Governing Sex Work Through Crime

Abstract

This article uses Jonathan Simon’s concept of ‘governing through crime’ as a framework to argue that the state has framed sex work, and its surrounding problems, as issues of crime. There has been a privileging and proliferation of criminal justice responses to sex work in England and Wales, at the expense of more social or welfare-based responses and at the expense of creating safer environments for sex workers to work. Criminal law is used to manage and control sex work, to reinforce other policies, such as immigration and border control, and to appear to be doing something about the ‘problem’ of sex work without providing rights to sex workers. By framing sex work as an issue of crime, with sex workers being both the perpetrators of crime and the potential victims of exploitative crime, the state is able to legitimise its actions against sex workers, while ignoring the harm done to sex workers by the state.

Unionising Sex Workers and Other Feminists

“…Socio-legal literature has described how law constitutes the lives of sex workers and hypothesises or traces empirically the negative effects of law for sex workers (Munro and Scoular, 2013;Carline and Scoular, 2015;Graham, 2017). Bottom-up empirical studies have focused on sex worker experience and legal consciousness.…”

Trajectories of Vulnerability and Resistance Among Independent Indoor Sex Workers During Economic Decline

“…Instead, clients are criminalised for purchasing sex, and the increased risk-taking needed to purchase sex has encouraged riskier clientele (Della Giusta et al, 2021). This legal model increases stigma, introduces greater risks and inhibits alternative solutions to the vulnerability experienced by sex working women (Brown and Sanders, 2017; Graham, 2017). Comparatively, regulated policy models are also viewed as unfavourable among sex workers (Cruz, 2013; Garofalo Geymonat and Macioti, 2016) because of the need for individualised rather than externally set rules, and also that this model does not necessarily guarantee access to labour protections (Cruz, 2013; Orchiston, 2016).…”

Motivation of sex workers who provide camming services to engage in sex with their real-life and virtual partners

“…), indicating that sexual motivation is not solely an individual attribute, but is also impacted by the specific characteristics of the partner and the relationship. Meanwhile, most of the studies that investigate sex work, are focused on the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among sex workers and the measures taken to prevent their spread (for, e.g., see Steen and Dallabetta, 2003;Argento et al, 2019;Platteau et al, 2022); the issue of sex trafficking, examining its causes, effects, and potential solutions (for, e.g., see Gerassi et al, 2021;Cockbain et al, 2022;Motseki and Mofokeng, 2022); sexual abuse and exploitation in the sex industry, including the use of violence, coercion, and human rights violations (for, e.g., see UN Women, 2020;Navarrete Gil et al, 2021), also well-being of sex workers, including their physical and mental health (Romans et al, 2001;Beattie et al, 2020;Armstrong, 2021), as well as their economic and social status, and legal and policy issues governing sex work, examining their effectiveness in protecting the rights of sex workers and preventing exploitation (for, e.g., see Graham, 2017;Platt et al, 2018). However, little is known about sex workers' motivation to engage in sex.…”