Willan The Price of Sex: Prostitution, Policy And Society

As a society we are buying more sex than ever before. Adult sex shops now take their place amongst retailers in the high street and lap dancing clubs compete for an increased share of the leisure economy; hotel chains offer sexually explicit films as part of their standard service, the party selling of adult toys to women in their homes has become a mainstream activity; and at the traditional end of the sexual service economy, prostitution has experienced new growth. Along with this has come new legal measures and attempts to regulate the sexual leisure economy, and far more comprehensive plans than ever before to regulate prostitution, in particular in the form of the new Sex Offences Act. This book seeks to address the range of issues and contemporary debates on the sex industry, including the demand by customers who buy sex, the policing of women who work in the street sex industry, and the violence that pervades prostitution. It shows how these issues have been addressed in policy terms, the problems that have emerged in this, and how a social policy might be formulated to minimize harm and enhance public understanding. Overall the book aims to provide a critical perspective on prostitution policies and the legal chaos and complexities that surround this. Review This is the latest in the rapidly expanding specialist series of Willan books on themes relating to sex and society. It addresses a real gap in terms of current texts and understandings in relation to the problem of prostitution and specifically the legalization of commercial sex work. The author sets her stall out right from the start asserting that recent Government reforms to control prostitution are counter-productive in not only failing to meet their desired objectives, but in creating a number of unanticipated ancillary social problems. She has also been fortunate to draw on the expertise and help of a number of leading criminologistsand practitioners in the field,including Betsy Stanko, Keith Soothill, Helen Self, Lorraine Gelsthorpe and the Metropolitan Police Vice and Clubs Unit. This gives the book not only considerable academic integrity, but embeds the discussion in a practical and real life context as well. The first chapter provides a brief historiography of societal responses to commercial sex as both an actual and perceived problem, from initial public acceptance in Roman times to an increasingly less tolerant and more repressive regime. Reference is made to moral repression, the role of the church, the hypocrisy of the Victorians and associated vice and vigilance campaigns, through to the Wolfenden Report and the Sexual Offences Act 1956. From then the increasing use of more punitive strategies aimed at ‘eradicating’ the ‘problem,’ primarily the kerb-crawling provisions of 1985 are covered, culminating in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In the second chapter Brooks-Gordon analyses the integrity of the Government’s investigation into the current problem of prostitution; analysing its Consultation Document Paying the Price 2004 and subsequent Co-ordination Strategy on Prostitution January 2006. The consultation report maintains the premise that prostitution must be controlled despite the fact that it is not illegal. The author challenges the Government’s approach on the basis of its failure to even ask the question whether sex-work should be legitimate and its automatic assumption that it is and should be a crime. The consultation exercise is subjected to considerable criticism, particularly the lack of any historical perspective post-Wolfenden in the literature review and the subsequent failure to consider the wider contextual and socio-cultural changes of the past 50 years. The failure to address the psyche of male sex clients and the reasons why they choose to engage in commercial sex is identified as another shortcoming.Existing research on these themes is also underutilised and remarkably the Home Office is al