Laws targeting ‘johns’ only increase dangers to prostitutes, report warns
OTTAWA—A new report by a coalition of Canadian prostitutes warns the Conservative government that proposals to target “johns” — the clients who buy sexual services — will only increase danger to prostitutes and eventually be found unconstitutional.
The Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society, along with a group from downtown eastside Vancouver called Sex Workers United Against Violence issued the report Tuesday.
It draws on a newly published peer reviewed report in British Medical Journal Open, and cites research by the Gender and Sexual Health Initiative (GSHI) of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the University of British Columbia.
The British journal study said its findings “suggest that criminalization and policing strategies that target clients reproduce the harms created by the criminalization of sex work, in particular, vulnerability to violence and HIV/STIs (sexually-transmitted infections).” Its study supports “decriminalization of sex work to ensure work conditions that support the health and safety of sex workers in Canada and globally.”
The Pivot Legal Society report, released to Torstar News Service, points to the Vancouver Police Department which has gradually, over the past five years, shifted away from arresting street-based sex workers while targeting the arrests of “clients” or “johns.”
Vancouver police essentially adopted a new policy that is similar to the so-called Nordic model expected to be proposed this week by the federal Conservative government in response to December’s Supreme Court ruling in the Bedford case.
In January 2013 Vancouver cops came up with new guidelines that focus on ending demand for prostitution. Those guidelines saw police officers shift to greater use of undercover stings and patrols of areas where the street-based sex trade occurs to target the buyers, not the sellers, of sex services.
But prostitutes in Vancouver report that while they welcomed fewer police arrests of women, the overall impact of the change is to create dangerous working conditions for sex workers, and expose them to the same kinds of “significant safety and health risks” that concerned the Supreme Court in the Bedford ruling.
According to the report, those include “displacement to isolated spaces; inability to screen clients or safely negotiate terms of transactions; and inability to access police protection.”
The Canadian advocates say the consensual sex trade should be decriminalized while criminal law should focus on human traffickers or anyone who coerces or exploits prostitutes into selling their bodies. It should also be used to target those who would rob, assault or otherwise harm prostitutes, they said.
They argue the findings of the British journal mirror findings from Sweden and other countries that have instituted a ban on the purchase of sexual services.
In December, Canada’s Supreme Court in the Bedford case struck down as unconstitutional three key criminal laws. Those prohibited communicating for the purposes of prostitution, living on the avails of prostitution and operating a bawdy house. The high court gave the government 12 months to draft a new law.
Conservative Justice Minister Peter MacKay gave notice Tuesday he would introduce a new bill Wednesday or Thursday.
However the advocates of decriminalization reported the same kinds of harms would result if new laws target clients.
“The vast majority of sex workers who took part in the GSHI/UBC research reported that when the police target clients, both clients and sex workers have to take steps to avoid police detection. They move out of familiar and populated areas to areas where sex workers face greater risk because of the degree of isolation.”
“They are forced to rush or forgo client screening and negotiation of the terms of a transaction. This directly increases the risk of violence, abuse and HIV.”
Much of their first interaction with a potential client is “focused on convincing them that they are not an undercover police officer rather than screening for safety or negotiating the terms of the transaction.”
“The evidence from Sweden and Norway indicates that prohibiting the purchase of sexual services does not result in increased safety and protection for sex workers, nor does it eliminate prostitution. In fact, violence and stigma against sex workers increases.”
In Vancouver, where prostitutes became the prime target of serial killer Robert Pickton, streetwalkers reported “some improvement” in the way they felt Vancouver police officers treated prostitutes, but the stigma remains. As a result the relationship between police and prostitutes is still adversarial and counterproductive — with many reluctant to seek police protection, the report said.
“In our opinion, such a law would not withstand constitutional scrutiny,” the report said. “It is clear that criminalizing the purchase of sexual services will recreate the same devastating harms as the current prostitution laws.
“With this knowledge, it would be unconscionable to enact such a law and then wait for a constitutional challenge to wind its way through the courts. Sex workers need immediate access to safer working conditions.”
The report makes four recommendations:
- Calling on Ottawa to not to prohibit the purchase or sale of sexual services by adults.
- Ensuring prostitutes are “in a leadership position in all future law and policy development.”
- Using existing criminal laws to target violence and abuse in the sex industry.
- Investing in government programs to support health and safety for prostitutes including “access to adequate financial support, safe housing, educational opportunities, mental health supports, drug treatment and harm reduction services and culturally-appropriate resources for themselves and their families.”
http://metronews.ca/news/canada/105...increase-dangers-to-prostitutes-report-warns/
