Commentary: Sex work is here to stay and decriminalisation improves safety and social justice

Abel, Gillian

doi:10.1136/bmj.k2687

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In responding to the report Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Anniken Hauglie claimed that 'the reality is that the law has made it more difficult for women in prostitution' [52]. In contrast, research has demonstrated that decriminalisation in New Zealand has enabled those who sell sex to determine what services they will and will not provide, which clients they will provide services to, as well as negotiate safer sex practices [53]. Their legal position means that when instances of exploitation do occur they can take their case to a human rights tribunal or through other legal processes [54].…”

Section: Uninformed Transfer?mentioning

confidence: 99%

No model in practice: a ‘Nordic model’ to respond to prostitution?

Kingston

Thomas

2018

Crime Law Soc Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The so-called Nordic model to respond to prostitution has been considered in legislative debates across Europe and internationally, and hailed by some as best practice to tackle sex trafficking and is believed to support gender equality. Yet, when we interrogate the utilisation of the Nordic countries laws by law enforcers, it is not being implemented as per the law. We argue that 'all that is occurring is the transfer of rhetoric and ideology' in these countries ((Stone Politics, 19 (1): 51-59, 1999) at 56). In this article, we expose the cracks in the so-called Nordic model, thereby discrediting the 'persuasive' nature of a unified Nordic approach to prostitution. We draw on policy transfer and comparative law literature to illuminate the problems and challenges of naïve adoption of this socalled model, arguing that this can lead to uninformed, inappropriate and incomplete transfer of the Nordic model, which then becomes a policy irritant, further exacerbating the very problems it seeks to address.

show abstract

Section: Uninformed Transfer?mentioning

confidence: 99%

No model in practice: a ‘Nordic model’ to respond to prostitution?

Kingston

Thomas

2018

Crime Law Soc Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Sagar and Jones (2013, 133) suggest that those agendas "keep sex workers as community outsiders, marginalized and beyond citizenship". Thus, restrictive state policies regulate or control but do not address the social injustices and inequalities within the sex worker community (Abel, 2018). The lack of focus on the complexity of individual experiences within sex work, and how these have a negative impact on their lives in general, their agency and rights, is ignored (Pitcher, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Workers: Citizenship Status and Identity, Civic Deficits, and Exiting

Gaynor¹,

Gifford²

2022

IJGSL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sex workers have a lesser citizen status, yet the relationship between sex work and citizenship status has rarely been explicitly considered within extant research. In contrast, this article will critique England and Wales’s sex work legal and policy discourses and frameworks from the perspective of the moral, material, structural, and operational components of citizenship (Lockwood,1996). The operation of citizenship has led to the creation of policy and law (such as the Sexual Offences Act 2003) which has assigned sex workers to a “negatively privileged” group prevented from accessing a full citizenship identity (Lockwood, 1996, 538). Sex workers experience civic deficits (stigmatised, power, and fiscal) and inferior resource allocation, as their access to social citizenship rights are curtailed on moral and material grounds. Despite claims by policy and lawmakers to support and protect this group, the article proposes that the structure and operation of citizenship interplays with victim and criminal discourses to further marginalise sex workers. This is evidenced in the article by the example of exiting programmes, which reconfigure and reinforce the exclusion of sex workers while claiming to provide a supportive route out of the profession.

show abstract

“…Harriet: “Abel’s commentary3 boasts that decriminalisation enables prostitutes to contact the police when an assault occurs. This is not what a safe workplace looks like.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contrast, claims for health benefits of the New Zealand decriminalisation model are not based on measured outcomes 13. Claims of consensus of support from health workers are inaccurate; in 2017 the BMA’s annual representative meeting voted decisively against it 6.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%