Introduction

The last decade has seen a proliferation of activities from central and local government, community safety partnerships and individual police forces, as well as the collective umbrella of the Association of Chief Police Officers, introducing policy and guidelines in addition to enhancing existing and new legislation in order to manage parts of the sex industry. This has been a reaction to the Home Office's review of prostitution laws and management strategies that resulted in the blueprint A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy (Home Office, 2006), which takes a non-tolerant approach to the sex industry, opting for ‘eradication’ of street prostitution and ‘tackling demand’ as the key focus.

This edited collection examines some of the complex and specific areas that make up what is commonly known as prostitution in the UK. To add to this analysis, this chapter examines the impact of government policy from 2004 on the female indoor sex markets and men who buy sex from women. In this chapter, ‘indoor sex markets’ refers to massage parlours, illegal brothels, women who work as escorts independently through the internet or agencies, or those who work alone or in small numbers from ‘working flats’. I will focus on the sale of direct sexual services rather than indirect sexual services such as lap dancing, telephone sex work and stripping (see Harcourt and Donovan, 2005 for types of sex markets). The chapter has three main objectives. First, to examine the government's position on indoor sex work in contrast to street prostitution. Second, to question why the government refuses to acknowledge, debate or make provisions for voluntary sex work beyond the criminalisation agenda. Third, to explore the reasons for ‘tackling demand’, the mechanisms for doing so, and to discuss critically the impact and realities of making it illegal to buy sex. To achieve these objectives, the chapter reviews the two main government documents: the consultation Paying the Price (Home Office, 2004) and the resultant A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy (Home Office, 2006).

Before recent policy changes are examined it is worth briefly exploring what is meant by the nature and extent of the indoor sex markets. The laws on the indoor markets remain confused.