The Republic of Ireland is a good case study to highlight the problems associated with uncritical appeals to criminal law as the only appropriate tool to tackle demand and protect sex workers from harm. In 2017, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act came into force in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland) making it a criminal offence to purchase sex in the jurisdiction. Ireland’s decision to introduce Swedish-style laws followed a protracted public campaign instigated in 2009 by the Irish and radical feminist inspired neo-abolitionist organisation, Turn off the Red Light. In this article, we confront and de-centre the Turn off the Red Light campaign’s hegemonic narrative that the criminal rather than social justice responses provide a more effective vehicle for sex workers’ empowerment. Undertaking our intervention in Irish feminist prostitution politics as a ‘politics of doing’ social justice through our separate and combined research, we extend our analysis by invoking Nancy Fraser and Barbara Hudson’s theoretical work on social and restorative justice. We wish to develop a theoretical framework that can serve as a roadmap for restorative social justice – the process of achieving rights, recognition and redistribution through relational, reflective and discursive interventions in sex work research, policy and practice. We argue that by ‘thinking’ sex workers’ positionality in social relations differently, the ‘doings’ of restorative social justice for sex workers can begin or take place.
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