“I’m an organized criminal,” mutters Valerie Scott in utter disbelief. Scott, a sex worker and executive director of the Toronto-based activist group Sex Professionals of Canada, doesn’t see herself as your typical organized criminal. But new amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code are lumping sex workers in the same category as violent criminals.
The Conservative government announced changes to the laws August 4. Keeping a “common bawdy house” is now considered a serious offence, and sex workers sharing a work space or working from home can be punished with up to five years in prison. Police are provided with the same tools for dealing with sex workers as they use with organized criminals, such as wiretaps and the power to seize assets.
“We treat sex workers as disposable and these laws are going to put them in more danger,” says Rene Ross, executive director of Stepping Stone, a Halifax-based organization offering supportive programs for sex workers.
Greg Mason of Halifax Regional Police’s Vice Unit is aware that there are downsides to the legislation. “If we make arrests and shut down a common bawdy house, the reality is that it may displace sex trade workers,” explains Mason. “We encourage them to seek out organizations that support them and can help them transition from the sex trade.”
But Ross says that the new legislation will actually make it tougher for sex workers to transition out of the sex trade, because those workers will now have criminal records, which in turn can make sex workers appear less hireable to employers.
Scott calls the legislation a “de facto death sentence,” as it pushes sex workers onto the streets alone. The act of selling sex in itself is not illegal in itself in Canada, but Canadian law increasingly criminalizalizes the activities surrounding sex work. This forces sex work underground, making it a risky business. Sex work has one of the highest fatality rates of any profession; Canadian police confirmed the murders of 15 sex workers as a result of their profession in 2007 alone, according to Statistics Canada.
“The federal government wants us alone and vulnerable. They’re serving us up to sexual predators like Robert Pickton on a silver platter,” says Scott bluntly. “We like to work together for security,” she explains. Indoor sex workers often work in groups, a strategy they are less likely to employ outdoors for fear of arrest. Academic research supports that strategy—more than two-thirds of indoor sex workers who participated in a 2007 Simon Fraser University study said they’d never experienced violent behaviour on the job.
Mason encourages sex workers to “report violence so that it can be investigated by police and to seek support from local organizations such as Stepping Stone.” But Ross worries the new legislation will make sex workers less likely to report being assaulted and raped by clients because the sex workers fear harsher penalties themselves.
Michael Goodyear, a women’s health expert and professor with Dalhousie’s Department of Medicine, says the new legislation is based on prohibitionist morality, not solid research. “Experts in Canada and all over the world are calling for a regulated indoor market in sex work to reduce violence and stigma on the streets,” explains Goodyear. “This move can only set the clock back years and further endanger sex workers.”
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2010.
What next? Bring back stoning?
I hope to I live to see the day when pimps, child traffickers, kidnappers, etc. are taken seriously in this country. North Preston’s Finest and any other monsters (of any race!) need to be taken out! So far I sit reading stories about grow ops being busted, while way more serious crimes go unanswered and it makes me lose more faith in our police and justice system every day. They just don’t give a shit about girls and women being enslaved.
More jail time than pedophiles? Way to go, Harper. you just PROVED you’re an asshole.
It is aimed at the scum who force women into the sex trade, and sell drugs.
The target is organised crime & traffickers, not the hookers.
Scott, Ross and Goodyear can stop hyper ventilating, they know what the intent is.
Or we can just leave things as they are and let the gangs and bikers stay in business with just a slap on the wrist.
In Halifax the police have focussed on the purchasers not the sellers and will continue to do so, they have little interest in the nonsense spout by Scott et al.
Unfortunately these comments suggest people have very little understanding of the exchange of intimacy and sex. Stories about pimping and drugs and exploitation tend to dominate the media, but have very little to do with most sex workers’ lives.
The exploitation of others is abhorrent, but there are already laws to deal with this, no matter who the object of exploitation is. No justification has been advanced for these stiffer penalties and police powers which threaten the much safer and numerically larger indoor market. When indoor markets are disrupted by police activity sex workers end up on the streets where they are exposed to far more danger. Countries that have few if any laws prohibiting sexual exchange do not see more crime.
Decriminalize.
Consult with sex workers.
Listen to us. We know what we need to be safer.
We need to work in groups for protection. Don’t give me a 5 year minimum sentence for trying to stay alive because I’m not quitting sexwork. I like it!
Anyone who thinks Harper has an iota of common sense is just as fucked up as he is !
That asshole & every member of that Party who support him need to have everything they own in the world taken from them & then throw them all out onto the streets.
Would serve those big feeling pricks right, it is unbelievable what that asshole & his cronies are doing to this country !