Anti-Social Behaviour Orders: The impact of new UK legislation on street-based sex workers

Submitted by: Teela Sanders, Lecturer in Sociology of Crime & Deviance in the School of Sociology & Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK

Input for: Expert Group Meeting: "Violence Against Women: A statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them," 11-14 April 2005, Geneva, Switzerland

Topic: Violence against women in the sex industry

The introduction of ASBOs

In Britain, it is legal to engage in adult consensual commercial sexual transactions but the relationships that surround the interaction, such as advertising, negotiating, renting premises and living off the earnings, are all illegal. The most recent legal development for women involved in prostitution in the UK, especially street workers, has been through the Crime and Disorder Act, 1998. This Act introduced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) to be used against those who cause 'alarm, distress and harassment' to local communities. These prohibition orders have been rationalised as tools for both community safety and protection and the rehabilitation of offenders. Although no figures are known, informal networks suggest that hundreds of ASBOs have been served on street sex workers in a disjointed and ad hoc fashion. Some police forces apply ASBOs regularly as a strategy to reduce street soliciting, while others prefer more tolerant approaches to managing the street scene.

A breach of an Order can be punished by up to five years imprisonment. Many sex workers have been given custodial sentences for entering 'no go areas' defined under the Order. These Orders have never been evaluated. Legal experts criticize the ABSOs because they are 'not only ineffective but also discriminatory in application to street sex workers' (Jones and Sager 2001:873).

The consequences: An increase in risk

ASBOs are not the only evidence of a return to the criminalisation of vulnerable, excluded street sex workers. Policing on the streets has become increasingly visible in some towns and cities. This visible police presence has resulted in geographical displacement; 'crime shuffling' (women become involved in other acquisitive crimes); and forced women to work in dangerous situations. Sex workers change the way they work in response to visible policing (Sanders, 2005). They arrive on the beat much later into the night; they work alone rather than in pairs, and jump into cars rather than take time to screen and make judgements. In order to avoid the police, sex workers have little option but to work in desolate and unlit areas away from potential protection. Street workers are also geographically displaced, working in other towns, or on streets that are typically not know for prostitution. Additionally, these consequences of avoiding law enforcement are compounded in some towns by strong groups of residents who campaign for the removal of street workers through intensive direct action tactics. These tactics include night patrols, taking photographs of women and working alongside the police to inform of movements and identities.

The injustice of the use of ASBOs on sex workers is evident by the fact that men in the area — clients, men who coerce women into the sex trade, and drug dealers — have rarely been served with Orders. There is no evidence to suggest that this strategy reduces street soliciting but merely removes individuals who are then replaced by others. ASBOs are not a deterrent: many women who receive custodial sentences return to the streets when they are released from prison, only to receive another ASBO within a short time.

Who supports criminalisation?

The use of ASBOs and the criminal justice system has been advocated by an important Home Office publication Paying the Price: A Consultation on Prostitution (2004), introducing the first review of the prostitution laws in the UK since the Wolfenden Report in 1957. In this report, enforcement action using civil and criminal law is recommended to 'protect communities from the nuisance associated with prostitution' (p.67). Rigorously applying the law is recommended to address behaviour that is considered unacceptable. This is an obvious return to the criminalisation of prostitution through a new discourse of anti social behaviour, but this time there is government agreement that any enforcement needs to be met with integrated, multi-agency support programmes, such as drug treatments and 'exiting' programmes enabled by court diversion schemes. In reality, grassroots organisations describe how these services are often under developed with limited finances and resources yet are driven by target expectations to quickly 'rehabilitate' women out of prostitution. The barriers — for sex workers who want to exit prostitution — are complex and exist on a range of personal, economic and psychological levels that require considered and sustained intervention in order to support women to make transitions. Pitcher and Aris (2003) evaluated an arrest referral scheme and found that street sex workers were cautious to engage in the programme because of previous negative experiences of support agencies, housing difficulties, drug and alcohol use and exceptional levels of violence.

Nuisance discourse: Who determines what is unacceptable behaviour?

Understanding sex workers' everyday experiences is at the heart of developing effective support services, good practice and fair social policies and legislation, but the rise in ASBOs can be understood as part of a wider political shift in the attitudes and beliefs about some forms of prostitution in the UK. Kantola and Squires (2004) studied the debates in parliament over prostitution and identified that there was a strong public 'nuisance discourse' associated with street commercial sex based on the ideas and stereotypes that appear in the media, government debates and policy developments focusing on the nuisance that prostitution causes to neighbourhoods such as noise, litter and disorder. Simultaneously with the discussion of nuisance behaviour, Kantola and Squires (2004) found there was an absence of any framework that understands selling sex as an occupation. They compared the parliamentary discourses in the UK to those in the Netherlands, and found that any notion of sex work as work is stifled by moral judgements from religious groups and certain feminist fractions that describe prostitution as only violence against all women and always coercive and oppressive. Ultimately the strength given to abolitionist perspectives on prostitution has shaped the policies that are introduced through the police and law enforcement agencies. The spread of this public nuisance rhetoric is visible through the introduction of ASBOs and also by the recent outlawing of advertisement cards of sexual services that are found in telephone booths in the capital.

The UK may lack a strong political sex work discourse and advocacy movement compared to our European counterparts, but there are lines of resistance that campaign for the rights of sex workers. The UK Network of Sex Work Projects is opposed to the use of ASBOs because of the detrimental affects such prohibitions have on service delivery to vulnerable women, their human and civil rights as well as an increase in criminalisation and exposure to violent and dangerous working conditions. As the use of ASBOs increases and the strategies used to police prostitution are inconsistent across police force, the lack of coherent policy and approach to the management of prostitution means that the rights of sex workers are exposed to violation. The inconsistency of enforcing the law and the use of police discretion even within the same locality means that women do not know from one day to the next whether they can work free from criminalisation or whether the risks posed by policing are inevitable.

References

• Home Office. (2004). Paying the Price: A consultation paper on prostitution. London: HMSO.
• Jones, H., & Sager, T. (2001). Crime and Disorder Act 1998: Prostitution and the Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Criminal Law Review, Nov, 873-885.
• Kantola, J., & Squires, J. (2004). Discourses Surrounding Prostitution Policies in the UK. European Journal of Women's Studies, 11, 77-101.
• Pitcher, J., & Aris, R. (2003). Women and Street Sex Work: Issues arising from an evaluation of an arrest referral scheme. London: Nacro.
• Sanders, T. (2005). Sex Work: A risky business. Cullompton: Willan.

Submitted by:

• Teela Sanders, Lecturer
  Sociology of Crime & Deviance
  School of Sociology & Social Policy
  University of Leeds, UK