Criminalizing the Payment for Sex in Northern Ireland: Sketching the Contours of a Moral Panic: Table 1

A Review of the Criminalisation of the Payment for Sexual Services in Northern Ireland

“…When this has occurred, it has been located mainly in Belfast, the largest urban centre, albeit at a level well below comparable UK and Irish cities (Ellison, 2017;Huschke et al, 2014). Sanders (2006) for example, notes that across the UK street prostitution has been in steady decline over the last two decades and points to the emergence of indoor sex markets.…”

“…6.2.1 The first point to note is that we know next to nothing about the dynamics of a protracted period of political violence on sex markets in Northern Ireland and this remains an area for future research. Nevertheless, the on-street sector in Northern Ireland is traditionally small, certainly by the standards of other jurisdictions, with on-street prostitution a fraction of what it is in UK or Irish cities such as Glasgow, Manchester or Dublin(Ellison, 2017). The earlier DOJ research (Huschke et al, 2014) noted there were around 20 female on-street sellers in Northern Ireland with the majority of these concentrated in Belfast (Huschke et al, 2014: 52).…”

“…This of course was confirmed in the earlier DOJ research (seeHuschke et al, 2014). See alsoEllison (2017).29 In 2013 one of the present authors(Ellison) was involved in a comparative case study of prostitution in four cities (with Prof Ron Weitzer). Off all the cities studies Belfast had by far the lowest level of prostitution, and dwarfed by some margin that of Manchester, England.…”

‘Ulster Says No’: Regulating the consumption of commercial sex spaces and services in Northern Ireland

“…This is also in stark contrast to the ROI, a predominantly A particular policy interest in sex work and a desire to regulate it more effectively was reflected in the publication of two NI Department of Justice Reports (DOJ, 2010(DOJ, , 2011. The roots of this 'new' policy interest in sex work can be traced back to increased reporting of sex work in the media plus agitated concerns from local councillors and the police about streetbased sex work and brothels that slowly emerged following the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998 (Ellison, 2015). Whereas Belfast and Derry/Londonderry, the two largest cities in NI, were traditionally seen to be the primary, if not exclusive, markets for commercial sex there were growing reports of clandestine brothels operating in provincial towns such as Banbridge, Portadown, Lurgan, Craigavon and Dungannon.…”

“…We then highlight the spatial and regulatory contours surrounding the regulation of commercial sex generally but also how the '(sub)urban sexscape' (Maginn & Steinmetz, 2015) has been informed by particular discourses within NI, paying attention to (i) sex shops, (ii) strip clubs and (iii) prostitution/sex work. We link these developments to a number of contributory processes and a desire to retain social norms premised on fundamentalist Christianity, heteronormativity and patriarchy (Ellison, 2015). Ultimately, the term sextarianism is used to describe the broad political attitudes and policy responses to commercial sex in NI.…”