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Being Outside: CONSTRUCTING A RESPONSE TO STREET PROSTITUTION
Chapter Five: KEY FACTORS IDENTIFIED IN STREET PROSTITUTION
5.1 Street Prostitution is a Survival Behaviour.
'I used to have a plan that I'll do this and then I'll get better but it never worked out and now I don't have a plan anymore...it's like you are in a big black hole and there's no way out for you unless someone came to you with heaps of money and said you can get into rehabilitation.' Glasgow woman
Information gathered through literature review, research reports and city visits, as well as the direct operational experience of Group members has led to a number of conclusions as to the factors which cause women to become involved in street prostitution, which contribute to their continued involvement and which make it difficult for them to move on in their lives. For the great majority of women involved in street prostitution, their involvement is a search for survival. The main identified factors are:
- Misuse of drugs, and sometimes alcohol;
- Debt and low income;
- History of family breakdown, commonly associated with sexual and/or physical abuse and consequently being looked after through local authority social work services;
- Continuing physical and sexual abuse into adulthood;
- Poor educational achievement, poor employment history and lack of skills useful to employment;
- Mental illness or learning disability;
- Homelessness or lack of secure accommodation;
Whilst, of course, not all women will have experienced all these adverse factors, and it is possible that some will have experienced none - although this seems to be so rare as to be discountable - the reality is that the overwhelming majority of women involved in street prostitution have experienced clusters of multiple numbers of these factors.
For these reasons the Group is strongly of the view that street prostitution must be seen not simply as a lifestyle of choice, nor essentially as a sexual behaviour, but rather as a means of survival by people with accumulated personal difficulties and few resources with which to develop a less damaging way of life.
This conclusion, more than any other consideration, is why the Group advocates later in this report a review of the criminal law.
5.2 This analysis is also one strong reason why the Group believes that street prostitution should be seen as exploitative. It consists overwhelmingly of exposing vulnerable people to high risks. They are reinforced in seriously damaging behaviours such as drug misuse, and are at great risk of being drawn into deeper criminality and harm. Any response which, in the words of the Home Office consultation paper (Paying the Price, 2004) 'normalises the concept of street prostitution and pre-supposes its continuing existence' requires to be questioned.
5.3 However these very same factors place an obligation to act in a considered, constructive and effective way. This is the thinking which has already led responsible agencies away from strategies based heavily on legal prohibition and towards strategies which base on reduction of harm, engagement with the person, rehabilitation and support to exit a damaging way of life. The Group favours this as a way to approach to street prostitution, albeit with clear legal involvement to prevent exploitation and to prevent nuisance and public offence.
5.4 Drug and Alcohol Misuse are Intrinsically Linked to Most Street Prostitution
'No I can't see me stopping in the foreseeable future, not as long as I'm taking drugs anyway.'
' I'd say around 99% of the women down here are working to fund a drug habit' Glasgow Women
'Every single girl in this street has a drug habit and if they tell you otherwise they're lying.' Aberdeen Woman
In the past 15 years in the UK the contribution of drug use in particular has grown to the extent that it is now unusual to find a woman involved in street prostitution who does not have a problem of serious drug misuse, sometimes allied to alcohol misuse. Drug use is predominantly injected use of heroin in all four cities, with an increasing pattern of polydrug use, certainly involving cannabis and benzodiazepines, but now also a small but growing tendency towards combined use of cocaine including its derivative, crack.
Funding a demanding and expensive drug habit, not infrequently combined with funding the drug use of a partner or friends, is the reason that a significant number of women turn to street prostitution. As well as being a contributory cause, drug use is frequently the means by which they give themselves a means of coping with, or masking the fear of, engaging in prostitution. This increases risk partly because it increases the frequency of drug misuse but also because it removes caution and self-protective behaviour as women work while intoxicated. The drug dependency also, of course, reduces the capacity to relate effectively to services and supports which could be of assistance in finding a route away from prostitution. Impacting on drug misuse would therefore be an essential part of reducing the likelihood of becoming involved in prostitution, reducing the risk of harm once involved and facilitating an exit route away from prostitution.
'I was the first one in my family to take drugs, and now I've come down here. It's the drugs that done all the lassies down here.' Glasgow Woman
5.5 Alcohol misuse alone, traditionally a dominant factor in involvement in prostitution, now occurs more frequently in association with drug use, but should not be overlooked. It is part of the pattern of polydrug use which increases risk and adds to the complex of identifiable problems.
5.6 If coping with the demands of addiction is a core cause for involvement in prostitution, it is the association with experience of sexual abuse or physical abuse, or with low personal esteem, mental illness, learning disability or childhood disadvantage which makes the progression into prostitution a conceivable step for the woman. Tackling the effects of these life experiences helps to protect against risk of involvement, and crucially is necessary to the rehabilitative process if continuing vulnerability to relapse is to be avoided. Furthermore, the children of those who have drug problems and may be involved in prostitution are likely themselves to be experiencing childhood disadvantage which may heighten the risk of them also becoming involved as they grow up. In the longer term context of preventing further generations becoming involved, breaking the cycle by rehabilitative work with the parent is an essential contribution to lasting change.
5.7 Meeting practical needs is also essential both to prevention, reduction of harm and to rehabilitation. Settled, secure accommodation; remediation of educational and training deficits; support towards employment; and achievement of personal aspirations must all be part of any strategy to break links between survival behaviour and involvement in prostitution.
5.8 Understanding and addressing the personal needs of those women involved in prostitution is, however, only part of the picture. This is a complex and deep-seated problem, requiring solutions which deal with that complexity and do not evade the difficult issues. Amongst these other considerations are:
- attitudes which feed the continuation of involvement in prostitution, and behaviour which abuses and exploits vulnerable women;
- women's poverty and lack of economic opportunities;
- social attitudes and communities' responses which historically have failed to take the constructive and effective way referred to above. They have evaded responsibility and failed to deal with the structural factors. This has led to an increase in victimisation of the women involved.
The other key factors to an effective response to street prostitution must therefore be a purposeful strategy to influence attitudes to prostitution and sexual behaviour generally, and a socially inclusive approach, which tackles the problem without avoiding the issues or exacerbating the vulnerability.
5.9 Redevelopment of Cities is Affecting the Context of Street Prostitution
Redevelopment and regeneration of cities is destabilising the equilibrium within which street based prostitution has existed as part of the activities in Scottish cities for many years. Redevelopment and regeneration are clearly desirable and important to the vigour and economic health of our cities, but its full impact needs to de recognised and managed. Without defending street based prostitution as a legitimate activity, it must be acknowledged that it has a long history as a 'survival' response to pressing personal problems, whether they be, as once was the case, poverty, debt and alcohol dependency or as is now overwhelmingly the cause, drug misuse associated with historical and current abuse. Each of the four cities has traditionally had areas identified over a long period of time as 'red light' areas, often associated with dockland or non-residential city centre localities. Women turning to this 'survival' response would turn to these areas knowing firstly, that that was where clients would be found and secondly that, although they faced prosecution, there would be a historical precedent for where they were and what they were doing.
5.10 This relatively stable position is eroding for several reasons. Attitudes are changing and there is increasing recognition and concern that women are being forced into street prostitution as a problem solving recourse. A second reason is that locations protected by tradition are no longer available as city dynamics change. Attitude change and service interventions cannot impact quickly enough to replace dysfunctional problem solving approaches. Therefore, changes in community dynamics displace and disperse women, putting them out of service reach and increasingly at risk. This in turn frequently exacerbates the problems which some women seek to deal with through the damaging response of involvement in prostitution. The message of this has to be that any resolution of the problems of street based prostitution cannot be seen solely in terms of meeting individual women's problems or tackling the incidence of male clients' abusive behaviour. It must be given a context of addressing urban regeneration, and planning our cities, in a way which recognises the needs and the rights of all city users, and shapes the urban environment to help them in their use of the city - not to persist in harmful behaviour but to find their way out of that behaviour in their own time and in their own way.
5.11 Service Responses Should be Gender Specific
Services to help women find their way out of drug misuse, offending and street prostitution will need to be different in key respects from those which may work for men. In devising service responses for women involved in prostitution service planners and commissioners should be aware of the growing acknowledgement that most current interventions in the addiction and criminal justice fields are designed for men - who historically have been the main service users in these fields. Experience presented to the Group by staff working with women in prison, and staff working with women in the community in projects such as '218 Time Out' in Glasgow, draws attention to potential factors of difference between men and women. These include:
- The pathway into drug use and offending is often different, with women more likely to be influenced by one or more personal relationships/partnerships.
- The influence of factors such as physical and sexual abuse is likely to be particularly prevalent with women.
- The criminal justice response is more likely with women to have to be orientated towards meeting personal needs than towards managing risk to others.
- Interventions for change with women which are based upon establishing personal relationships and using the relational content are more likely to be effective - rather than interventions based predominantly on learning.
- The complexity of women's problem inter-relationships needs to be understood and worked with in its entirety.
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