A  The ?Swedish Model? is a regime used in Sweden since 1999 under which punters can be imprisoned and fined.

It is a method of supposedly combating prostitution being pushed by radical feminist cabinet members and MPs, notably Harriet Harman, Fiona Mactaggart, and Vera Baird, along with Denis MacShane. These are using the human trafficking argument for bringing it in. Currently the Home Office is holding a ?review of demand? which is expected to culminate in its introduction in the UK.

TRAFFICKING

Whilst there have been some dreadful cases in the courts recently concerning people who have been trafficked for sex, they are unlikely to exist in anything like the numbers suggested by some. MacShane came out with a figure of 25,000 last December, whilst a figure of 700,000 - the equivalent of the entire population of Leeds - appeared on the Downing Street site, albeit in an ePetition.

The USA had a similar period of moral panic and crusading at the turn of the millennium, at which point a US Government spokesperson announced that 50,000 persons a year were trafficked into the USA. After seven years of looking, the spending of $150m and the creation of 42 Justice Department task forces, less than 1,300 persons were found to have been trafficked into the USA in total.

There are some popular misconceptions about trafficking. One is that everyone who has been trafficked is a ?victim?. Where coercion, force or deceit has been used, of course there are victims, but somebody who has entered the country legally and with the clear intention of working as a prostitute can still be deemed trafficked and anyone who has benefited from the process of her/his movement can be deemed a trafficker, even though the trafficked person?s standard of living may well have improved markedly as a result and they are perfectly happy with the outcome.

So the number of trafficked persons does not equate with the number of trafficking ?victims? in any meaningful sense of the word.

PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF THE SWEDISH MODEL/REGIME

Academic studies show that the number of prostitutes per head in Sweden has always been very low compared with Holland or the UK. Stockholm?s red light district basically consisted of one street. Among the many factors that gave rise to the new law, however, were panic stories of hoards of prostitutes, all of them of course carrying the AIDS virus, about to enter Sweden when the European labour market opened up.

In practice, the new laws have increased the dangers involved in prostitution considerably. Brothels are publicly raided, clients removed in the glare of TV lights and taken to court, and the prostitutes left with the streets to work on after their workplaces have been closed down.

On the streets, life is much more dangerous. Deals have to be done quickly, leaving the prostitutes little time to assess clients. Neither clients nor prostitutes carry condoms as they are seized by the police and used in evidence. Informal street networks relied on for safety have been broken up as the street workers seek darker alleys in which to work - alleys which are themselves less safe.

This same dispersal - aimed at making it more difficult for the police to detect street prostitutes - also makes it more difficult for the health and social services and specialist drug agencies to detect them.

Consequently, it is impossible to say whether the law has reduced street prostitution, especially as no reliable figures exist on the numbers of street prostitutes before the law came in.

The police and the social services held independent surveys in Stockholm, each coming to totally different conclusions over the numbers of street prostitutes working.

Another affect of the regime is that clients are less likely to help trafficking victims they come across, for obvious fear of prosecution.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT

A petition has been started opposing adopting the Swedish Model/Regime in the UK. You can sign it here:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/sexworkers/

and if you?ve a website you can publicise it using this banner:
http://deid.net/ScotPEP/
and you can add it to your email signatures and auto-responses and mention it in forums where possible.

You can also read about what Swedish sexworkers think of the Swedish regime here:
http://tinyurl.com/3ygeol

And you can ask yourself whether this trafficking victim would still have been helped if the Swedish laws had been adopted by reading this article published today:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32ys67