Prostitution should be decriminalised, and the act of procuring or buying sex should be illegal, echoing the Swedish model, women’s rights organisations have insisted.

“There are few cases where a woman’s choice to enter prostitution is genuine. Most are vulnerable and forced into the industry, so people need to be given opportunities to get out of the vicious circle rather than punished,” said Malta Confederation of Women’s Organisations chairwoman Lorraine Spiteri.

The confederation was reacting to a policy document prepared by the law students’ association, which suggested legalising prostitution and making it subject to employment and taxation laws. The main intention behind the legalisation of prostitution would be to make it safer, especially to curtail sexually transmitted diseases.

But the document of proposals currently being reviewed by the governmeny was immediately rejected by women who work in the industry. Calls to regulate the trade did not reflect the way prostitutes felt about the industry.

In Malta, prostitution is not considered a criminal offence. What is considered a crime is soliciting, living off immoral earnings, organising prostitution or forcing anyone into prostitution.

There are few cases where a woman’s choice to enter prostitution is genuine

The state of the law at the moment is not ideal, according to women’s rights organisations.

Through its proposals, the women’s association said the burden would be shifted from the vulnerable on to the purchaser and would offer financial support to those who want to leave the trade. Studies show this model has had positive results (see box). However legalising prostitution, as happened in the Netherlands, has failed to achieve its intended aims.

Lawyer Lara Dimitrijevic from the Women’s Rights Foundation said regulating prostitution “would only make the vulnerable more vulnerable”. Such a measure risked driving exploitation underground, she said.

She questioned the number of prosecuted pimps compared to the number of prostitutes prosecuted for loitering in Malta. Moreover, the punishment at law for pimps did not reflect the seriousness of the offence of living off someone else’s exploited and vulnerable position.

“While everyone should have a choice, including voluntarily becoming a sex worker, it is an undeniable fact that women and girls were and still continue to be exploited in the sex trade,” Dr Dimitrijevic said.

The foundation believes prostitution should not be regularised or banned, as this would run the risk of making it go further underground.

“Making the purchase of sex illegal, increasing the punishment for pimps, decriminalising loitering and ensuring there are long-term support structures for those who have managed to get out of their exploitative and vulnerable situation would be a better option,” she added.

The Swedish model: criminalise the purchaser

Ten years after the Swedish government prohibited the purchase of sex (not the selling of sex), an evaluation found that tackling demand acted as a barrier against the establishment of organised crime, traffickers and pimps.

The law contributed to the fight against international networks of procurers, according to the police. By reducing their possibility to profit from prostitution, Sweden discouraged criminal networks from investing in its territory.

The number of people exploited in street prostitution was halved, and the number of people in prostitution did not increase even though there was an increase in other countries.

The evaluation of the Swedish law shows that:

• The number of people exploited in street prostitution has halved since 1999, while it tripled in Denmark and Norway in the same period. There is no evidence of more Swedish men going abroad to buy sex;

• Online prostitution increased in Sweden because of technological advances, but this also occurred in neighbouring countries, which had a higher number of people who sold sex over the internet;

• The proportion of prostituted persons from third countries did not increase in the same way it exploded in neighbouring countries;

• There has been no increase in ‘hidden’ prostitution.

While the majority of the Swedish population was opposed to the prohibition of the purchase of sex before the adoption of the law, 10 years later three surveys showed more than 70 per cent supported it.

The proportion of men who buy sex decreased. In 1996, almost 14 per cent of Swedish men said they had bought sex, while this went down to almost eight per cent in 2008.

The Netherlands: legalised brothels

The Netherlands lifted the ban on brothels as far back as 1911. Since then, several studies from the Scientific Research and Documentation Centre of the Justice Ministry and from the national police force evaluated the impact of the decriminalisation of pimping.

Findings show the situation for prostitutes got worse:

• The prostitutes’ emotional well-being decreased in all aspects measured;

• The use of sedatives increased;

• There was a high demand from people wanting to leave the industry.

Studies show that 50 to 90 per cent of women in licensed prostitution worked “involuntarily”.

What is striking is that the majority of women exploited and abused with extreme violence in the Netherlands were in the legal, licensed, taxpaying and state-sanctioned brothels. Studies show organised crime kept control over the sex industry.

In 2011, Amsterdam deputy mayor Lodewijk Asscher said decriminalisation had been a “national error” and the government had been “reprehensibly naïve”. A joint report the City of Amsterdam and the Justice Ministry showed a great part of the legal side of the sex industry perpetuated exploitation and trafficking in human beings.

Decriminalising procuring and legalising the sex industry did not prevent an increase in hidden or illegal prostitution.

Source: European Women’s Lobby