Soliciting offences drop 66pc as police treat prostitutes as ‘victims of crime’

Prostitution offences have fallen by two thirds in a decade as a new police approach means they are seen as “victims of crime”, figures suggest.

Data from the Home Office show that the number of soliciting offences by sex workers fell from 1,216 in 2007-8 to 420 in 2016-17. The change in approach followed the murders of five women in Ipswich in 2006 by Steve Wright, a forklift truck driver.

The most recent guidance, issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council in 2015, recommends that sex workers “not be approached as offenders per se, but people who may become victims of crime” for police “have a responsibility to protect”. Arrests should be made as a “very last resort”.

However, campaigners said women were still being criminalised. The English Collective of Prostitutes told the BBC: “We are guilty before proven innocent. We face saturation policing without protection. When we try to report violence to the police we are told it’s part of the job.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “While we have no plans to change the law around prostitution, we are committed to tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with it.