News

New laws on kerb crawling will drive sex market underground

(31 March 2010)

New laws on kerb crawling have been criticised by an expert who says that they could make women more vulnerable and could be difficult to police.

The new laws, which come into force Thursday April 1, will make it possible for police to arrest kerb-crawlers for a first offence and will make it illegal to pay for sex with a prostitute who is subject to 'exploitative conduct'.

This is the first time in the history of English law that purchase of sex from a consenting adult has been made criminal.

But Dr Jo Phoenix, from Durham University, says that evidence shows that criminalising the purchase of sex would increase the vulnerability and exploitation of women in prostitution.  

"Research indicates that criminalising the purchase of sex has an unintended and paradoxical effect of increasing the levels of vulnerability and exploitation of women in prostitution.

"It tends to drive the market further underground and away from the agencies including the police that can offer women protection."

She added that "symbolic" criminal laws were not the solution to the problem: "There is no credible research which indicates such approaches are successful in abolishing prostitution, not even in Sweden where the purchase of sex was fully criminalised."

Dr Phoenix also questioned whether police would be able to enforce the laws effectively: "Not only is there no clear definition of exploitative conduct, or an easy way for the police to determine whether a women is subject to it, there is also no clear cut way of policing it."