Thursday 27 March , by Evie Embrechts. Recent years have seen renewed debate about prostitution in European countries. Both the Swedish and the Dutch models have been in effect for over 10 years and a lot of research has been done on the various implementations. What are the opinions and results? There are of course countless opinions about prostitution.
Most of these are problematic because they are based on myopic, selfish or conservative thinking, or on abstract theory far removed from the real-life situation. There are a few models that try to take reality into account and to improve on it. These can be roughly divided into two tendencies: the harm reduction and the harm elimination model. The Dutch paper Volkskrant had an article where a quite pessimistic author opines that both the Dutch and Swedish models have failed.
To summarize: most prostitutes are in a very precarious situation. The majority of prostitutes have post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD. For the majority, the age of entry into prostitution is below The mortality rateof prostitutes is extremely high — 10 to 40 times higher than the average population. Violence was the leading cause of death, most violence was committed by clients.
Today we have reasonably accurate and replicated research about prostitution, though numbers in trafficking are still difficult to estimate. Several studies with multiple hundreds of research subjects in different countries exist [ 6 ] ]], e. Male demands have slowly become more extreme, e. The first major model is harm reduction.
Here prostitution is considered more or less a constant in societies. Assuming this, the way forward is trying to improve the conditions: easy or free access to condoms, HIV testing, and the legal recognition of prostitution and pimping as work. Included are also attempts to lessen the additional violence: less violence done by pimps and johns, with the state keeping an eye out — and earning money on the back of the prostitutes. This is linked to human trafficking: trafficking is always problematic, prostitution not necessarily.
