In just five years Sweden has dramatically reduced the number of its women in prostitution. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared. Gone too, for the most part, are the renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal. In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex is nil.
By what complex formula has Sweden managed this feat? It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem⦠gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them. In , after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that criminalizes the buying of sex, and decriminalizes the selling of sex.
Police made very few arrests of johns and prostitution in Sweden, which had previously been legalized, went on pretty much as it had gone on before. Prostitution always has been, and it always will be. But eminently secure in the thinking behind their plan, the Swedes paid no heed. They quickly identified, then solved the problem. The police themselves, it was determined, needed in-depth training and orientation to what the Swedish public and legislature already understood profoundly.
Prostitution is a form of male violence against women. It was then that the country quickly began to see the unequaled results. This Swedish experiment is the single, solitary example in a significant sized population of a prostitution policy that works.
In , the Scottish government in looking to revamp its own approach to prostitution enlisted the University of London to do a comprehensive analysis of outcomes of prostitution policies in other countries. The researchers did not review the situation where prostitution is criminalized across the board as it is in the US. The outcome of that approach is already well known. The failures and futility of the revolving door of arresting and rearresting prostitutes is all too familiar the world over.
