Scotland Looks To Success Of Swedish Model
March 13, 2008 by sparklematrix
Edinburgh Castle.
Kerb crawling - criminalised in Scotland last year does nothing to stop men buying sex at massage parlours and brothels. This of course would cease if Scotland introduces the Swedish approach to prostitution which involves decriminalising the prostituted and criminalizing the buyer of sex. It also ensures exit strategies involving support counselling and retraining.
“The only logical way we can stop the damage suffered by this group of vulnerable women is to cut off the demand for buying sex.”
Here we have another topical and relevant article by Melissa Farley and Victor Malerek “The Myth of the Victimless Crime”
Whose theory is it that prostitution is victimless? It’s the men who buy prostitutes who spew the myths that women choose prostitution, that they get rich, that it’s glamorous and that it turns women on.
The Swedes stopped punishing the prostitutes - and instead criminalised the men who buy sex.
Before the legislation came in nine years ago, 2500 women worked Stockholm’s streets. Now there are 100.
And the number of punters has dropped by 80 per cent.
A delegation of experts from Sweden this week visited Glasgow in the first step of a campaign to make paying for sex illegal in Scotland.
Glasgow City Council deputy leader James Coleman is spearheading the debate and plans to take it to the Scottish parliament. The city has been leading the fight against the sex trade.
Coleman said: “There’s no doubt it has worked in Sweden and there’s no reason why it can’t work here too.
“There can be no question that prostitution is exploitative and abusive of the women involved.
“Name one other situation where we would put up with endemic violence, abuse, disease, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, fear and trauma as a way to earn cash?
“The only logical way we can stop the damage suffered by this group of vulnerable women is to cut off the demand for buying sex.”
In Sweden, 1650 men have been convicted for buying sex. They faced up to six months in jail but all were fined Stockholm Detective Inspector Jonas Trolle, who is part of the delegation, says indoor prostitution is every bit as harmful to the women.
He said: “You need at least five customers a day for it to be profitable.
“One case I was involved in, the woman took 17 customers one evening and she was not able to walk from the flat afterwards. Is this a question of free will, when you can’t even walk?”
Trolle is part of a unit dedicated to tackling the sex trade and admits that the attitude of the police was one of the biggest stumbling blocks.
Cops, like the rest of society, had a tacit acceptance of the sex industry and some sympathised with the punters.
A retraining programme exposed both the plight of the women and the connection between the sex trade and organised crime.
Trolle said: “The police became more interested. If you are dealing with the sale of human beings, you are also dealing with associated criminals and crimes.”
The biggest impact has been a shift in the public’s attitude towards selling women for sex.
Four out of five Swedes support the legislation. Every schoolchild is taught that buying sex is illegal and immoral.
In 2006, researchers found Swedish men were least likely of about 30 nationalities to use prostitutes as they considered it unacceptable.
Another phenomenon has been a dramatic fall in sex trafficking. It has fallen to just 200 women, while neighbouring Finland sees 15,000 a year brought across its borders.
Also in the delegation is Detective Inspector Kajsa Wahlberg of the national criminal intelligence service.
He said they had intercepted telephone calls between traffickers.
She said: “They don’t choose Sweden because the buyers are too scared they will be caught.
“The traffickers know that the police consider them a priority and they are efficient in catching them.”
The Swedish legislation was first lobbied for by women’s shelters.
They saw the sexual exploitation of women in the same camp as domestic violence.
Now former prostitutes are treated as victims and helped to find a way out of the trade through retraining and counselling.
Like Scotland, drugs and prostitution in Sweden go hand in hand but there is debate as to whether the women become addicts before or after they go on the game.
More than 50 per cent of the women who worked on Stockholm’s streets were addicts but the success in getting them off drugs has been very limited.
Many of the women turned to other means of funding their habit.
Coleman wants to gather support for the Swedes’ ideas before taking a Bill to the Scottish parliament.
The Swedish delegation met councillors, police and experts on drugs, prostitution and the trafficking of women.
Ann Hamilton, general manager of Glasgow Community and Safety Services, is optimistic that Scotland can follow the pioneering stance of Sweden.
She said: “It is not a matter of taking the Swedish legislation and changing the name to Scotland. A lot of thinking is still to be done.
“The Swedish law put a clear message that the prostitution of women is wrong.
“I don’t see why we can’t do the same in Scotland.”
Ann is an expert on prostitution and trafficking and believes that it can’t be “managed safely”. She said: “There has been a view that prostitution will always be with us and to make women safer, you have to manage it in some way.
“The reality is that women are being attacked day in and day out.
“We can’t make these women safe, they are routinely exposed to verbal, sexual and physical abuse.”
The kerb crawling legislation has already had an impact on street prostitution but women are in just as much danger in brothels and saunas.
Up to 800 women are trafficked into Scotland each year and many end up behind closed doors selling sex to as many as 10 men a day.
As early as 2001, the Parkgrove sauna in Glasgow’s west end were advertising 35 women from every corner of the globe as a selling point on their internet site.
Ann said: “Men kid themselves on that unless a woman is chained up, looks like she has been beaten and can’t speak English, she won’t have been trafficked.
“There are lots of ways to keep a woman against her will apart from beating her up.”
Mar 13 2008 By Annie Brown
The Daily Record
“One case I was involved in, the woman took 17 customers one evening and she was not able to walk from the flat afterwards. Is this a question of free will, when you can’t even walk?”
Prostitution is an awful form of slavery.
Clearly the Swedish law criminalizing buying women for sex has worked! No doubt about it.
Great articles, Sparkle*Matrix! And it’s wonderful to see Melissa Farley in the NY Times.
P.S.: Nice picture of the Edinburgh Castle!
I so hope Scotland pulls this off Maggie it’s really important for both prostituted women and women as a class.
Yeah I love Edinburgh Castle, in fact I love Edinburgh - just it’s so freaking expensive.
This sounds amazing - I didn’t have much hope for the ‘banning kerb-crawling’ bit because the article where I first read it stated that it had been banned in England for some time. I’ve been kerb-crawled in *both* Scotland and England, although it must have been illegal in the latter.
Unless the general attitude has changed… well, it’ll be an interesting experiment to watch anyway. There’s a big difference in living as a woman between NZ and Scotland (although NZ is bad enough in some ways). A lot of the time, it feels like having made a successful escape. The harassment in Scotland really was that bad.
It’s been made legal to both sell and buy in NZ (within the last few years). I get the impression that legalising hasn’t been the success hoped for.
“I really hope Scotland pulls this off Maggie”
Me too!
“it’s really important for both prostituted women and women as a class.”
I agree. Prosecute johns!
Sweden has been very successful in tackling prostitution because this country unlike so many others views prostitution as male sexual violence against women as well as an abuse of all women’s human rights. New Zealand and Germany however, have legalised the right for men to buy women’s bodies but this has fuelled the numbers of women being sold into sexual slavery.
Scotland is way ahead of the UK on a number of issues concerning men’s violence against women. Unlike the UK, Scotland does not shrink from using those taboo words ‘male violence against women.’
Unfortunately the fact one prostituted woman who had to experience 11 men sexually abusing her body with the result she suffered considerable injury will be seen as just ‘rough sex’ or ‘those men gave it to her good.’ This view is common among male users of porn. Let’s hope Scotland does follow Sweden and criminalise Johns who for far too long have been perceived as entitled to buy women’s bodies so they can rape and sexually abuse them. Male demand is what fuels the trafficking and sexual slavery of women. But equally if Scotland does criminalise male johns they must also put in place multiple support for women exiting prostitution. Sweden has these services and they are proving to be very successful despite claims to the contrary.
Before the legislation came in nine years ago, 2500 women worked Stockholm’s streets. Now there are 100.
This is an amazing result.
The general estimate is that 90% would exit prostitution if given the opportunity, but the result in Sweden is actually 96%.
So much for the Happy Hooker theory (myth!).
Kerb crawling is illegal in England and has been for ages. But nobody ever gets done for it. About 10 years ago I lived briefly (thank goddess) in a notorious red light area. If any female dressed in any way stood still (including at a bus stop) you would get kerb crawled. I have heard of women being kerb crawled when they’re so pregnant they’re about to give birth. The menz just don’t care…….
I got kerb crawled by two men when I had two kids in tow - one of them in a pushchair. My eldest one kept asking “why are they calling you “baby” mam?
“I have heard of women being kerb crawled when they’re so pregnant they’re about to give birth.”
I think they believe, not without precendent, that a pregnant woman walking on the street has a good chance of being economically insecure.
The way they hunt us, it’s like men can smell desperation emanating from poverty-stricken women.
It makes sense sam - in respect to what I’ve just said from one of my experiences. In fact within this particular incident - one of the men kept asking me where my husband was.
I presume you’re from the US sam, because it is a bit more normal to walk places here, even if you’re affluent, but I get your point. I just think it is any unaccompanied female that will get this stuff. Which is a powerful argument against buying sex IMHO. Even if you do believe the argument that ’sex workers’ are exercising free choice, (I don’t, just playing devils advocate) prostitution affects all women. And to all those people who advocate legalised brothels, I presume you’d be happy living next door to one would you, and for all your female relatives to work there.