Prostitution-related charges drop nearly 25 per cent across province
Published Sunday August 24th, 2008
TORONTO - The number of charges laid for prostitution-related offences in Ontario decreased dramatically between 2000 and 2007, but advocates continue to warn the law puts sex workers at greater risk - regardless of whether or not it's enforced.
Prostitution charges dropped by 24 per cent provincewide - 1,992 last year from 2,644 in 2000, an analysis by The Canadian Press has found.
There is generally little "proactive enforcement" of prostitution laws, said Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Toronto's Osgoode Hall law school and longtime champion of a more liberal approach to issues like drug enforcement and prostitution.
Young is currently spearheading a constitutional challenge to strike some of the Criminal Code provisions against prostitution-related activities.
"For the most part, they turn a blind eye," he said of the typical police approach to sex workers.
"Prostitution-related offences have always been very low priority. That calls into question why we do this in the first place if they're such low priority."
Only nine Ontario cities saw an increase in charges - Belleville, Chatham, Cornwall, London, Barrie, Kitchener, Sudbury, Windsor and St. Catharines.
Meanwhile, the Toronto and Ottawa areas saw decreases of 36 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively. In Kingston, the number fell from 25 in 2000 to just three last year.
Charges may be declining as larger urban centres, like Toronto, increasingly shift their law-enforcement focus and resources to more serious - and politically charged - crimes like gun violence, Young said.
It's estimated that most prostitution - about 80 per cent - is conducted off the streets in so-called bawdy houses, or through escort services, classified ads and massage parlours, he added.
"Unless the police are receiving complaints from the community, they're not going to act."
The number of charges in a given year can't be used to draw conclusions about the crime rate, cautioned Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, the department that compiled and released the statistics.
Multiple charges can be laid against a single person, or multiple people can be charged in connection with a single incident, Crawley wrote in an email.
But the uniformity of the trend, which extends across Canada, suggests something is going on: the number of prostitution charges in 2007 was more than 17 per cent lower than in 2006, according to Statistics Canada.
Between 1998 and 2007, the decline was more than 27.5 per cent.
Valerie Scott, a long-time advocate for the decriminalization of prostitution who is taking part in the constitutional challenge, said laws as they exist make women more vulnerable, regardless of how often they're charged.
The law against "bawdy houses" means stiff penalties for sex workers who ply their trade indoors, which is a generally safer practice, said Scott, who has been a sex worker for decades.
She said the current laws, which prohibit communication for the purpose of prostitution, denies sex workers the only tool they have for screening clients - conversation - and drives them to more dangerous areas, further from the public eye.
It equates to giving "carte blanche" to those who would do harm to sex workers, she added.
"There are too many deaths, too many robberies, too many rapes, too many beatings, which are a direct result of the law," Scott said. "It doesn't need to be this way."
Ottawa police Staff Sgt. Terry Welsh said diversion programs, such as "john school," which sees those charged with soliciting a prostitute moved out of the criminal system and into education programs, are likely a factor in the drop in charges.
"That would be one significant factor why the numbers are down," Welsh said.
In Ottawa, enforcement is complaint-driven, though officers on patrol also keep an eye out for street prostitution. Police there don't turn a blind eye, Welsh added.
"There isn't that element that we say, 'if it's not bothering anyone we leave it alone,"' he said.
Welsh also refuted the oft-stated defence of prostitution that it's just sex between two consenting adults.
"Sex trade workers tend to recruit younger and younger individuals," said Welsh. "We're certainly on the fact that we could be dealing with children under 18 years of age, out on the street."
Terri-Jean Bedford, who landed on the street as a sex worker at the age of 17, said it's a tough life. The now-retired dominatrix matter-of-factly recounts her days as a "streetwalker," which she said were at times at lot of fun.
But the flip side, said Bedford, was waking up without any clothes, covered in bruises in an alleyway with no recollection of the previous night's events. That happened, too.
"When you're on the street, you're a nobody, nobody cares about you," said Bedford, who wants to see prostitution decriminalized so sex workers can ply their trade indoors in a clean and safe environment.
Diane Meaghan, a professor of sociology at Seneca College in Toronto, said prostitution has been more and more ignored by the justice system in recent years.
She said it's seen as a "revolving-door" crime, one that those close to it expected to be decriminalized in Canada - until the current Conservative government was elected in 2006.
The laws still discourage prostitutes from going to the police if they're assaulted, Meaghan said.
"If you should be beaten up or robbed or raped and you go to the police . . . it's rather dicey whether they lay charges against the person, or whether they think you're credible . . . they may even end up charging you," said Meaghan.
"The assumption may be that if you weren't working as a street prostitute, this wouldn't have happened to you."
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