Prostitution Policy in the Nordic Region

Ambiguous Sympathies

May-Len Skilbrei, Charlotta Holmström

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409444268
• eBook ISBN: 9781317074526
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

There is great interest internationally in the development of prostitution policies in the Nordic countries after Sweden, Norway and Iceland have introduced general bans against buying sex whilst selling sex remains legal. In addition, there is a partial ban against buying sex in Finland. This is a different approach from that of several other European countries, where we have seen a decriminalisation of third-party involvement in prostitution as well as to that of the USA which criminalises both the buying and selling of sexual services. Thus the Nordic countries are often treated as representatives of a 'Nordic model' of prostitution policies. In this book - the first on the subject - Skilbrei and Holmström argue that these models of policies or policy regimes tend to ignore the trajectories, contexts and consequences of the full range of approaches to prostitution, thus they are too simplistic and static. Prostitution policies in the Nordic countries are multifaceted and dynamic, and cannot be represented as following a straight path and detached from empirical contexts. Their analysis treats Nordic prostitution policies both as a product of history, of current national and Nordic debates, and of international obligations and changes in the international and national prostitution markets. Furthermore they argue that a broad understanding of the relevant context is necessary so as to place Nordic prostitution policies within broader policy concerns related to gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, social welfare, immigration and organised crime, as well as to neoliberal forms of governance.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Over the last decade there has been great interest internationally in the development of prostitution policies in the Nordic countries after Sweden, Norway and Iceland introduced general bans against buying sex while it continues to be legal to sell sex in all these countries.1 In addition, there is a partial ban against buying sex in Finland and a full criminalisation of the purchase of sex is also being debated in Denmark. These legal reforms have come at different times and have, because of this and for other reasons, been influenced by different national and international discourses on prostitution, gender, sexuality, public space, social work, criminal justice, human trafficking and immigration, as well as by welfare state policies. However, they are also related to each other. There are similarities in how the countries define and approach prostitution, the five Nordic countries share general societal developments and there is a strong tradition of regional cooperation (Rosenbeck 1998),2 particularly on the issue of prostitution (Skilbrei and Holmström 2011). In the Nordic countries the issue of prostitution has been high on the public agenda for several decades, and in most debates it is taken for granted that the countries share the goal of wanting to abolish prostitution.

There are, of course, also significant differences between the countries, and throughout the book we will present and discuss similarities and differences concerning the approach to prostitution. The similarities are great enough in important aspects to make developments in one country interesting for understanding developments in the others, as they share central features of welfare statism and a high degree of gender equality, as well as having intertwined national histories and commonalities in terms of culture and legal traditions (Nousiainen and Niemi-Kiesiläinen 2001: 4). The analysis involves some degree of comparison between the Nordic countries, but we will not treat the countries as separate entities to be mapped and compared. Neither the region nor the countries are closed circuits wherein policies are forged. Policies and approaches in the region are not created in a vacuum but are rather a part of global policy processes. Not least since the concern over trafficking has stepped up transnational activities that are directly and indirectly influencing the prostitution market and the question of what policies individual countries can apply. In this book the focus is on the intra-regional developments, and even though we relate this to how the Nordic countries relate to developments elsewhere, we first and foremost present the Nordic case.

The Nordic countries are often treated as representatives of a ‘Nordic model’ of prostitution policies, and are as such also often heralded for their progressive policies towards prostitution (see e.g., Raymond 2004). Politicians, journalists, researchers and activists internationally relate their arguments about what prostitution policy to apply to particularly the Swedish case, discussing whether the ‘Nordic model’ or ‘Swedish model’ constitutes a ‘best practice’ for dealing with prostitution or not. Both in politics (e.g., in Vancouver Courier 8 March 2011 (Siuk 2011), on CNN 31 March 2011 (Ask 2011) and in the Scottish Parliament (2012)) and research, Nordic examples are used when debating prostitution policies in other countries, such as the UK (see e.g., Sanders, O’Neill and Pitcher 2009) and France (see e.g., Allwood 2006).

The policy development in the Nordic countries points to a different approach from that of several other European countries. Examples of this is how in the Netherlands (Outshoorn 2012), Germany (Pates 2012) and in Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium (Weitzer 2012: 79) prostitution is approached with a form of regulation that includes decriminalisation of third-party involvement in prostitution and the issuing of licenses for establishments that organise and promote prostitution. The choice to criminalise only the act of the buyer3 in the Nordic countries also stands in contrast to the policies in countries which criminalise both buying and selling sexual services, such as Romania, Croatia and Serbia. Internationally, this way of approaching prostitution is widespread.

As the unilateral criminalisation of the purchase of sex in several of the Nordic countries has attracted a lot of attention, it is also something that many have an opinion about. It has great symbolic value, whether this is deemed a success or a failure.

There are numerous examples of presentations of individual Nordic cases or aspects of them in academic articles and book chapters. The literature on Sweden is much larger than on the other Nordic countries, including analysis of the Swedish situation and comparison between Sweden and other countries. In addition to empirical work on the Nordic situations, Nordic examples are used in research as representatives of a distinct approach to prostitution. Despite the volume of research in the area we propose that there is a knowledge gap and a subsequent need for more detailed and systematic descriptions, and a comprehensive analysis. We argue that the research conducted in the field has to understand the Nordic cases within a larger context than is typically done in the literature. Both international and Nordic representations of the reasons for and effects of the prostitution policies of the Nordic countries are often somewhat misguided or simplistic, representing them as a unitary approach or an undivided success or failure. Research on prostitution policies elsewhere points to the fact that the relationship between arguments for an approach and the formulation and implementation of policies is a complex issue (see e.g., Matthews 2008, Wagenaar and Altink 2012). Through our own empirical work on prostitution in the Nordic countries since the mid-1990s we know there is a great divergence between the formulations of laws on prostitution and the establishment of rights of the people involved on paper on the one hand, and in praxis on the other. Just simply presenting Nordic prostitution policies as they appear on paper is thus not sufficient if the goal is to understand how prostitution is approached in the various countries and in the region.

Building on Nordic and international scholarship on prostitution policy and our own research, our aim with this book is to give a comprehensive description of Nordic prostitution policies and a contextualisation and analysis of these. We will treat Nordic prostitution policies both as a product of history, of current national and Nordic debates, of international obligations and of changes in the international and national prostitution markets. As we see a convergence between the Nordic countries in how they on paper choose to regulate prostitution, it is important to look at how various policies are argued for and implemented. We trace today’s approaches to prostitution through four decades of developments in criminal law and social work, well aware of the dangers of only looking at legislation when studying policy (Wagenaar and Altink 2012). We link these developments to the knowledge production on prostitution in the region and look at how policy developments relate to what is believed to be true at any given time about prostitution. We argue that a broad understanding of the relevant context is necessary (Bernstein and Schaffner 2005) and will thus place Nordic prostitution policies within broader policy concerns related to gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, youth, social welfare, immigration and organised crime, as well as to neoliberal forms of governance.

How a society chooses to approach the issue of prostitution not only tells us something about how it views the people directly involved; it also reveals how it regards broader issues. The changes in prostitution policies, however, do not take place in a vacuum, but are closely connected to social change and societal processes such as migration flows and patterns. This means that the way in which a society approaches prostitution can be seen as mirroring political responses to broader social changes and societal processes. It is our intention to take this perspective into consideration as well. Thus, approaches to prostitution also have implications outside the realm of the sex industry. Prostitution can, for example, be used as a lever for stricter immigration control and policies aimed at sanitising public space. The heightened attention directed at prostitution creates a sense of urgency and legitimacy for calls for radical action which means that referring to it creates political possibilities. Prostitution and its agents continue to serve a symbolic function, as representatives of that which is immoral and corrupted. Terms such as ‘prostitution’, ‘whore’, ‘hooker’, ‘pimp’ and ‘John’ continue to serve as metaphors for social relations also outside the realm of commercial sex, which evidence the continued symbolic importance of the phenomenon of prostitution, in the Nordic countries and elsewhere. In addition, prostitution has been serving a specific symbolic function in the Nordic context from the 1970s onwards, as evidence of the not yet fully-realised welfare state (see e.g., Inghe and Inghe 1967, Bernstein 2007); as long as prostitution exists, the Nordic states are not yet fully equal.

In the Nordic countries, as elsewhere in Europe (Lehti and Aromaa 2006), prostitution policies are changing quickly and in a variety of ways, including their formulation or implementation (see e.g., Munro (2005) on the UK, Crowhurst (2012) on Italy, Duarte (2012) on Portugal). The patterns of these changes give us insight into how policy processes work in controversial questions, but also how controversial questions are being used in broader policy processes. By detailing how prostitution is approached in this particular region of Europe, we also aim at facilitating the analysis of developments elsewhere.

We argue that the book brings the analysis of the Nordic policies further by studying their trajectories, contexts and consequences, and by making a Nordic comparison. By describing, contextualising and analysing the developments, debates and research in the Nordic countries, the book also make these available to an international audience. As already mentioned, the case of Sweden has attracted a lot of attention, and is used as an example in both a positive and negative sense. In the book, the Swedish case will be given particular attention, but also placed in a larger Nordic context. Prostitution has grown to be a substantial area of research in the last ten years and a wide array of articles, monographs and edited volumes are published every year. Several internationally published articles and book chapters propose interpretations of the developments in prostitution policies in the Nordic countries, and we have also ourselves published on the issue (see Holmström and Skilbrei 2008, Skilbrei and Holmström 2010, Skilbrei and Holmström 2011). What is lacking is a joint presentation of the Nordic policy developments and a comprehensive analysis of what might appear as a ‘Nordic Model’ of prostitution policy. At the moment, there are negotiations taking place in the Nordic countries as to how prostitution should be dealt with and how to combine today’s emerging legal approach with a definition of prostitution as a social problem. This can be posed as a dilemma between a zero-tolerance approach and harm reduction models manifested in the Nordic bans against buying sex. We suggest exploring the relationship between legal and social solutions as a way forward for research. This is an area where the Nordic region offers unique material and history, and where the value of Nordic comparisons is most visible. The Nordic countries could at the outset appear to hold a common approach to prostitution, and we will particularly look into similarities and differences. Several scholars have critiqued attempts to delineate models or regimes of prostitution policies (Agustín 2008, Matthews 2008, Scoular 2010, Wagenaar and Altink 2012). However, our aim is also to discuss the benefits of identifying similarities and group policy approaches to better theorise their emergence and consequences. We believe that to study a region like the Nordic gives a good starting point to discuss the viability of identifying policy regimes. The recent convergence of the countries’ legislation on prostitution makes an interesting comparison, particularly in light of the relative homogeneity of the region in terms of affluence, welfare models, and crime and penal patterns.

The main aim of this book is subsequently to give a comprehensive description of Nordic prostitution policies and an analysis of these that can substantiate debates. As we will show throughout the book, prostitution policies in the Nordic countries are multifaceted and dynamic, and cannot be represented as following a straight path detached from empirical contexts. When looking closely at how prostitution is regulated in the Nordic countries, we find great differences, not only between, but also within each country. We also see that policies that are the same or similar on paper, may vary extensively in terms of their trajectories, contexts and consequences. As we will demonstrate in this book, there are some notable differences between and within the Nordic countries in how prostitution is dealt with both concerning legal measures and social initiatives. We will describe and discuss both differences and similarities in the current regulation of prostitution and the social policies directed at prostitution, but also in relation to the intellectual history of the subject in the Nordic countries.

In Chapter 2 we will lay the ground for later presentations and discussions by presenting literature on policy generally and prostitution policies specifically. We define concepts that will be central throughout the book, and describe the different models for State intervention in prostitution that have been developed by scholars. We will return to these models in the discussions throughout the book. The relationship between social welfare policies and criminal justice policies will be central to these, and in this chapter we present the more theoretical questions we will relate to in terms of modern forms of governance.

After describing literature on policy and on the development of prostitution policies we will deal with the specificities of the Nordic countries and the Nordic region in Chapter 3. In this chapter we give an introduction to the Nordic context, in terms of characteristics of the countries and the region generally. We focus particularly on Nordic welfare state policies and the role of gender equality ideals and targets, on how the relationship between the state and its citizens is contextualised and on how the relationship between criminal justice and social approaches is negotiated. We argue that the focus on gender equality and the development of a state feminism can be interpreted as an important part of the development of the Nordic Welfare State, with its high level of engagement in social problems. Within this context prostitution has been understood as an explicit consequence of social and gender inequality and as something that could be prevented, mainly through social measures and social interventions. We describe how the question of prostitution has been placed within a broad societal context and how the question of the way in which a country should regulate such a central issue became an important one. In this chapter we also place the development of Nordic prostitution policies in a wider context, arguing that debates on which prostitution policies to apply are related to issues of globalisation, migration and Europeanisation processes. In this chapter we also describe the role of the political participation of people involved in prostitution in the Nordic region, in light of the importance of civil society engagement and of state–citizen relations in the region.

Prostitution policies, either they are forms of social work agendas or criminal justice, build on what one believes to be true about the phenomenon and society in general. In Chapter 4 we describe how knowledge production on prostitution from the late 1970s and onwards has played a central role in the Nordic public debate on prostitution and on the development of prostitution policies in the Nordic countries. We understand knowledge as taking part in legitimising the approaches of social work and criminal law respectively, and we see knowledge as something that is simultaneously created by how social work and criminal law approaches frame prostitution and its agents. In this chapter we describe and explore how academic research and other forms of knowledge production have been authorised and how these have taken part in the discourse formation that revisions in social welfare policies and criminal justice policies are also a part of. We understand definitions, classifications and differentiations as acts of power by institutions that in their time are considered to be authoritative. In this chapter we describe the different forms of knowledge production in the Nordic context and explore the relationship between these, and how these by way of what they include and exclude, open up and outline possible and preferred policies. Developments in the prostitution market have also always played a key role in producing arguments for policy reform and in this chapter we therefore present what is thought to be known about the prostitution markets in the region. This serves as a basis for later chapters’ descriptions and assessments of policies; what is it that these policies are designed to change?

Even though Nordic criminal justice policies on prostitution are given much attention, it is important to note that prostitution is not only governed by the Penal Code. In the last four decades targeted social work agencies, both GOs and NGOs, have established themselves in this field, and prostitution is currently met by an extensive web of social services. In Chapter 5 we describe how targeted social services came to be defined as the preferred way to regulate prostitution in the region. In this we explore and try to understand what kind of assumptions about prostitution and its agents these services are based on, asking how prostitution came to be seen as a social problem warranting targeted services. Arguments in favour of targeted services differ somewhat between the countries and have also changed over time: Today we are seeing an increasing diversification of ways in which prostitution is managed. In this chapter we investigate how the issue is approached by describing what services are being offered. We understand that who is targeted for special forms of social work and how this social work is designed tells us something about wider concerns and processes. This means that what is, at any given time and place, governed as prostitution is not a given, but rather needs to be seen as produced within a specific context. In this chapter we argue that it is necessary to look at how social work takes part in constructing/monitoring the field of prostitution – and that it interacts with how prostitution is regulated through criminal justice policies. Within this context we trace the current approaches to the regulation of prostitution during the nineteenth century, and describe how the regulatory approach was framed within a medical discourse, from a functionalistic perspective. We thus understand current approaches from a historical perspective; measures have changed, but the control of women is still there, now not only by the police, but also by a broad range of actors who take part in surveying and overseeing their self-governance. In order to understand the current Nordic approaches to prostitution we contextualise these targeted services politically and ideologically. Specific attention is given to the case of Sweden, but we also elaborate on the development of the social political approaches to prostitution within the other Nordic countries.

In the Nordic countries, several new acts targeting prostitution have been introduced, and we have also seen a situation where already existing legislation on prostitution has been given higher priority. Taken together, this constitutes a stronger focus on prostitution as a criminal justice problem in the region than was the case few years back. In Chapter 6 we explore the reasons for and consequences of this shift, and take into consideration how this again changes social work agendas and the premises for knowledge production. From giving a prominent role to social work, the Nordic countries are now moving in the direction of a juridification of the prostitution issue based primarily on criminal law. Within this context we discuss how legal revision impacts on how social welfare policies are being formed, implemented and received and argue that the consequence is that the relationship between the state and the person selling sex changes when the contact activity moves from social work to policing. When ‘the problem with prostitution’ is increasingly defined as one of criminal justice, the focus of social work is also transformed. Thus an important question in this chapter is how changes in social welfare policies influence their relations to criminal justice policies, and vice versa. We describe how prostitution is currently regulated by laws and by-laws in the Nordic region and how the current legal regime came about. We also discuss the implications of the legal situation, in terms of what kind of problem prostitution is defined to be, and how these laws may influence the prostitution market. As t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is Prostitution Policy?
• 3 The Nordic Context
• 4 What is ‘Known’ about Prostitution in the Nordic Countries?
• 5 Regulating Prostitution through Social Welfare Policies
• 6 Regulating Prostitution through Criminal Justice Policies
• 7 Nordic Prostitution Policies in Context
• References
• Index