Do not treat prostitutes as criminals, say police chiefs
PROSTITUTES should not be treated as criminals even if they run illegal brothels and should have individual police “risk assessments” of their safety, new guidance by police chiefs for UK forces says.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) says the “focus” of law enforcement should be to improve the safety of the women and target traffickers and criminals who may be exploiting them.
This includes brothels which, though technically illegal under the 1956 Sexual Offences Act, could have been set up as a way for the women to protect each other when selling sex.
“Don’t start from a position that treats sex workers as criminals simply for being sex workers or engaging in practices that have been undertaken to increase their own personal safety such as ‘managing or keeping brothels’ under Section 33 of the 1956 Sexual Offences Act,” the guidance says.
“Do focus on those exploiting sex workers or committing crimes against them.”
The NPCC’s newly-revised guidance – which critics claim amounts to backdoor decriminalisation – also includes for the first time a checklist to help officers determine if a prostitute is being “coerced or exploited” following the explosion in online sites advertising sex. These include whether a prostitute can edit her own online advert, has control over the contact number and is offering “high risk” services such as unprotected sex.
There are now at least 50 online national platforms advertising adult sex, which police say has increased the opportunity for organised crime gangs to exploit women, some of whom will have been trafficked from abroad.
Officers are advised they should carry out risk assessments of prostitutes which need to be done in a “sensitive and supportive” manner. “Police adopt risk assessments in many different areas and reviewing a sex worker’s own risk assessment would give a strong indication of how well thought out it is and how vulnerable they are,” says the guidance.
“This should be done individually with sex workers, not in groups. If there is exploitation, dominant or complicit persons may overshadow and drown out those who are being exploited or coerced. This is made worse if there are language barriers and nonindependent interpreters.”
The NPCC document acknowledges that public opinion on prostitution is polarised between those demanding “zero tolerance” and those favouring more liberal “decriminalisation” that sees sex work as a personal choice of the individuals. Residents who cam
‘If there is exploitation, dominant or complicit persons may drown out those being exploited’
paigned against Britain’s first official red light district in Holbeck, Leeds, claimed the guidance tilted too far in favour of allowing prostitution without taking sufficient account of the impact on communities.
“This guidance document seems to further encourage the police to consider prostituted women too ‘vulnerable’ to be robustly chastised for rule breaking or prosecuted for genuine crimes properly,” said Claire BentleySmith, of the campaign group Save our Eyes.
There is growing political pressure for the UK to adopt the Nordic model, which would make it illegal to buy sex but legal to sell it with the emphasis on helping women escape prostitution.
According to the NPCC, 80 per cent of prostitutes have suffered a crime in the past five years, while 180 were murdered from 1990 to 2016. By and
THE Treasury has ignored requests from a military charity hoping to erect a memorial to the Battle of the Atlantic.
The first of two letters was sent in June last year from the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial charity (BOAM) hoping for access to the Libor fund, made up of fines on the financial sector.
The charity had asked for £2.5million and highlighted that if the Battle for the Atlantic in the Second World War had been lost, Britain would not have survived the war. The letter pointed out that the Normandy Memorial, unveiled on June 6 this year by Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, had received £20million funding from Libor.
Vice-Admiral Michael Gretton, then chairman of BOAM, wrote to the Chancellor stating that “if D-Day deserves Libor funding, we firmly believe our memorial should receive funding too”.
He said: “Without the efforts of thousands of men and women … during the Battle of the Atlantic, we would not have been able to fight or [eat] and there would have been no D-Day.”
After nearly a year with no response, Gary Doyle, the current chairman, wrote to Philip Hammond last month,
Perfect symmetry
saying: “That there is no memorial to perhaps the darkest struggle [of the war] is a national oversight.”
The Battle of the Atlantic was the name given for the struggle for control of the Atlantic sea routes during the Second World War. Britain depended on supplies from North America, with many merchant ships falling victim to U-boats that hunted in so-called “wolfpacks”.
In total, 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk and the Allied forces lost around 72,000 sailors. The destruction of 783 U-boats eventually turned the tide of the battle.
The charity hopes to site the memo