Prostitution legislation ‘incapable’ of being enforced

New research published by Leeds Metropolitan University suggests that the vast majority of police forces in England and Wales are not enforcing a prostitution law recently introduced to tackle trafficking.

Researchers submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to all 43 police forces in England and Wales and found that section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 was not being used by the majority of the forces and, in one instance, was being used inappropriately.

Section 14 relates to the offence of paying for sex from a coerced (ie, trafficked) person.

Police forces were asked for the number of times section 14 has been used since the Act became law in March 2010, details of its use and the outcome.

Dr Sarah Kingston said: “This research demonstrates that the majority of police forces have not used section 14, which raises questions about the need for this law and the inherent difficulties the police have in identifying women who have been trafficked for sexual exploitation.”

She added that the lack of police use of the law also challenges some of the fundamental principles upon which the legislative changes were made and will be scrutinised by the university.

The national policing lead for prostitution, Assistant Chief Constable Chris Armitt, said: “There is a real concern, on the part of many foreign sex workers, in relation to cooperating with the police in the UK based on their experience of law enforcement in their countries of origin.

“Many women claim not to have been trafficked, and as such providing sufficient cogent evidence to a court is difficult and evidence that such people have been subject to force/threats can only be provided by the victim or the controller – therefore direct evidence from a victim would almost certainly be required to prove this offence.

“The offence is summary only and it is difficult to secure convictions within the necessary timescales. There has been a very low level of usage of the legislation and a low level of charges have been proffered in relation to section 14 offences, principally because it is virtually incapable of being evidenced and is extremely difficult to enforce for a variety of reasons.”