Sign petition to decriminalise prostitution

A while back Siân Berry, Green Party Mayoral Candidate for London, and Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London, signed the Safety First! Petition, which calls for the complete decriminalisation of sex work, so that the focus of official efforts can be on protecting the most basic human rights of prostitutes, life and health. I've only just got around to this and would urge others to also sign the petition here:
www.petitiononline.com/swsafety/petition.html

Green Party policy calls for the complete decriminalisation of prostitution on the “New Zealand model”, so that the focus for sex workers moved on to their safety and wellbeing. Although it is the so-called ‘Swedish model’ of criminalisation of the customers of prostitutesis receiving much attention at present. However this approach drives sex work, and particularly street sex workers, further into the twilight, further from traditional areas, further into danger.

At our most recent Green party conference, we heard from a speaker from the Safety First! campaign about how criminalisation of actions associated with prostitution left workers vulnerable to violent clients, and encouraged police and other authorities to treat them as criminals even when they are in fact victims of serious crimes.

Siân Berry said “Decriminalisation could mean that instead of hearing about prostitutes being murdered or battered by their clients, we would instead be talking about health and safety in sex work premises (which are already 10 times safer than working on the street).”

Siân has also deplored Clause 72 of the Labour government’s Criminal Justice Bill which proposed introducing a new “order to promote rehabilitation” for the offence of “loitering or
soliciting for the purposes of prostitution”. This would effectively re-introduce imprisonment for the offence of soliciting, which was abolished by a Tory government in 1982.

Siân is also quoted saying: “The government with this Bill is treating prostitution as though it were an illness, and one for which women and men should be punished. Of course we would hope that sex workers who want to get out of the industry, and who need help with that, should find it immediately – and for that the government needs to provide greatly improved funding for, for example, drug addiction treatment programmes. But women and men arrested for soliciting should not be forced into ‘treatment’ against their will. And the government should note that it is often its own policies - inadequate support for women with children, the withdrawal of recourse to public funds for failed asylum-seekers, that is forcing women and men into the industry....Centuries of criminalisation have not wiped out, have not even reduced, the level of prostitution – instead it has left on our streets, and our consciences, the bodies of many murdered women and men.”

Glos Green party have commented on this issue in past - see for example here, here and Coffee House discussion on People Trafficking here. I would urge people to consider signing the petition mentioned above.