Introduction

Recent reforms of prostitution policy in the UK have been abolitionist in tone, with concerns about community safety and violence against women encouraging zero-tolerance strategies. In relation to street sex work, such strategies include a range of interventions – from voluntary referrals to compulsory intervention orders and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) designed to extricate women apparently ‘trapped’ in street prostitution. Despite being heralded as a new approach, we argue that recent constructions of street sex work as a form of anti-social behaviour must be viewed as merely the latest attempt to construct the street sex worker as a social ‘other’. In this chapter we utilise both critical and empirical forms of enquiry to uncover the relationship between dominant constructions of the ‘problem of prostitution’ and the associated norms that operate across various historical epochs, focusing in particular on the recent association between street sex work and anti-social behaviour. By situating this within a critical historical analysis of prostitution policy, we are able to contextualise contemporary policy within the wider history of control and governance in order to show that the alleged antithesis of sex work to community safety owes as much to the ideological operation of law as to any inherent feature of commercial sex. In the main part of the chapter we consider the practical implications of recent reforms, which continue to follow this ideology. By reflecting on our recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded study, which examined the experiences of those living and working in areas of street sex work, we outline some of the dangers of policy frameworks and techniques of control that continue to situate sex work as antithetical to the cultivation of community safety.

Recent reforms

Recent reviews and reforms of prostitution law in the UK (Home Office, 2004; 2006; Scottish Executive, 2004; 2006; 2007 Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill; 2007 Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act) have been widely acclaimed as marking an important sea-change in sex work policy, with new anxieties about community safety and exploitation joining more long-standing concerns about morality and decency. The Home Office strategy (2006) which informs current law reform proposals prioritises the promotion of community safety and the elimination of street sex work as a form of commercial exploitation in its key objectives.