Toronto police unit strive to build trust with sex-workers
**UPDATE** The link I had here now leads only to a message, "this story is no longer available". I've tried to find other stories that carry the same information, but have been unsuccessful. The story was about the Toronto "Bad dates unit" that works with prostitutes to enable them to report, anonymously if they prefer, incidents of rape, violence or abuse. Other stories about the unit do exist, and can be found on Google.
It strikes me that this is a model that could be taken up everywhere to good effect. It would also make an excellent precursor to decriminalising sex-work, by making it clear that (contrary to the anti-sex work campaigners' claims) regarding sex-work as work does not "legitimise abuse" but quite the opposite: where abusiveness happens, this approach says, the police will ignore irregularities in a woman's conduct and focus on catching the abusers.
Coupled with a decent hand-up scheme to get those women who really don't want to do it but have to, another option and therefore a way out of doing it, this would seem to me to erode the objections of the "anti" folk pretty effectively.
Nothing could put it more succinctly or more effectively than this quote from Detective Wendy Leaver:
I say to people, they provide a service. The service is for sale. Not the body.
That's an attitude that we need to spread, all too urgently. It's the cure to events like this. And if we can finally get the law enforcement community onside with spreading this view, then just maybe one day judgements like this will not happen.
And it's what points out the difference between sex-work and this. No matter how degrading I felt my work as a cleaner to be (for me, personally), it was always a service that I was attempting to sell, nobody would ever assume a right over my body because of it. But if the attitude of Det. Leaver becomes more widely understood and accepted by society, then at last sex workers could have the same workers' rights as other people.
(The original link is here, it seems to be working again: 'National Post' story)
I totally agree with you! It bothers me a lot that whenever someone is arrested for prostitution it is always the prostitutes who are arrested, never the customers (at least in my town, in my local newspaper). Women who are prostitutes deserve basic human rights-they deserve to be safe.
ReplyDeleteI have had several low wage jobs that were degrading that were legal, so I totally know what you mean.
Sugar Mag:
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you're talking about the "Swedish Model", so called because Sweden were the first to introduce it, of making the purchase of sex illegal rather than the sale of sex. While it has worked to reduce the amount of prostitution in Sweden (which is the real aim, of course), it hasn't always worked out to help the prostitutes.
But by targeting only those customers who are violent, abusive, and actually rape the prostitutes, as the Toronto police seem to be doing, they are allowing the sex work to continue, but making it safer to do. It also makes it easier to find out about trafficked women and do something to help them.
And the fact is, there will always be prostitution while ever there are people willing to sell and other people who prefer to buy than go the scenic route. Which makes the "Toronto Model" that much more important in this world.