“They are used against street sex workers who face the greatest need, the most dangerous working conditions, and the harshest and most punitive policing,” Laura Watson of the English Collective of Prostitutes told Big Issue. “They’re unjust and have lifelong effects. It’s the first barrier to women being able to leave prostitution.”
Between prostitute’s cautions and convictions related to sex work, Sharon said her record was “pages long”.
“I never realised all of that [the cautions and convictions] would be included in my history,” she said.
But she found out the huge impact her sex work would have on her ability to find other work when she tried to start a career in nursing at the age of 28.
Sharon enrolled on a nursing course at college, and had to find a job in the nursing field to accompany her classroom learning.
“I applied for jobs and got taken on by a nursing agency,” she said. “But when they got my CRB check [a criminal record check now known as a DBS check] back, it was the end of that. It was so embarrassing. I was still young enough to have a career, but the police record stopped me. I would have been good at nursing.”
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Aware that the only job she wanted was forever out of reach, Sharon started working at a supermarket, where she still works today, at the age of 61.
“While in the job, they offered me another job (a promotion), but I refused it because I would need to provide a DBS check,” she said. “I wasn’t willing for my managers to look at my past.”
Even though it’s been nearly 40 years since Sharon left sex work, she’s still being impacted by her previous work, as are countless sex workers.
“Sex workers around the country continue to receive prostitute’s cautions from the police for working on the street,” Megan, one of the coordinators of Decrim Now, told Big Issue.
“This hands them a criminal record that makes it incredibly difficult to get another job, essentially trapping them in sex work. At a time when the UK is facing a poverty crisis and the government is considering cutting disability benefits, it’s outrageous that sex workers are being punished for doing what they need to in order to survive.”
In June, Watson and others from the English Collective of Prostitutes delivered a letter signed by 80 others, requesting the government abolish prostitute’s cautions, expunge criminal records which trap women in prostitution
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“Abolish ‘prostitute’s cautions’; expunge criminal records which trap women in prostitution; and target resources at sex workers to allow women to leave prostitution if and when they want,” the letter read.
Just after the letter was delivered, an amendment to remove cautions and convictions was put forward for the Crime and Policing Bill, alongside three other amendments relating to prostitution, but Watson told Big Issue that all four amendments fell in the House of Commons.
“We were expecting it,” Watson said.
An amendment to the bill that is moving forward will enable police forces to request the suspension of a website’s IP address or domain name for up to 12 months if they suspect that the website is being used for the purposes of serious crime, which can include trafficking or sexual exploitation.
“While we think it’s really important for the police to tackle trafficking and sexual exploitation, we don’t want to see websites being taken down if they’re used predominantly by independent sex workers to advertise themselves – this would push sex workers into working in brothels or on the street rather than being able to work independently, which would put them at an increased risk of violence or exploitation,” Megan said.
Both Watson and Megan say this government is more interested in punishing clients of sex workers than in protecting sex workers from poverty, violence and criminalisation.
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“We’re very concerned that there are several ministers in the Labour government who want to increase the criminalisation of sex work, in particular through implementing the ‘Nordic model’ of criminalising the clients of sex workers,” Megan said.
This move, according to Watson, would reframe all prostitution as sexual exploitation, and therefore should be stopped through criminalisation.
“There is a wealth of research from other countries who have implemented the Nordic model [which would criminalise the buyer of sex] showing that it increases violence against sex workers, pushes sex workers further into poverty, and worsens their health,” Megan said. “We must not implement this failed model in the rest of the UK.”
One of the impacts of the Nordic model is a further crackdown on where sex workers can work. Already in the UK, sex workers risk working together because of laws criminalising working on the same premises.
Sevvven (her work name), a 31-year-old sex worker in London, told Big Issue she had opened two locations for sex workers to safely work.
They were ‘private hire’ spaces to be used by anyone, but they were primarily for sex workers to meet clients.
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“I was simply hiring a space and whatever happened in that space had nothing to do with me,” she told Big Issue. “It was so much safer for workers as it meant they didn’t have to give clients their home addresses, or go to the clients’ homes.”
Sevvven set up an emergency app, provided first aid and sexual health kits, and was available by phone if and when sex workers needed her.
“And both units were in shared buildings so there were people around,” she said.
The premises were shut down, each for different reasons, and Sevvven was told regarding one of the locations, that legal avenues would be pursued if she didn’t shut it down.
“There’s one less of the already very few spaces for us to work from,” she said.
Instead of protecting sex workers, Watson thinks stories like this, and worse, will increase if Labour continue to lean toward a Nordic model framework.
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“Prostitution is fuelled by women’s poverty, particularly mothers’ poverty,” Watson said. “This is what we need to address to ensure women can leave sex work when they want to.”
Megan agreed: “As a result of government policies like benefit sanctions, the benefit cap, the two-child limit, and migrants having no recourse to public funds, people are resorting to sex work to support themselves.
“The longer the government ignores this problem and refuses to solve these systemic causes, the more people will be driven into sex work by financial need and potentially put at risk of harm because of our laws forcing them to work in unsafe conditions.
“This government must start listening and change the law to keep sex workers safe, before more sex workers face unnecessary harm.”
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