A truly liberal and progressive Malta would ban prostitution outright

I am more than a little disturbed by the plans to regularise prostitution, which means making it a legal business. There is a lot of confusion about this.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com Prostitution in and of itself is not illegal: that is, it is not illegal for a man or woman to charge a fee for having sex with somebody else. What is illegal, on the other hand, is loitering – hanging about in the streets or other public places with a view to picking up clients. It is also illegal to live off earnings from prostitution, a crime called ‘living off immoral earnings’ and running or owning a brothel are also crimes – so being a pimp, a brothel-keeper or a madam is illegal.

All of these currently illegal things, except perhaps loitering – because it is an act performed on the street – will become legal under the proposed new laws. So, brothels will become legitimate businesses and, it is assumed, they will be run like legitimate businesses too. Except that they will not be, because prostitution does not attract legitimate business operators even if it is legitimate itself. It will attract people who by their very nature are inclined to thwart the law and outwit agents of the law.

But there is more that should worry us, and it is far more important than whether brothels legitimised under the law will keep proper books, pay their taxes, insure their buildings and maintain health and safety standards. It is this: the welfare of what will now be legitimate employees of Private Parts Limited, incorporated in Malta but with a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands as the ultimate beneficial owner, with the real ownership concealed from Maltese authorities or interested parties in Malta. Who will protect them? The received wisdom is that because the prostitutes will be proper employees under the law, they will be protected under Maltese and European law, with labour rights, proper pay and so on. This is all rubbish, of course.

As we known from various legitimate fields of endeavour in Malta, the fact that a business or industry is legitimate does not mean its employees are protected. Some businesses, by their very nature, are perilous to employees, who end up working shifts on a part-time basis, or on a weak contract. Many people working in the catering trade or in building are little more than the casual labourers of old, their wages paid in cash on a Friday or not at all. Many of them do not even have work permits, and are taken on illegally. Then they are not paid and if they complain, they are thrown out and their bosses challenge them to go to the police, knowing that they can’t because they will be deported for being in Malta illegally or prosecuted for working illegally.

Is it going to be any different in prostitution? Of course not. It will be worse, because it is even more difficult to find people to work in prostitution than it is to find waiters or labourers for a building site. Maltese brothels are certainly not going to find any or many Maltese women to work in them, which means they are going to have to be brought in from other EU member states. And I can’t see that working, either, when the kind of people who run brothels are accustomed to trafficking their women in from third countries on the cheap.

The situation is bad now, we are told, so the law will regularise it. I think the law will not regularise it at all, but will instead legitimise a situation that will simply carry on as it is, with women trapped into an impossible situation and abused at all levels.

It is a stinking business, and turning it into a lawful business will not reduce the stink or the terrible situation of the women involved. Let’s take working hours. Will the law set a limit on the numbers of hours they are permitted to work in a day, or a limit on the number of times they can be obliged to have sex? Because if the law allows their employers to expect a nine-hour day like in other sectors, there’s an awful lot of clients you can fit into that stretch of time, and the prostitutes will not be permitted to refuse them. They are not permitted now, either, but now they can go to the police, at least theoretically.

There’s more, but it goes beyond the scope and length of a newspaper column. Suffice it to say that if Malta wishes to be truly liberal and progressive, it would ban prostitution altogether and make every aspect of it a crime, including buying sex from prostitutes. Anything else is barbaric.