Challenges of prostitution policy

Abstract

All public policy faces general and domain-specific challenges. General challenges are key tasks, such as mobilising support for an agenda, or transforming policy goals into policy design, that need to be adhered to to realize a policy. In addition we distinguish five domain-specific challenges in prostitution. These are: The pervasive stigma and the urge to control and restrict prostitution that follows from that. Prostitution is morality politics, which results in an ideologically charged, emotive debate about prostitution and a tendency toward symbolic politics. Prostitution policy gets mixed up with immigration policy. Precise, reliable data on prostitution are generally unavailable. And, local policy making is essential for understanding the process and outcomes of prostitution policy. Local policy often deviates from, and is more repressive than national policy making. In our analysis we use concepts and theories of the policymaking process as formulated in the academic policy literature. But above all, by putting the domain-specific challenges central in describing and analysing prostitution policy, we consistently reason from the perspective of the elected official and public administrator.

Unveiling the Price of Obscenity: Evidence From Closing Prostitution Windows in Amsterdam

“…According to Wagenaar et al. (2013), on a normal day all windows are rented out in two shifts, from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. on the next day.…”

“…A window is typically one by two and a half meters, with a small bedroom inside (see Figure 1), and a brothel is just a company that rents out windows to sex workers. According to Wagenaar et al (2013), on a normal day all windows are rented out in two shifts, from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. on the next day.…”

The external cost of prostitution: Evidence from shutting down red light districts in the Netherlands

“…Signs that many of them were undocumented and sometimes victims of trafficking made the three biggest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague) close their street prostitution areas between 2003 and 2006 (Outshoorn, 2012). In the whole Netherlands, the number of brothel windows declined from 2096 in 1999 to 1466 in 2009, and the number of sex clubs went from around 800 in 2000 to 370 in 2010 (Wagenaar et al., 2013). This repressive policy caused many sex workers to move to Utrecht, increasing the popularity of its RLDs among tourists and clients.…”

Designing Prostitution Policy

“…Regime typologies have been criticised on several grounds. They do not necessarily coincide with national borders, they are insufficiently consistent as more than one regime can be discerned in the same country or even in one policy programme, and they ignore the complex and multi-level character of prostitution policy (Phoenix, 2009;Skilbrei and Holmström, 2013;Wagenaar et al, 2013). Does that mean that the policy regimes in the prostitution literature must be seen as convenient shorthand for a complex set of processes, institutions and actors, somewhat as Howlett and colleagues' definition implies, and that scholars can be trusted to be careful enough to elaborate when they analyse prostitution policy?…”

“…Increasingly they closed themselves off from actors who had different ideas. Research reports that offered data and analyses that questioned the reigning narrative of trafficking and victimhood were consistently ignored (Wagenaar et al, 2013;Siegel, 2015). Repression has become a self-propelling tunnel vision.…”