Posts Tagged ‘politics’
Why Smith’s New Plans Won’t Work – Criminalising the Clients (Part 1)*
As you may have read, UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has laid out new plans aiming to “tackle the demand” for prostitution in the Government’s new Policing and Crime Bill, the Second Reading of which is due on January 19, 2009.
Centrepiece of a variety of measures is a plan to criminalise clients of prostitutes ‘controlled for gain’ by a third party with fines of up to £1,000, ostensibly in a bid to counter Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation (HTfSE). A ’strict liability’ offence, ignorance by punters of prostitutes being controlled will be no defence. What you may not have read is that merely arranging a booking will be an offence – no sex need to have occurred.
But there are good reasons to believe the scheme will be counter-productive to Smith’s intentions, and constitute the latest in a line of Home Office own goals in the area of prostitution stretching back nearly 125 years. In this case, it will further endanger genuine HTfSE victims by making their discovery far more difficult. Read the rest of this entry »
