Newsletter 1

Decriminalisation does not achieve the aim of making sex work safer for women

Decriminalisation does not achieve the aim of making sex work safer for women. On the contrary, the New Zealand experience demonstrates that decriminalisation achieves the opposite. A report to the Prostitution Law Review committee on the impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the health and safety of sex workers conducted in 2007 in New Zealand failed to demonstrate a decrease in the level of violence and sexual assault since decriminalisation in 2003. [1]

Since decriminalisation in New Zealand, several prostituted women have been murdered. In Germany where prostitution was legalised in 2002, there are at least 55 women who have been murdered by punters, and in the Netherlands where prostitution was legalised in 2000 that figure is 28. [2]

In addition, women have worse working conditions since decriminalisation, as described by a prostitute in New Zealand: “Women can end up being paid nothing at all or in debt to the brothel on a quiet night, where they only get one “client.” The accumulative penalties— “shift fees,” “laundry fees,” “clothing and appearance fines,” and “late fees” — that women must agree to pay see to that.[3]

Another prostitution survivor explains, "I thought it (decriminalisation) would give more power and rights to the women," she says. "But I soon realised the opposite was true………. it allowed brothel owners to offer punters an "all-inclusive" deal, whereby they would pay a set amount to do anything they wanted with a woman.……..the women wouldn't be able to set the price or determine which sexual services they offered or refused”.[4]

Decriminalisation promotes women and girls as objects to be purchased and contributes to misogyny.A society that enables this is not ‘safe’ for any woman.Women deserve better than a system that normalises men’s sexual entitlement and abuse of women.

[1] Abel, G., Fitzgerald, L., & Brunton, C. (2007). ‘The impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the health and safety of sex workers: Report to the prostitution law review committee’, Retrieved 7 December 2021, from: https://www.otago.ac.nz/christchurch/otago018607.pdf (p. 119-122) [2] Bidnal, J. (2019) The Pimping of Prostitution (p. 52) [3] White, P. (2015, Nov 3.) Remembering the murdered women erased by the pro-sex work agenda. On Feminist Current. Retrieved 26 July 2021, from http://www.feministcurrent. com/2015/11/03/remembering-the-murdered-women-erased-by-the-pro-sex-work-agenda/ [4] Valise, S. (2017, Oct 17) My work as a prostitute led me to oppose decriminalisation https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41349301