CWJ welcomes government plans to expunge unjust ‘child prostitution’ convictions

Under the new provisions, people who were convicted or cautioned as children for loitering or soliciting will automatically have these convictions or cautions disregarded or pardoned.

The CWJ says this is an important step to respond to a recommendation by Baroness Casey in her recent review of grooming gangs.

However, it says the Government must go further by decriminalising the outdated offence of loitering or soliciting, and by extending the disregard and pardon scheme to convictions and cautions received by those aged 18 and over for this offence.

Tonia Antoniazzi MP earlier tabled amendments in the same Bill that would have had this effect. The same amendments are now to be tabled in the House of Lords by Baroness Helena Kennedy KC.

“As our parliamentary briefing paper highlights through survivors’ stories, many women with historical convictions for soliciting and loitering first entered street prostitution as children when they were made to sell sex by pimps and other exploiting adults,” the CWJ said.

“Their abuse and exploitation didn’t end when they reached the age of 18, yet the women we have supported and acted for in litigation, continue to suffer the consequences of having a criminal record arising from grave criminal acts done to them by adult men who were rarely punished.”

In her response to Ms Antoniazzi’s amendments, the then policing minister Diana Johnson DBE MP indicated that before committing to these further changes, the Government required “an opportunity to consult properly with communities”.

However, several previous inquiries and calls for evidence over at least the last 11 years, both by Parliamentary bodies and internationally, have concluded that these reforms are necessary, said the CWJ.

This includes the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which recommended nearly ten years ago that “at the earliest opportunity, the Home Office change existing legislation so that soliciting is no longer an offence” and that the Home Office should “also legislate for the deletion of previous convictions and cautions for prostitution from the record of sex workers by amending the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act”.

Harriet Wistrich, CEO of the CWJ, who acted for several women in an earlier legal challenge around this issue, welcomed this announcement, commenting: “Insisting on further consultation will lead to further unnecessary delay and likely ultimate inaction. Survivors deserve justice now.

“This is a first important step to correcting the scandalous treatment by the criminal justice system of children who were victims of adult rapists, but those children didn’t suddenly become free to choose when they reached the age of 18.

“We call on the Government to extend the disregards and pardons scheme to all of those with historical convictions for soliciting and loitering now.”