Sunday, December 12, 2004
Welcome common sense as police chiefs reject red light toleration zones
See: Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Police chiefs say no to red light 'toleration zones'.
Red light toleration zones seem such a good idea. After all, they have them in Amsterdam, and everyone knows that the Dutch lead the way in a happy, liberal society with low teenage pregnancy and freedom for all. What's more, any discussion about sexual politics always ends up with someone pointing out that things get worse if you drive them underground.
But myself, I couldn't agree less. You see, I've lived in Holland, and I've worked with victims of people trafficking and the sex industry.
There is simply no way of organising the sex trade that makes it anything other than sordid. Although it's always possible to find individual sex workers who boldly proclaim that they chose their career themselves and wouldn't have it any other way, the broader facts speak all too clearly.
Statistically, you are far more likely to find your way into prostitution if you have been in care as a teenager, or if you have suffered child abuse. Among other studies, background to this is available in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation / NSPCC study Choice and Opportunity Project: Young women and sexual exploitation. In that study of 55 13-18 year old women, 39 had been in care or looked after by the local authority.
A very high proportion of people who are trafficked in Europe (read 'sold as slaves') end up in the sex trade. Street prostitution is dangerous and humiliating for those who practice it, but building based prostitution is the real power base of sex traffickers - it is simply so much easier to coerce, intimidate and imprison in those circumstances. Legalised brothels in Amsterdam, and tolerated establishments in Belgium, have merely given the traffickers a safer and more defined market. A particularly disturbing report into the trafficking of children into the UK can be found here: Children - what the professionals know
But tolerance zones for street prostitution don't help either. The control mechanisms that pimps use don't depend on the legality of what sex workers do. The Home Office estimates that 95% of people working on the streets are using heroin or crack. The introduction of tolerance zones will not benefit these workers.
But what are the alternatives?
The Association of Chief Police Officers vice strategy, published today, is especially to be welcomed because it favours setting up safe houses and exit schemes. This is perhaps surprising coming from police chiefs, since in local situations it is often the police who favour Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and other penalty based approaches to tackling prostitution. From a police point of view, legalising brothels and tolerance zones would get the problem off their books. Exit schemes are a much harder -- but better -- approach to take.
Their new strategy perhaps reflects the realisation that the current practice of fining girls for soliciting only puts them back on the streets with a need to earn more cash fast.
But there is one legislative approach which has met with some success where it has been tried. Instead of fining the girls, fine the customers. One of the subtle and insidious degradations of the UK sex trade is that while sex workers are seen as dirty, cheap, and reprehensible, their clients are often able to continue respectable lives as business men, politicians, even senior policemen. Who has the most to lose by the threat of the courts? The clients. Who do financial penalties most put off repeat offending? The clients. Who is most threatened by their names and pictures appearing in local papers after a successful conviction? The clients.
It is a reflection of the nasty double standards that persist in the UK sex industry that this approach is often rejected at the local level. It appears that key figures veto it without giving any reasons.
You don't have to think about it for very long to work out why.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
It's inconsistent. It's unworkable. It's soulless. It's Michael Howard again
See BBC NEWS | Politics | Howard calls for refugee quotas
I have to say I was knocked over by Michael Howard's latest policy. If the Tories were to win the next election (just so it's clear we are deep into hypothetical territory), they would set a quota of 20,000 or so refugees a year that the UK would take.
Yes, this is the same Michael Howard whose own family fled from Romania to Wales as refugees in 1939. And it comes despite a promise from shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin that Tory plans would not include a cap on refugees.
20,000 may seem a respectably high figure. It's more than we currently accept. But, of course, our current figures - we accept about half the proportion that France does - are artificially low after a wave of anti-asylum hysteria led in equal parts by Labour, the Tories and the media.
The notion is, of course, unworkable. If we can't manage quotas in any other area of public life, how are we going to manage them in this one. We don't know how many refugees are trying to get into Britain. We don't have any control over who declares themselves for asylum and who is simply plugged straight into the sweat shops and the sex trade (although under Howard's Way there would certainly be many more). We don't control the routes by which they come in. In fact, we don't even understand the routes, since we have closed off all legal routes for asylum seekers to enter Britain.
It's also completely soulless. Are we really going to tell someone who has been tortured, raped, has seen their children slaughtered in front of their eyes and has paid every penny they have to get out of their mother-land which they love - are we really going to tell this person 'Sorry, you are number 20,001 and therefore Britain is full.'
Michael, just stop it, ok? You have established your right wing credentials. At least now try to inject some common sense.
The only real winners from the quota proposal are the people traffickers. The vulnerable are their easiest prey. And we - if Michael Howard gets his way - will be making that prey a lot easier.
Friday, November 05, 2004
People trafficking should be at the top of the world's agenda - but it isn't.
See BBC NEWS | England | London | Human smuggling racket 'smashed' and BBC News | A Modern Slave's Brutal Odyssey
People trafficking should be at the top of the world's agenda. Along with modern slavery - unpaid labour under the threat of violence - it is the most widespread form of man's inhumanity to man. Slave produced products include Chinese paperclips, carpets from India, Pakistan and Nepal, chocolate from the Ivory Coast, charcoal from Brazil, and sugar from the Dominican Republic (Source Abolish.
20 million people across the world (source UN) are subject to bonded labour. Up to 179 million children suffer under the worst forms of child labour (source ILO) An estimated 5 million women and children are trafficked every year (UN). A recent US Government report estimated 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year.
As far as the UK is concerned, Home Office research in 2000 estimated between 142 and 1,420 women and children trafficked into the country each year - but this figure was based solely on reported cases - and trafficking is one of the most clandestine crimes, it's victims by and large unable to testify.
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