A few years ago police policy was to target the street prostitutes arrested them got them a fine in court. How did the girls pay the fine by going back to work on the streets.
The current "Thinking" of targeting the punters has been tried before in a number of areas of the country with naming and shaming kerb crawlers in the paper this has included several fairly high ranking police officers local councillors etc.
Police in a number of towns such as Leeds have targeted parlours and closed them down. This has forced women to continue working in places less safer than the parlours that were closed.
People like Harriet Harman jump on the bandwagon and make statements like "no woman would voluntarily be a prostitute" well some are!! Politicians like Ms Harman have no real interest in the welfare of Working Girls they will "prostitute themselves and their values" with a dodgy expenses claim or to get publicity and attention by spouting misinformed rubbish such as this.
Why are are applying victorian legislation to a situation that has been in existence for centuries.
There needs to be some control to prevent trafficking, exploitation of the young and vulnerable and to provide a degree of safety for the ladies. You will never stop the WG's or Punters. If the authorities won't go as far as legalising prostitution then they should follow a policy of tolerance where girls can work safely and without hassle in designated areas and parlours.
Good post. Of course prostitution isnt illegal here, yet, only certain forms of it, the street scene, coercion, underage girls and brothels with the owner and staff excluding the WGs unless actively running the brothel the ones breaking the law, not punters or the WGs who just solely work as WGs in the brothel.
That thinking isnt the present thinking of the coalition as the statement by the Home Office spokeswoman in the link given clarifies, they arent even considering any changes. Plus ACC Armitt the police lead on prostitution made clear his view that enforcing off-street prostitution would be unenforceable AND he sees no problem with what consentual adults do. IMO thats a bold statement for him to make, it doesnt correlate with what some senior officers think like Kevin Hyland, who is very anti prostitution.
The thinking is very much politics wise a Harridan driven crusade backed by her ilk in the media, Julie Bindel and others. Only after 2015 if Labour gets back in with a workable majority and she is put back in a position to continue her crusade could such a law be passed. Clearly passing a law to criminalise all punters is one thing and bound to scare some off punters understandably so, but that in no way means the police will enforce that law, or might in some asreas and not in others. As it stands they certainly havent the resources to nick punters enmasse, many hundreds of millions of pounds extra would have to be given to them. I think that is very highly unlikely to happen, and we will end up like with Harridans coercion law where its been about scaring punters off, not nicking punters, in fact i have still to hear of ONE case of prosecution/conviction for it.
I cant see brothels being legalised in the short to medium term, so i think the best we can get is tolerance by the police as happens in many areas now.
Finally and crucially the police cant even stop the already illegal street scene despite it being the most easy thing to nick kerb crawlers if they so wished to. They choose to do these naming and shaming purges in some areas from time to time but the next night the WGs and punters are back. So its proven that even the most easy way of nicking punters is not affective. And the same with the most easy way to nick those that run brothels, in some areas they just dont bother letting some operate for years. Armitt i assume is a smart guy and knows all this, and he will no doubt also know the police work involved to nick a punter who punts with an Indie who under our current law are working legally if always alone would involve those huge additional resources.
