“Managing” prostitution
Dan and Jo have been quicker off the mark on this than me on this one.
I won’t add much except to say that if you announce the creation and thus the location of a managed zone for prostitution, you advertise the services provided there, increasing demand and thus provision. This seems to me to be a key consideration for a city like Oxford where the problem is relatively small. Having a toleration zone or legalising brothels is a (not very effective) last resort for cities with huge prostitution problems like Liverpool and Glasgow, not small ones like Oxford.
Oh, and I was glad to see the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police opposing the proposal in today’s paper.
“if you announce the creation and thus the location of a managed zone for prostitution, you advertise the services provided there, increasing demand and thus provision”
oh please come on! So if you know where the prostitutes are more people will use them, really? And the men in Oxford don’t know where prostitutes are?
one: not all men are just dying to go to a prostitute, but ‘just don’t know where they are’
two: what about the safety of the women? surely this should be are main priority or does Labour not care? Oops cause I forgot it’s labour that’s been cutting benefits for single mums and the like, so that’s why they have to prostitute themselves in the first place….should have thought
“one: not all men are just dying to go to a prostitute, but ‘just don’t know where they are’”
No, but if there is an area of Oxford which is known to be an area where prostitution is tolerated, more people will go there. This is the experience elsewhere, and also obvious.
“two: what about the safety of the women? surely this should be are main priority or does Labour not care?”
Toleration zones attract pimps and drug dealers from other areas, which doesn’t exactly increase the safety of the women. Research into already existing toleration zones found that ‘it appeared impossible to create a safe and controllable zone for women that was not open to abuse by organised crime’.
“Oops cause I forgot it’s labour that’s been cutting benefits for single mums and the like”
Single mothers are, on average, much better off now in real terms than in 1997.
“so that’s why they have to prostitute themselves in the first place…”should have thought”
It would help if you understood something about this issue before sharing your thoughts with others. You could start, say, by reading this:
http://www.met.police.uk/sapphire/documents/POPPY%20Newsletter%20Issue%201%20Jan%202004.pdf
Take care
Dan xxx
Dan thanks for the link to the police but no thanks…I lived in Kings Cross when the guy was cutting up the prostitutes there and the police actually went in to his flat and saw a dead woman and did nothing!
Labours disgusting attitude to immigrants, denying them benefits etc and the general poverty level of benefits anyway is what in a vast majority of cases would make women go into or be forced into prostitution so save the Blairite bollocks if you will
I’d like to see women not have to sell themselves, but for that really radical change would have to happen, and if they’re going to have to do it, then they should be safe a toleration zone a la amsterdam woul dhelp this I feel - because then they wouldn’t have to keep fucking in the back alleyways round my estate and getting preyed on by drug dealers as they are now
Noel, the link is to the newsletter of the Poppy Project, the only refuge for trafficked women in the country. It’s hosted by the Met, but still worth a look at.
I think it’s absurdly oversimplistic to say that bad attitudes to immigrants and low levels of benefits cause prostitution. Instead, I think you’d be better off looking to drugs as a major cause.
A real strategy to end prostitution includes most of the following:
- the UK signing up to the Council of Europe anti-trafficking agreement (see here)
- more resources put into women-only residential drugs treatment centres that are immediate access and adequately and sustainably funded
- schools that encourage every young woman to aspire to a career and to achieve, and a variety of well-paid jobs to be open to women
- a homelessness strategy that recognises that the major cause of women’s homelessness is family breakup and domestic violence
- real anti-pimping and anti-coercion strategies to prevent young vulnerable women being groomed by older “boyfriends” and coerced into prostitution
These would be a good start, and I for one would rather spend money on these than on policing a crime hotspot, which is what would be created by toleration zones.
“Labours disgusting attitude to immigrants, denying them benefits etc and the general poverty level of benefits anyway is what in a vast majority of cases would make women go into or be forced into prostitution so save the Blairite bollocks if you will”
The level of benefits, in real terms, has increased in the past five years. I think it should be much higher, but when discussing this issue and trying to look at what to do it is important to understand the actual facts. If prostitution were simply caused by poverty, then there should have been a big decrease in the number of prostitutes in the last few years.
As for immigration, there is an awful lot wrong with what the government is doing (and specifically on this issue, the deportation of women who have been trafficked is a particularly revolting policy). But the policy that you support of setting up toleration zones would actually assist the people traffickers who smuggle women into Britain. You mention the toleration zones in Amsterdam, but it is the mayor of Amsterdam who said that toleration zones work to the benefit of organised criminals.
In addition to what Antonia’s suggested, I’d add that I think the law should criminalise kerb crawlers rather than prostitutes, that we should reduce poverty and inequality, and that we need to stop thinking that prostitution is ‘the world’s oldest profession’ and will always be with us.
Take care
Dan xxx
I am researching a film on student debt and poverty, and the increasing numbers of students who are turning to prositution in order to finance their studies.
Does anyone know somebody that I can talk to about the issues involved?
Try your local escort agency Sarah.