Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October Learn More or Try it out now. There is a notable shift toward more repression and criminalization in sex work policies, in Europe and elsewhere. So-called neo-abolitionism reduces sex work to trafficking, with increased policing and persecution as a result.
It is illustrated how criminalization and repression make it less likely that commercial sex is worker-controlled, non-abusive, and non-exploitative.
Criminalization is seriously at odds with human rights and public health principles. It is concluded that sex work criminalization is barking up the wrong tree because it is fighting sex instead of crime and it is not offering any solution for the structural conditions that sex work its ugly sides included is rooted in.
Sex work repression travels a dead-end street and holds no promises whatsoever for a better future. To fight poverty and gendered inequalities, the criminal justice system simply is not the right instrument. The reasons for the persistent stigma on sex work as well as for its present revival are considered. Sex work policy regimes have always and everywhere formed a prominent chapter in the field of sexual politics.
The philosophy behind criminalization is largely of an abolitionist nature and starts from a strong moral rejection of sex-for-pay and from the idea that casting the practice as illegal holds the best cards to, ultimately, get rid of it altogether.
