Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Frameworks of understanding
- two What’s anti-social about sex work? Governance through the changing representation of prostitution’s incivility
- three Community safety, rights, redistribution and recognition: towards a coordinated prostitution strategy?
- four UK sex work policy: eyes wide shut to voluntary and indoor sex work
- five Out on the streets and out of control? Drug-using sex workers and the prostitution strategy
- six Male sex work in the UK: forms, practice and policy implications
- seven Beyond child protection: young people, social exclusion and sexual exploitation
- eight From ‘toleration’ to zero tolerance: a view from the ground in Scotland
- nine Conclusion
- References
- Index
five - Out on the streets and out of control? Drug-using sex workers and the prostitution strategy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and boxes
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Frameworks of understanding
- two What’s anti-social about sex work? Governance through the changing representation of prostitution’s incivility
- three Community safety, rights, redistribution and recognition: towards a coordinated prostitution strategy?
- four UK sex work policy: eyes wide shut to voluntary and indoor sex work
- five Out on the streets and out of control? Drug-using sex workers and the prostitution strategy
- six Male sex work in the UK: forms, practice and policy implications
- seven Beyond child protection: young people, social exclusion and sexual exploitation
- eight From ‘toleration’ to zero tolerance: a view from the ground in Scotland
- nine Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Addiction to drugs, too often acquired with tragic carelessness, may take control of a life, and force actions not dreamed of before. (From the film Drug Addiction, USA, 1951, cited in Campbell, 2000: 149)
This chapter critically considers the assumptions underlying policy proposals for sex-working drug users and drug-using sex workers in New Labour's prostitution strategy. In critiquing these underlying assumptions this discussion suggests that the strategy proposed in A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy (Home Office, 2006) (hereafter referred to as ‘the strategy’) reduces involvement in street sex work to a problem of drug use (Melrose, 2007) and at the same time misconceives problems of drug addiction. I argue that the punitive framework that has increasingly characterised policy towards problem drug users (Buchanan, 2004) has been imported into ‘the prostitution debate’ and now also frames policy responses to street sex workers (Scoular et al, 2007). Its potential to tackle the very real social problems experienced by those involved in street sex work is therefore severely compromised.
The chapter argues that by conflating sex work with other social problems, particularly drug addiction (see, for example, Cusick and Berney, 2005; Melrose, 2006a), the strategy conveniently sidesteps the wider structural problems associated with involvement in street sex work, such as poverty, social exclusion and homelessness. This means that what the strategy offers is punitive responses that provide ‘individualised solutions to de-contextualised social problems’ (Phoenix, 2003), rather than structural solutions to socially contextualised social problems (Buchanan, 2004; Cusick and Berney, 2005; Melrose, 2006a).
Sex-working drug users and drug-using sex workers
Previously, I have argued that it is conceptually important to distinguish between ‘sex-working drug users’ and ‘drug-using sex workers’ (Melrose, 2007). While this distinction may appear pedantic, it is an important distinction to make for the development of appropriate policy and practice. The distinction allows us to differentiate those individuals who are involved in sex work but whose drug use is not necessarily problematic from those individuals for whom there is a closer and more problematic connection between their drug use and their involvement in sex work. So ‘sex-working drug users’ may be, for instance, sex workers who are also recreational drug users. In contrast, ‘drug-using sex workers’ may be those individuals for whom drug usage has become problematic and/or those who engage in sex work specifically to fund their drug use.
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- Information
- Regulating Sex for SaleProstitution Policy Reform in the UK, pp. 83 - 98Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2009