Scottish Government

Being Outside: CONSTRUCTING A RESPONSE TO STREET PROSTITUTION

Chapter Six: MANAGING THE PROCESS OF RESPONDING TO STREET PROSTITUTION

6.1 The Group would define the strategic objectives to be pursued in relation to street based prostitution in the following terms:

• to safeguard women involved in street based prostitution, reduce the harm they experience, tackle the concurrent behaviours such as drug misuse and help them towards exiting prostitution;
• to protect residential and commercial communities from the effects of prostitution;
• to prevent children and young women who may be vulnerable to becoming involved in prostitution from taking that step; and
• to influence the attitudes which lead to the abuse of women sexually and physically through street prostitution.

6.2 Any strategic response will be multi-faceted because this set of objectives, of necessity, faces in several different directions simultaneously:

• addressing the needs of women involved or at risk of becoming involved;
• addressing the needs of the different communities affected; and
• tackling the attitudes which fuel the persistence of prostitution.

Equally, because the factors which lead women towards street prostitution and the behaviours such as drug misuse which underlie it are themselves complex and often relate to deep and intractable consequences of experiences such as abuse or family breakdown, the strategic response requires to be sufficient to cope with this complexity and intensity of personal need.

The task of influencing deep rooted social attitudes, such as an assumption of the legitimacy of sexual relationships based on power and abuse - while by no means impossible - demands careful thought, planning and sufficient intensity of implementation.

For these reasons, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that single or quick solutions are not available - although there are measures which of themselves will contribute significantly to the objectives, such as the review of law proposed below. Unavoidably, complex problems are likely to require complex solutions. Furthermore, the responses need to interact purposefully one with another, rather than be in tension, and this requires a co-ordinated and a comprehensive approach. Whatever way forward is seen as appropriate, it needs to have a local relevance, because as the Group's experience has shown, while the four Scottish cities visited have much common ground, they also have significant variables, which will require local resolution. These considerations lead the Group to conclude that a strategy to address street based prostitution needs to be based on a process which brings together a range of initiatives and activities in a co-ordinated whole and places the women clearly at the centre of that process.

6.3 The first step must be for the Scottish Executive to set out a national strategic framework for tackling street prostitution which would bring the process into being. The framework will define the national objectives; provide guidance on how needs analysis will be carried out; set out what should comprise the core content of the locality plans which will be required of those local authorities where evidence of street prostitution is identified; and will set out principles of good practice which should underpin the plan and its implementation. The Scottish Executive should also specify through the national framework - where need is identified - the core range of services which is acceptable for the purpose and the operational standards to which services in this field should comply. The framework would require each local authority to:

• carry out analysis (in accordance with guidance in the framework) to establish whether or not there is evidence of street prostitution within its area; and
• where evidence is identified, draw up an implementation plan for intervention to tackle the problem. This, in effect, would create for the local authority, where there is evidence of street prostitution within its area, a responsibility to produce, jointly with relevant local partners such as the police and health authorities, and also appropriate voluntary and community organisations, a plan (reflecting the national strategic framework) to pursue the objectives defined at 8.1 above. In commissioning local implementation plans the Scottish Executive should ensure that all areas for which there is a need, produce a plan. The responsibility should be on the local authority to justify that there is no requirement for a local implementation plan because of evidence of lack of need.

The main content of the implementation plan should include:

• a strategy for preventing the involvement of vulnerable people in street prostitution;
• early intervention measures with those beginning to become actively involved;
• services for reducing harm with those more deeply involved;
• managing risk and nuisance; and
• supporting women to exit street prostitution, prevent relapse and sustain non-involvement in prostitution.

The local plan should also look beyond the individual needs of those involved in street prostitution, or at risk, and should seek to ensure that the impact from redevelopment of areas traditionally used for street prostitution be managed to reduce adverse effects arising from dispersal and loss of access to services by women involved in street prostitution. Section 6.5 below covers the content of the plan in greater detail. Development of the plan should follow the principles and practice of Community Planning to ensure proper connection between national and local priorities, and full engagement of relevant local community interests.

Implementation of the plan should be monitored at regular intervals against agreed targets and nationally prescribed standards of performance. The Group sees benefit in the establishment of a national forum to oversee the process of defining the strategy and monitoring its implementation.

6.4 The local implementation plan will require to satisfy Scottish Ministers that it has been drawn up in accordance with the national framework and is sufficient and appropriate to the task. It would be reviewable at intervals of three years. It should include implementation arrangements - which may be specific for this purpose or may be linked to the responsibilities of an existing appropriate implementation body such as a Drug Action Team. While there are likely to be resource implications arising from the plan - and these should be defined and costed as part of the plan itself - it should also maximise the contribution of existing services - such as those targeted towards drug misusers, and services for women offenders - by harnessing them to the strategic action to impact on street prostitution. Similarly, the plan should ensure that other related strategic planning obligations - such as those relating to children's services, addiction (community care) services and criminal justice services - each address the need to impact on street prostitution.

6.5 The local plan might be expected to cover the following main aspects:

• identification of young people at potential risk of becoming involved, and development of preventive engagement and intervention. Because there is a tendency for city areas to draw in vulnerable young people from the surrounding area this should require the lead authority to secure collaborative preventive commitments from neighbouring authorities who would have a duty to respond positively.
• ensuring early intervention with those young women who are being drawn towards involvement in street prostitution, whether because of drug misuse, the influence of associates, family breakdown, homelessness or whatever reason. Early intervention requires its own set of service responses (which may not be specific to prostitution and may include interventions to address other unwanted consequences of the causal factors described). The preferable way forward is likely to be one which works in a broad way with the young person's growth and development needs, rather than specifically focuses on the single risk of street prostitution.
• engagement with women already involved in street prostitution in order to provide access to harm reduction services, including free provision of condoms, needle exchange, methadone substitution for opiate users and suitable accommodation for those without stable housing provision. Accessible health services (including mental health) are essential in view of the characteristic problems of poor health and lack of access to health and dental services which come with drug misuse and prostitution.
• engagement which has as its main target the progression towards longer term intervention to help a woman to move on from prostitution - which will include counselling, addiction relapse prevention and components such as accommodation, with support as necessary; building constructive social networks; and training and employment which act protectively against risk of relapse.
• responding to the incidence of street based soliciting in a way which makes and sustains service engagement but does not lead to unacceptable levels of nuisance and risk to the wider community. This may include provision such as 'managed areas' to assist risk reduction (through for example enhanced policing, use of additional lighting and C.C.T.V.), dedicated service access and moderation of community impact. If the proposals for review of the law in section 11 are followed such a measure would be for the reasons of nuisance management, risk reduction and service contact and there would be no need for suspension of the criminal law in the area. Similarly, nuisance arising from the behaviour of potential clients (e.g. kerb crawling) would be capable of being tackled through response to offensive behaviour and conduct rather than penalisation of the fact of seeking to purchase sex.
• development of a corporate responsibility within local authorities and between relevant agencies to tackle all the factors relating to street prostitution and not just the individual needs of those involved. This may, for example, include ensuring that local plans incorporate the explicit protection (or suitable replacement) of areas traditionally used for soliciting until such time as no continuing soliciting behaviour can be evidenced. This should be seen as an essential component of the corporate process of responding to street prostitution and avoidance of dispersal.
• setting out local proposals, in conjunction with national initiatives, to influence and educate public opinion regarding the risks of prostitution-based sexual relationships and the abusive elements they contain.
• establishing an implementation model which integrates the participation of all relevant services as well as community interests.

The plan would set out timescales for achievement of objectives and these would be monitored through annual reporting and three yearly review.

6.6 To sum up then, the approach that is advocated by the Group may be characterised as follows:

• The Scottish Executive would draw up a national framework requiring local authorities to analyse the prevalence of street prostitution in their area, and where a problem is detected, to prepare a local implementation plan to respond to the range of issues arising, in conjunction with other relevant local agencies.
• The national framework will offer guidance as to the core content of the plan and advice as to principles of best practice to be followed in the plan.
• The local authority would convene a group of partners, including police and health interests, and probably also voluntary sector and local community representatives - including where possible representation of the women involved in street prostitution. This partner group would prepare the plan, identify resources for the implementation of the plan from partner agencies (as appropriate) and other suitable sources, and oversee the implementation of the plan.
• Scottish Ministers would endorse the suitability of the plan and implementation of the plan by the local authority would follow. The local authority would produce annual reports on the implementation and there would be an audit of progress and review of the plan every three years.

The four sections which follow identify the core components of a complete and well-structured programme of health and social care which could be seen as essential to a proper strategy for responding to street-based prostitution.

It should be noted that, to complement the introduction of this national framework and local implementation plan approach, the Group also sees a need for review of the law relating to street prostitution. The objective will be to ensure that social policy, operational service delivery and the criminal law work harmoniously in pursuit of the goals set out in section 6.1 above. The proposals with regard to the law are described in Chapter 11.