[Wamvan] Toronto Star Editorial: Why anti-john laws don’t work (Lisa M. Kelly and Katrina Pacey)

[Meenakshi Mannoe]

Editorial to the Toronto Star. I enjoyed the multilevel analysis in
this editorial, including considerations of gentrification, the weight
upon street level sex workers and the importance of looking at long
term effects of the Nordic model. th-th-that's all folks!

meenakshi


Back to Why anti-john laws don’t work
Why anti-john laws don’t work
October 19, 2011

Lisa M. Kelly and Katrina Pacey


The Ontario Court of Appeal is due to release its decision on the
constitutionality of Canada’s criminal laws around adult prostitution.
Last year, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down these
laws, finding that they significantly contribute to danger for sex
workers. If the current laws are unconstitutional, what comes next for
the regulation of prostitution in Canada?

Conservative MP Joy Smith has one answer: more criminal law. Smith’s
campaign to criminalize the purchase of sexual services reflects a
crusade by conservatives, evangelical Christians and some feminist
organizations to import Swedish prostitution laws to Canada. These
laws decriminalize sex workers while criminalizing purchasers
(clients). The purchase of sexual services is not currently illegal in
Canada. The Swedish model aims to eliminate the sex industry by
“ending demand” for prostitution. In this imaginary scenario, criminal
sanctions will eliminate clientele for commercial sex and thereby end
sexual exploitation.

Measured on its own terms, the Swedish model has proven ineffective
and harmful. In Sweden and other Nordic countries that have adopted
such legislation, prostitution has not been eliminated, only
reshuffled. Sociological research in Sweden has shown a significant
shift from street-based to online sexual advertising since the law was
adopted in 1999.

What did these laws accomplish? They made sex work more dangerous. In
recent research from the University of Leiden, Swedish sex workers
report having to rely more on third parties (agents, pimps or helpers)
because clients are nervous about direct contact with workers.
Street-based workers report having to work in more isolated areas and
to rush transactions, increasing their danger.

If Canada adopts the Swedish model, we can expect a disproportionately
negative impact on street-based sex workers, the most vulnerable
workers in the sex industry. Since the mid-1980s, street-based
transactions have accounted for the lion’s share of
prostitution-related charges in Canada. As many urban areas face the
pressures of gentrification, street-based sex workers and their
clients, homeless persons, and street-based drug users and sellers
become common targets of police sweeps. “Not in my backyard” campaigns
result in street-based sex workers and their clients being much more
heavily policed than indoor sex workers. Criminalizing purchasers of
sexual services would force street-based workers to continue to resort
to furtive and isolated transactions with clients who are seeking to
avoid arrest.

And herein lies the hypocrisy of the prohibitionist campaign.
Advocates of “ending demand” claim the moral high ground by asserting
that their efforts to eliminate commercial sex are motivated by a
desire to end sexual exploitation and to protect women. But the
evidence suggests that the Swedish approach in fact increases dangers
for a significant proportion of these women.

Prohibitionists calling for the adoption of the Swedish model reduce
all sex workers to victims and all clients to perpetrators. They gloss
over a diverse industry that includes independent home-based sex
workers, street-based survival sex workers and male and female
escorts. This is inconsistent with the diverse experiences of Canadian
sex workers, some of whom feel exploited while others do not.

Coercion and exploitation in markets is not unique to sex work. Yet in
no other service industry are concerns about exploitation met with
proposals to outlaw demand. The commercial sex industry is singled out
because it is still subject to moral disdain and stigma. This moralism
and stigma costs lives.

We all want to end exploitation and coercion in the sex industry and
to address the social conditions that leave some women and men with
few choices other than to engage in sex work. But continuing the
failed and misguided experiment of criminalization is not the answer.

Let us instead support the efforts of Canadian sex workers to fully
decriminalize the adult sex industry and secure safer working
conditions. In order to end exploitation and coercion in the sex
industry, we should focus on social and legal reforms that will make a
meaningful difference for all vulnerable workers: labour and
employment protections, increased social assistance rates, affordable
housing and child-care programs, accessible mental health and
substance abuse treatment, immigration protections for migrant
workers, and ongoing resistance to sexism, racism and other forms of
oppression. Evidence-based policies, not ideological reactions, will
address the real harms to workers in and beyond the sex industry.

If we identified the underlying social and economic causes of
vulnerability and exploitation, we may be inspired to undertake far
more transformative measures than the doomed criminal law project of
“end demand.”

Lisa M. Kelly, a Trudeau Scholar, is a doctoral candidate at Harvard
Law School and a Fellow in the International Reproductive and Sexual
Health Law Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.

Katrina Pacey is litigation director at Pivot Legal Society in
Vancouver and counsel in the constitutional challenge to prostitution
laws currently underway in British Columbia.

On Oct. 20, the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law
Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law will host an
afternoon panel discussion on “The Myths of ‘Ending Demand’ for
Prostitution.”