Legislating P4P

Australia's Northern Territories Government has rejected a call for brothels to be opened in the Territory.

Chief Minister Paul Henderson said the idea wouldn't be considered .

And a Christian nutter group came out strongly against legalising brothels in the NT.

The Australian Christian Lobby said the NT should adopt the Swedish model - and make it a criminal offence to buy sex or run a brothel.

ACL Managing director Jim Wallace claimed the new laws there led to the number of women involved in prostitution being cut by two-thirds, the number of men buying sex falling by 80% and a huge drop in women being smuggled into the country for prostitution.

The NT Sex Workers Outreach Program has called for legal brothels. Program organiser Seranna Shutt said: That would be best practice for health and safety.

There are about 50 sex workers in the Territory, most operating from a Darwin escort agency.All agency women must be registered with police.

Ms Shutt said the registration system should be scrapped because personal details were kept by police forever.

Wallace said the Government should reject the call for brothels: Legalising brothels does nothing to address the appalling exploitation of women in the sex industry, but instead dramatically increases the problem, as well as increasing trafficking in women .

Wallace claimed the NT system of licensed escort agencies didn't work either.

Congratulations to Pye Jakobsen

Campaigner who has spoken all over the world, including in the House of Commons on how the banning of buying sex just does not work in Sweden, and how it makes sex workers more vulnerable.

She works closely with politicians both on a national and international level and has just returned from Coruna, Spain where she spoke in the University on alternative philosophies.

In Sweden, she runs the little strip-club collective where they share all the cash, does some phone sex and sees some regulars, mostly disabled clients.

Pye (pronounced Pia) is highly articulate and full of sexual energy.

Iceland's public prosecutor has issued charges for 11 men who are suspected of having purchased sexual services last year from a woman who is on trial for sex mongering.

This is the first time that such charges have been issued in Iceland since the Althingi parliament passed legislation in 2009 making the purchase of prostitution illegal.

The woman's affairs have been under investigation for a long time. The police have referred 17 cases related to her affairs to the public prosecutor where the law on prostitution is suspected to have been violated.

The woman will remain in custody until June 5. Reykjavík District Court found her guilty of drug smuggling and profiting from the prostitution of others on December 1 and sentenced her to two and a half years in prison, but she appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

If the men who are suspected of purchasing sexual services are found guilty, they might be fined or face up to one year in prison

Liberal Party MP Camilla Lindberg has argued that Sweden should legalize prostitution and provide greater social security for practitioners of the oldest profession .

The parliamentarian said she hoped her vocal stance would spark debate. Lindberg said Swedish laws permitting the sale of sex but forbidding its purchase had failed to protect prostitutes.

Lindberg said prostitutes should be given full access to Sweden's unemployment insurance and pension systems: Prostitution has existed for thousands of years. How can we help people living with this? They too are part of our society. People should be secure in society and feel that they belong .

Lindberg said it had become taboo to question Sweden's prostitution laws.

What one really wants to get at is trafficking, which is a completely different thing to prostitution. The two are often mixed up. One shouldn't confuse trafficking with a 40-year-old woman who has chosen to sell her body, or a 40-year-old man who has made that choice .

A mean minded bid to introduce sweeping new laws criminalising all aspects of prostitution has been defeated in the Scottish Parliament. 

Labour MSP Trish Godman's amendment would have made it an offence to engage in, advertise or facilitate paid-for sexual activity, whether it was on the streets or indoors.

The plan won the support of the committee's three Labour members, but was voted down by its five MSPs from other parties. 

Godman ranted: As I speak, men are buying sex from prostitutes, men are raping women who are trafficked, they have no fear, they will never get caught because it is not an offence. We need to send a strong message that buying sex is not harmless or acceptable, that it should be regarded in Scotland as an abuse and an exploitation which will not tolerated. I would argue that we owe it to all women who are victimised by prostitution to do what we can now.

At present, kerb crawling is illegal in Scotland but prostitution is not, and prostitutes are arrested only if they are suspected of causing a breach of the peace.

The Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, prostitutes' support agency Scotpep and Independent MSP Margo MacDonald had all warned that the amendment could drive prostitution out of the relative safety of flats and saunas and on to back streets, putting women at greater risk.

Community safety minister Fergus Ewing, who attended the justice committee meeting, said: The government is concerned about making substantial changes to the law in this difficult, complex and sensitive area without proper consideration and consultation, with all the issues involved. Rushing through a major change to the law of prostitution through amendments, without any proper consultation and with very limited time for consideration, is a bad idea.

The amendment was also criticised for being added to the already wide-ranging Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill, and without having had specific consultation on the ramifications of a change in legislation on prostitution.

Ruth Morgan Thomas, of Scotpep, said the amendment would have sought to criminalise an estimated 5,000 women working in the sex industry in Scotland. She also said that a law against facilitating the purchase of sex would potentially lead to receptionists, hotel porters and even taxi drivers being charged and convicted.

Sweden's former injustice minister Thomas Bodstr๖m and former equality ombudsman Claes Borgstr๖m have proposed increasing the punishment for paying for sex, admitting that legislation outlawing the practice during the Social Democrat tenure has proved insufficient to address the supposed problem.

They propose, for example, elevating the classification of pimping to human trafficking to underline the severity of the crime and increase its penalty. They also propose raising the custodial penalty for paying for sex from six months to twelve months.

Furthermore, victims of the purchase of sex should be entitled to receive compensation, among a raft of other measures proposed.

Three men have been arrested under new legislation aimed at protecting women who have been forced into prostitution.

They were held by officers at an alleged brothel in Newham, east London, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

The men were questioned on suspicion of paying for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force.

A woman was also arrested on suspicion of managing a brothel.

The arrests were made on the day new laws came into force to target men who pay for sex. From 1 April, a man paying for sex with a prostitute who is being exploited through force, deception or threats is breaking the law - regardless of whether or not he knows she is selling her body against her will.

Under the new legislation, courts have the power to close down premises associated with certain prostitution and pornography offences. And a new penalty for the offence of soliciting will oblige sex workers to attend meetings at which they will be helped to leave prostitution.