it worse- brothel owners now have the power to de facto criminalise prostitutes who try to stand up for themselves.

The sex worker speakers I heard at the above event were very clear that the New Zealand (legalisation) model is much better than the Swedish (decriminalisation) system for the sex workers themselves.

I think the solution lies in giving more power to prostitutes themselves as workers, through a system of full legalisation and regulation.

It's not a pleasant trade, and won't ever be, but it can be reformed to improve it, if you engage the sex workers themselves in that reform, to reduce the worst of the exploitation.

Ipswich Council phoned the organisers of the Decriminalise Prostitution meeting at 3 yesterday to tell them that they had cancelled the booking in the old Town Hall because the issue was "too sensitive" at the moment. Nevertheless the event went ahead in the function room of a local Irish pub. Up to fifty attended, including a strong contingent from the London based English Collective of Prostitutes.

The main speaker, from New Zealand, spoke of the experience of decriminalisation in that country. Despite scare-mongering from some quarters, alleging an increase in the sex trade and trafficked women, on, she argued, very thin and contestable evidence, the new system had provided better protection for women.

That indeed as the central theme of the meeting: protection and supporting the rights of women. Bejamin's point, that it was the voices of the women involved in sex work, that should be heard, was underlined by several speakers. As was evidence locally that the recent crack-down on seet workers, coupled with elements (very flawed, notably in funding levels) of a rehabiliation and reinsertion programme had simply displaced prostitution from the Red Light district to other sites. It was noted that there had been new 'massage parlours' opened, hand-written cards in newsagents, and press ads. Those who believe in further repression, to eliminate these as well, would, it was said, simply drive the whole business into dangerous areas - more dangerous than even the practice that led to the deaths of vulnerable women in Ipswich.

The Collective's campaign against measures in the Criminal Justice Bill (at present going through the Lords) to make rehabilitation compulsory, and increase penalities, though wih a few good aspects (allowing two women and a maid to work from home), appears a step towards the draconian legal framework wanted for some. With detailed first-hand descriptions of working with women affected we were left in no doubt that the calls to ban the entire sex industry, above all by prosecuting men who pay for sex (an estimate is that 25% of all men have done so at some time) would push sex-workers into increased criminalisation. Though one should be wary of statistics about this entire subject, since it was signalled that some figures alleging vast numbers of 'traficked' women in the UK included any women who was not a British citizen

From the audience a woman involved in a Community Resource Centre noted that this seemed to be part of a general effort to simultaneously criminalise and to 'reform' the entire so-called underclass, the unemployed, the poor and those with addictions.

Speakers referred to an important and succesful meeting held in the House of Commons, arranged by John McDonnell, for the Collective on these topics.

These women from the Collective are deadly serious, clear, very coherent and informed. They would present their case far better, and in greater detail, than I can do here. Still, I hope that everyone on the left will support their campaign: we should not stand by and let a group of the most fragile suffer from the attacks they now face.

The meetings in parliament were very successful and jeffs right Dave you should have come along it would have challenged your views.
However I have reservations about how rosy the picture is in New Zealand. We had the same speaker coatsy mentions from new zealand at the meeting I chaired and the discussion was in parts so bourgeois it hurt. She seemed to think it was a good thing that women were able to open there own brothels and get other women to sell sex for them, and taxes where a thing that all people avoided.
+ when I raised the point from comrades in new zealand that the policy there meant more people being traficed into NZ she got quite angry and (rightly) asked for stats showing this - which I'm looking for.

Saying that I really enjoyed the discussion the other contributor we had was Pye from Sweden who was explaining how the criminilisation of men wasn't working. (Perhaps Harriet also should have come)

This was perhaps the first time the younger generation of syn had engaged in this debate in this length and detail and many of them are still talking about it now - reactions ranged from completly dumbfounded by being in the room with 2 sex workers who were actually real people and stuttering your words out to being candidly honest that its hard to put away your moral feelings etc when you've always been brought up to and the world around you thinks that prostitution is something you would do only when desperate and that the women who do it are vulnerable and need rescuing.
The 2 speakers certainly challenged that view point but I am dubious about how many people are in their position and how many sex workers are living in desperate conditions.
It seems to me that whilst I agree we shouldn't criminlise P and the amendments 104 etc passed a little while ago are bad - if we are looking at this from a class perspective it is the prostitues who are on the streets selling sex who are the working class that we (lefty unionists) need to reach to not the petit b that just see any new legislation as a chance to set up shop and make money for themselves.

MJ

I had hoped to make one of the two meetings that week, but couldnt.

I think it is important to listen to the women themselves, but also perhaps to ask if they represent all women who sell sex. Im not sure how many of the members were or are in the position of the Ipswich women who were walking the streets and did , i think, have a drug habit. Within sex work there are differences , such as those at most risk on the streets and those who can perhaps be a bit more choosy and safe .

I could be wrong and perhaps the campaigning groups , and the people who speak at meetings, have been in the position of streetwalking , trafficking etc.

As I said in my first comment, the emphaisis should be on empowering the women and given them a way out of they want. Then it will be clear if it is a choice or the last resort.Support them and provide access to housing, employment, benefits etc. Not force them though.

Its about not being moralistic but at the same time supporting those women who are exploited, trafficked and trapped in sex work , even if it is not the majority. The danger is losing sight of them in what can be a polarised debate of all victims v women choosing and it being no worse than other forms of crap work. btw MJ, I dont think you are saying that.

"perhaps be a bit more choosy and safe ."

That should have been safer.

there is no safe place for any woman to work as a sex worker either n the streets or in licensed brothels, to me an ex addict and ex working girl there is no different, a woman is just as likely to be attacked weather working on the steet or in a house, there will also be someone who makes money out of it, as a memeber of the IPSWICH STREET PROSTITUTION STRATEGY 2007 - 2012 team i hope for the memoiers of the five young girls that prositiution never gets licensed