Following its review of the Sexual Offences Act (2003), the Home Office undertook a review of legislation on sex work. Policy will be shaped by responses to the consultation document, Paying the Price: a Consultation Paper on Prostitution. How the consultation conceives problems of sex work is therefore crucially important. Sex work service providers and rights campaigners are concerned that the consultation turns attention away from health issues and focuses instead on legislation to penalize both sex workers and their clients. Further, Paying the Price seeks solutions for sex work at the individual rather than structural level. Sex workers might be recommended to ‘exiting programmes’ and individual pimps and traffickers prosecuted, but there is no attempt to prevent sex worker abuse through human rights and employment laws. This article identifies the problems associated with a perspective that prioritizes punitive responses over public health strategies on sex work.
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