Decrim now? Will the Decriminalisation of Sex Work prevent Human Trafficking?
Sonia was 23 when I met her. She graduated from university the previous year with a degree in industrial engineering but after 18 months of unanswered job applications, she’d become desperate. She had been waiting tables in a restaurant, but the manager had to let her go, in order to give her position to one of his children. Her studies had left her in debt, and she was acutely aware of the pressure she was now putting on her parents, who were already struggling financially. She hated being a burden, which was why she had decided to take a three-hour bus trip to Boca Chica, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, far enough away from home that she was unlikely to bump into anyone she knew.
A friend introduced her to a bar owner who let her try out that Friday night amongst the group of regular sex workers available for customers to choose from. Men would visit the bar, buy a drink, and be introduced to the women on offer that night. They would then be expected to pick their favourite, buy her a drink and make arrangements with the boss or madame. There was a bar fine to take the woman off-site, somewhere between $10 — $20, and a further cost for whatever service you wished to procure. Sometimes you had to pay the bar owner, sometimes you’d pay the woman directly. More often than not, there was a small, dank, sweaty room available on-site, with a couple of thin towels, cheap condoms, and a well-worn mattress, if the trip to a nearby hotel was too much of an ask. The prices usually ranged from between $20-$40 for full sex, less if you were paying a street worker. Not a lot of money you might think. But with an average starting salary in the Dominican Republic ranging from $80-$140 dollars a month, it is perhaps clearer why the country has one of the highest prostitution rates in the world*.
I met Sonia while working as part of an investigation team for a Human Rights NGO, looking into the sex trafficking of children in the DR. That night, it appeared that all of the sex workers in the bar were adult; they had access to mobile phones and seemed to come and go with relative agency. But Sonia somehow looked out of place. The bar was small, the music loud and the neon-shaded air was thick with sweat and the hormones of randy, middle-aged men looking for a good time. It was clear to me, by the way she held her body, her choice of clothing, and her general demeanour, that Sonia was uncomfortable in this environment. This was a tricky one. I knew she wasn’t a minor and thus didn’t fall into the focus of our investigation, but I wanted to know more. In broken Spanish, I asked if we could go outside to talk, somewhere where we could hear each other better. I offered to buy her a drink and she asked for a coke. We sat on two red plastic chairs, ten feet from the front door. One of my colleagues stood by the road smoking a cigarette, watching my back, as I tried to establish the circumstances that had led Sonia to this place. She was sweating profusely and apologised each time she wiped her brow with a tissue. She answered my questions like she was at a job interview. There was nothing flirtatious or sexually provocative about her and, after she explained her situation and the fact that this happened to be her first night, I could see why. She looked terrified. Economic circumstances beyond her control had led her to make a hard choice from a list of poor options. She told me that she didn’t want to be there but felt that she had to do something to help out at home.
After about fifteen minutes, I made my excuses and left, frustrated by my inability to affect this situation and saddened by the idea, that to Sonia, I was a potential customer who had just rejected her. The thought of her returning inside the bar made me nauseous. I swallowed hard, hoping to suppress the experience as just another sad story, one of many that I would encounter that year.
I recently attended an online panel discussion on sex trafficking. I was surprised when three of the five speakers seemed to use this platform to promote the international decriminalisation of sex work. I have to confess to being somewhat ignorant to the decrim movement. I had heard of the Nordic model, first trialed by Sweden (2000) and more recently in Northern Ireland (2015), where the buyer is criminalised, as opposed to the sex worker, who is offered a number of supporting measures to help them leave the industry. I was also aware of the disastrously ineffective legalisation approach, evident in Holland and parts of Germany, where the state is given the role of brothel keeper, protecting its sex workers through regulation and licensing. As an ex-UK Police Officer, I am very familiar with the part de-crim model we have here, where it is legal for a sex worker to operate alone from a private residence, but the management of brothels and street solicitation remains a criminal act. The de-criminalisation model, now supported by Amnesty International and the UN, however, had somehow passed me by.
I was initially dubious. Surely this would lead to greater levels of sex trafficking, wouldn’t it? But with a growing tide of support coming from NGOs and human rights organisations, I chose to resist the temptation of confirmation bias and, instead, lean into what I could learn from websites, podcasts, and Ted Talks given by proponents of the Decrim movement, to better inform my opinion.
I believe there is a great deal of validity in much of what this movement has to say. I agree that the criminalisation of sex workers does nothing other than to perpetuate a cycle of vulnerability and abuse. I know that traffickers exploit the illegal nature of sex work to deter their victims from looking for help. Survivors in the UK have told me how they were fearful of being arrested and deported, or worse, not believed, should they reach out to the authorities. I remember from my time in the Metropolitan Police Service, trudging into East-London brothels with a cadre of 6ft plus, knuckle-dragging police officers in body armour and wondering why the women inside were refusing to engage with us. The status-quo is most certainly in need of reform. But it’s the philosophy of the De-crim movement I can’t find peace with, a philosophy that says, “Sex Work is Work”, as if the selling of someone’s body can be compared to, and should thus be treated, like any other job. The movement also seems to give the impression that all of those entering the sex industry do so with agency and would rather not be labeled a victim or disempowered by the sympathetic head-tilt of well-intended do-gooders. This point I can sympathise with, but what about the girls and young women who enter the sex industry with little or no choice of their own. Whether they are the victims of human trafficking, or of child abuse, domestic violence, or economic hardship, would they proudly choose to identify as a sex worker?
One study conducted by the European Parliament* estimates the average age of a sex worker to be somewhere between 13–25 years old. The UK charity Street Light* reports that 9 out of 10 of the sex workers they have engaged with, would choose not to be working in prostitution. So I have to question whether this movement is accurately representing the sex industry as a whole, or rather a reflection of those who are capable of freely articulating their position.
As I understand, the Decriminalisation model is distinct from the Legalisation model in the fact that it doesn’t want any state interference, rather it requests to be left alone to organise and self-regulate, that sex workers don’t, in fact, want any help leaving the industry. But I would want us to remember that there is estimated to be over 100,000* people living in slavery in the UK today, many of whom are trafficked into massage parlors and pop-up brothels up and down the country — forced, against their will, to service 5, 10, 20 men a day. Should they be left alone too?
A fact I know to be true, is that law enforcement is inextricably political. Policing budgets are spent keeping communities happy, as well as safe, that’s why reducing anti-social behaviour often receives a higher level of investment than targeting organised crime. As soon as something is labeled “legal”, you can bet your last Rollo it will no longer be considered a policing priority and the finite resources afforded to proactive investigations will be directed elsewhere. The searchlights will move on, much to the delight of the criminal fraternity, who profit from the trafficking and exploitation of girls and women throughout this country. Are these groups expected to disappear when sex work is decriminalised? When the brothels and pimps are legitimised, and the police stop passing attention, who will be responsible for routing out the organised criminals? The department of working pensions?
The issue of human trafficking seems to me, to be somewhat side-lined by this movement as if it’s an inconvenient fact. The principal references to it express the frustration that sex trafficking is wrongfully conflated with sex work. The ‘Sex work is Work’ movement is premised on the belief that, what sex workers want most in the world, is to have the legal right and protection to sell their bodies, not, to live in a world where they don’t have to sell their bodies to pay their bills and survive.
The argument that decriminalisation will lead to a reduction in sex trafficking stems from the belief that the change in legislation would reduce sex workers’ vulnerability to exploitation. Research conducted in 2013 by the London School of Economics, however, found that the rate of trafficking victims increases in countries where sex work is legal*. New Zealand’s decriminalisation of sex work is often heralded as evidence of this model working, as the data suggests that the trafficking rate has remained the same since prostitution was decriminalised. A fact that I find surprising, as I would have expected to see a dramatic reduction in trafficking data if the authorities are no longer monitoring the sex industry, closing brothels, and conducting vice-led investigations. The fact the rate remains the same should give cause for concern, not celebration!
For me, the accent is in the wrong place. The focus is on the decriminalisation of the sex industry rather than the aspiration of equal access to safe employment and state support; rather than challenging gender inequality by educating girls and protecting them from forced marriage; rather than improving the police response to rape allegations, child abuse and domestic violence with the expansion of specially trained officers and victim-friendly courts; rather than targeting the gross inequality that exists in this world between those with and those without. Perhaps I’m being wistfully hopeful to imagine a world where the 186 billion dollars* spent each year in the global sex industry, went towards closing the divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots.
It’s possible that I’m behind the times on this and I hope that I hold my views lightly enough to change them if evidence causes me to do so, but today, I am concerned that the decriminalisation of sex work, proposed with the best of intentions, will in fact draw a veil over those women and girls, who do not enter the industry with autonomy, but rather are being exploited by a third party, profiting from their vulnerability.
After meeting Sonia, I persuaded the team to go back with me the next night, perhaps it wasn’t too late for her. Perhaps we could take her to dinner, give her the night off at least, encourage her to explore other options. It was a dangerous move to make. Boca Chica was a small beach town and there was every chance we would need to return to this bar again. Burning ourselves would not be helpful to future investigations but I felt it was worth a shot. It was Saturday night, and I knew my colleagues would far prefer to be at home with their families, than out in the red light district with me, but they were as keen as I to do something. I alighted from our jeep and strolled confidently toward the security guard, lifting my arms out to the side and bringing him in for a bro-hug. “Hola hermano, que tal?” My causal and buoyant facade hiding the true purpose of my visit. I scanned the women perched on chairs outside the front door, but she wasn’t there. I went inside. It was still early and the bar was quiet. There was one overweight American man in sandals and a cowboy hat, sat at the bar pouring cheap champagne for a woman half his age, in the honest-held belief that his presence there was actually doing her a massive favour. Sonia wasn’t there. I wondered if, after our short conversation, she’d taken a bus home, she’d realised it wasn’t for her and she’d returned to mum and dad with a different plan. The weight that had sat on my shoulders for the past 24 hours began to lift when the barman asked me who I was looking for. “Se llama Sonia”, I spoke to her last night.” The barman shook his head, “Sorry bro, a customer picked her up about 30 minutes ago, he’s got her for the weekend.”
Written by Bryn Frere-Smith, Anti Trafficking Campaigner, Founder of Blue Bear Coffee Co. and Host of the Justice & Coffee Podcast.
31st March 2021
* https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)493040_EN.pdf / Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS 2016 / https://www.streetlight.uk.com/the-facts/ https://www.justiceandcare.org/human-trafficking/it-still-happens-here/ http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45198/
