'
In 2003, Matthews began work on a project that considered different legislative approaches to prostitution from around the world. The countries included Sweden, where buying sexual services was criminalised in 1999 - thus criminalising the punters, rather than the women in prostitution - and the Netherlands, where prostitution was legalised in 2000. The most important lesson learned in Sweden, says Matthews, was the need to treat the women in prostitution completely differently from the men who buy them. In the UK, soliciting and kerb crawling are arrestable offences, although the reality is that street prostitutes are usually treated more harshly than the punters if a case goes to court. "To treat both of these groups the same in the name of equality is actually to consolidate inequality," says Matthews. "I thought, if they can do this in Sweden, we can do it in the UK. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm when the penny dropped. That is what motivated me to write the book."
What of the arguments that often crop up, that prostitution is a necessary trade, that individual men need an outlet for their sex drive? "We know relatively little about men who pay for sex," says Matthews, "but the available research suggests that most of them are married or have steady partners, and that they are not driven by an irrepressible biological need. In fact, the available research indicates that the motivation of many men is relatively low, and that in the vast majority of cases it would not take much to deter them from paying for sex."
The book explores the failures of the legalisation of brothel prostitution. "When governments are seen to be endorsing prostitution, it leads to a massive expansion of the trade, both legal and illegal," says Matthews. "It brings the worst of all worlds." He has a point. Women working in legal brothels in Nevada, for example, have spoken about how prostitution under such a regime feels like "legalised rape", and that no laws can remove the stigma of selling sex.'
'It's abuse and a life of hell'As a world expert on prostitution, Roger Matthews has met women in the trade who have been stabbed, raped and beaten. He tells Julie Bindel why they must be given help to leave the sex industry for goodFriday February 29, 2008
The Guardian
SourceOn a first meeting with Roger Matthews, professor of criminology at London's South Bank University, he does not come across as an obvious friend of radical feminism. It is easier to imagine him on a bar stool than in a lecture theatre, and he admits he would rather be at a football match than a political meeting. In fact, everything about his brusque, down-to-earth manner belies the fact that his groundbreaking research on street prostitution has been cited worldwide - most recently by the Home Office during its ongoing consultation into the sex trade.
As Matthews explains in his new book, Prostitution, Politics and Policy, he is entirely against liberal solutions to prostitution. The liberal approach is to think of the trade as simply another form of work, to be "non-judgmental" in dealing with it, and to set up areas, such as "tolerance zones", where women can work without fear of arrest. (The Netherlands is among countries that have set up these zones, which are usually on the edge of industrial estates. The theory is that, without the fear of a police swoop, women will have more chance to size up customers, thus improving their safety.)
Matthews completely disagrees with the notion of legalisation. Instead, he says, the punters should be deterred from buying sex, women in prostitution should be decriminalised, and a radical welfare strategy should be put in place to help them out of the trade. "You can't remove the abuse and coercion from prostitution, whether legal or not," he says, so "the answer is to clamp down on the punters, while helping the women to get out and stay out."
Matthews has been studying street prostitution for more than two decades, but his latest book was inspired partly by the murders of the five young women in Ipswich. "All the evidence of the Ipswich case shows us that tolerance zones would not have kept the women safe," he says, because "it is about where the punters take the women to harm them, not where they pick them up." As he points out, "the killer was a trusted regular", which is why the women went with him.
In the book, Matthews describes most women he has met on the streets as "extremely desperate, damaged, and disorganised". "Many of these women, who are supposed to be 'working', are obviously off their faces with drugs and drink," he says. "Which other 'profession' would that be tolerated in?" He has interviewed women who have carried on selling sex immediately after being stabbed, raped, beaten, and in once case, hours after giving birth. "Entry into prostitution is often as a result of physical and sexual abuse, parental neglect, a history of local authority care, and drug addiction," says Matthews.
"I think that speaks for itself."
As one of the few men doing research in this sector, do his views on the women involved ever prompt charges of paternalism? Matthews is resolute. "The women involved in prostitution - particularly street prostitution - are not only among the most victimised group in society, but many of them are multiple victims. If the term 'victimisation' is to have any meaning, then those involved in prostitution must be prime candidates."
We talk in a break during the Ipswich trial, and hearing evidence there supports his views. A friend of one of the murdered women testifies that the victim's life was a constant cycle of drugs, homelessness and sexual violation. Numerous studies on women in street prostitution highlight the fact that most are dependent on heroin, crack cocaine, or both, and that all but a tiny minority want to stop selling sex.
After the first murder in Ipswich, Matthews saw a TV interview with Paula Clennell, in which she said she had to carry on selling sex because of her drug habit, but would be more careful. A few days later she was dead. "More than anything for me," says Matthews, "this crystallised what an unacceptably dangerous activity prostitution is ... Ipswich showed us that we need to be geared towards helping the women get off the streets, not making it easier to stay in prostitution."
According to his research, street prostitution is the most dangerous occupation you can be involved in. "The majority of street women have suffered life-threatening violence," he says. "Ipswich confirmed this." Such women are 18 times more vulnerable to homicide than other women, and suffer regular abuse from pimps, punters and passers-by. Over the past decade, at least 89 women in prostitution have been murdered, and that number is thought to be a low estimate.
Those who argue that the women enjoy it, and choose it, are completely missing the point, he says. "Murders such as those in Ipswich are actually the tip of a very large iceberg. Women I have interviewed told me about leaping out of cars to escape being murdered. We cannot justify anyone living in such a dangerous situation ... I've never met a 'happy hooker'," he says. "All the women I have interviewed, from every scale of the industry, are damaged by it in some way." What other "work", he asks, involves occupational hazards such as murder, HIV, rape, and having your children taken away from you?
Born to a working-class family in Kilburn, north London, Matthews took a variety of casual jobs after leaving school, before opting for a career in academia. His politics come from a movement within criminology known as "left realism", a belief that crime disproportionately affects working-class people, but that repressive solutions only exacerbate the problem. Name and shame campaigns - in which police sporadically target kerb crawlers and prostitutes - are not effective, he argues, because they only provide a temporary solution to a problem in dire need of proper attention.
Matthews' work on this issue began in 1985, early in his academic career, when he decided to evaluate a road closure scheme in Finsbury Park, north London. The road closure had been put in place to solve the chronic problem of street prostitution in the area by cutting off kerb crawlers' access. When it first started "there were 260 women working on the streets", says Matthews. "Two years later, there were only 10 or 20. People would say to me, 'But the women will just move on to other areas to work', but they were wrong. Most of them appeared to get out for good."
In the early 1990s, Matthews worked on a street prostitution research project in Streatham, south London, interviewing women. During the six months that he was conducting field research, two of the women he had interviewed died. "Week by week, the women out on the streets deteriorated," he says. "I would meet with professionals working in the area, who would say, 'I saw so-and-so last night, and she looked really rough.' No one suggested that they should act urgently to get the women off the streets. I thought, 'These women are just seen as throwaways. They service the men, serve their purpose, and can then just be disposed of.'"
In 2003, Matthews began work on a project that considered different legislative approaches to prostitution from around the world. The countries included Sweden, where buying sexual services was criminalised in 1999 - thus criminalising the punters, rather than the women in prostitution - and the Netherlands, where prostitution was legalised in 2000. The most important lesson learned in Sweden, says Matthews, was the need to treat the women in prostitution completely differently from the men who buy them. In the UK, soliciting and kerb crawling are arrestable offences, although the reality is that street prostitutes are usually treated more harshly than the punters if a case goes to court. "To treat both of these groups the same in the name of equality is actually to consolidate inequality," says Matthews. "I thought, if they can do this in Sweden, we can do it in the UK. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm when the penny dropped. That is what motivated me to write the book."
What of the arguments that often crop up, that prostitution is a necessary trade, that individual men need an outlet for their sex drive? "We know relatively little about men who pay for sex," says Matthews, "but the available research suggests that most of them are married or have steady partners, and that they are not driven by an irrepressible biological need. In fact, the available research indicates that the motivation of many men is relatively low, and that in the vast majority of cases it would not take much to deter them from paying for sex."
The book explores the failures of the legalisation of brothel prostitution. "When governments are seen to be endorsing prostitution, it leads to a massive expansion of the trade, both legal and illegal," says Matthews. "It brings the worst of all worlds." He has a point. Women working in legal brothels in Nevada, for example, have spoken about how prostitution under such a regime feels like "legalised rape", and that no laws can remove the stigma of selling sex.
Matthews believes that Ipswich should compound the need for urgent action by the government. Top of his wish-list is the decriminalisation of women involved in prostitution. In order for women to exit prostitution, says Matthews, they need to be given career advice and job opportunities. At the moment, women with convictions for soliciting are deemed sex offenders, and therefore barred from a number of jobs.
In terms of current UK policy on prostitution, Matthews' main bugbear is the widespread acceptance of harm-reduction measures, such as health professionals visiting women in street prostitution areas to give out refreshments and condoms. "I believe that this is a deeply conservative approach," he says, "which is more about keeping women in prostitution rather than helping them out." Indeed, one of the areas of prostitution policy now under scrutiny by feminist MPs such as Vera Baird and Barbara Follett, is how to move away from what Matthews thinks of as "sticking plaster" half-measures in dealing with the women on the streets in favour of a long-term plan to eradicate prostitution altogether.
"The Ipswich murders have exposed the reality of prostitution - that it is abuse and a life of hell for these women," says Matthews. "It is high time to expose and challenge the liberal consensus"·
· Prostitution, Politics and Policy, by Roger Matthews, is published by Routledge-Cavendish, price £24.99. To order a copy for £22.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875