Sweden's radical reform of law on prostitution (Punishing customers debated in UK)

The debate comes as the Government here is drawing up proposals for law reform that could de-criminalise prostitutes who would, instead, be offered help to get out of the vice trade or given anti-social behaviour orders, in favour of a crackdown on men who trawl for sex.

The approach, championed by women ministers such as Harriet Harman, has met with fierce resistance from the Home Office. While Diane Abbot has tabled an Early Day Motion, to date it has only 23 signatories. The question is would such a system work here? At face value, the Swedes have got it right. As Kajsa Wahlberg, head of the human trafficking unit of the Swedish police, says: ''We no longer have a problem with prostitutes. We have a prob-lem with men who buy sex.''

Before the 1999 law was introduced some 2,500 vice girls prowled the streets of Stockholm or worked in brothels. Today there are around 150. The number of punters picked up has fallen 80 per cent. In the nine years since the legislation changed, 1,650 men have been charged with paying for sex. None were jailed, but all faced hefty fines and huge humiliation. Several lost their jobs.

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My apologies for the severe editing of this article...this was done in order to remain in compliance with Free Republic posting rules regarding articles in The Telegraph. Please click on the original article link for the full story....given that I was forced to excise over half of the article in order to be able to post anything from it here, you will be missing quite a bit of the story if you don't.

(U.K.)Muslim leader police being 'over cautious' in stopping Asian gangs pimping white girls

Nine years ago, Sweden took the step of punishing the men who buy sex rather than the women who sell it. There, it is legal to be a prostitute. But the man who pays for her service is committing an offence.

I understand the whole shaming the "John" aspect of this but what kind of rational being makes a service legal and then makes the customer's actions illegal? Methinks the liberals are really losing it these days.

Right.. It’s either illegal or its not. Plus, there are a lot more johns than there are prostitutes, so if you are going to use the gov’t to stop prostitution, you will get much better results focusing on the prostitutes since there are fewer of them and they are easy to find.

That being said, I don’t think it should be illegal at all.

("And that's chairman," she chirps. "I'm not a chair, thank you very much; we're not one of those politically correct, lefty organisations.")

LOL! During my term as chairman of an international committee, I was asked one day by one of my Asian colleagues about this business of being a "chair." Why was it I was being designated as a piece of furniture?

Methinks the liberals are really losing it these days.

Indeed. This FR thread from 2006 may also be of interest.

Great Britain Mini-brothels get go-ahead to operate on your doorstep

I understand the whole shaming the “John” aspect of this but what kind of rational being makes a service legal and then makes the customer’s actions illegal? Methinks the liberals are really losing it these days.

smoking is legal except just about everywhere it is illegal to smoke.

smoking is legal except just about everywhere it is illegal to smoke.

U.K. Riot police storm pub after a smoker lights up in protest to the ban

So Mr Vaughan lit up a cigarette in protest. When he refused to extinguish it, staff pressed a panic button behind the bar.

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Staff told me I couldn't smoke, but I said I'd had enough of being pushed around by the Government.

The government doesn’t want to stop it, they want to tax it (through fines assessed as punishment after the men are arrested).

And it will be very easy to pass more laws to jack the fines way up to increase revenue. Who is going to care that the customers of prostitutes are getting gouged by the State? Same deal as smokers - the State is just expanding that same philosophy into another sector of the legal economy.

You punish both the whore and the john.To do anything else is to eliminate any chance of solving the basic problem and it's damn discriminatory as well.

Of course,on the basis of "PC thought" it makes perfect sense because,as *everyone* knows....men are evil and women are victims.

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The Townswomen's Guild are meeting to debate a radical reform in the law on prostitution. Their template? The Swedish model.