Criminal trials are only designed to impute responsibility and punish those who
inflict harm, so this trial will not in any way address the larger political
issue of how to prevent the continuing disappearances and killings of sex-trade
workers.
The first modern serial killer, Jack the Ripper, preyed London prostitutes in
the late 19th century and, as last year drew to a close, we were inundated with
stories of serial killings of prostitutes in Ipswich, England, to sadly remind
us that Jack the Ripper was not a freak aberration but a trendsetter.
While the jury in the Pickton case will be hearing evidence about the
disappearance and death of sex-trade workers in British Columbia, it must be
remembered that Project Kare in Edmonton is still trying to determine the
whereabouts of more than 80 women in "high risk" professions who have
disappeared in recent years. Research indicates that female sex-trade workers
are exposed to a homicide rate that is about 100-per-cent higher than the
homicide rate for women in Canada and that the clearance rate (the rate of
solving crime) for homicide is a dismal 34 per cent when the victim is a
prostitute compared with 77 per cent for the rest of us. Every government
report written in the past 20 years has acknowledged that street prostitution
is a dangerous business; but, even as the body count continues to rise, nothing
is done.
No one will really know how many prostitutes are killed every year, because
they often just go missing and no one cares to look for them. In 2003, when the
Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, was sentenced for 48 killings in the state of
Washington, he told the court that he "picked prostitutes as victims because
they are easy to pick up without being noticed. . . . I thought I could kill as
many of them as I wanted without being caught."
Nothing will change until it is recognized that the criminal law itself bears
some responsibility for giving predators such as Gary Ridgway the opportunity
to act on their malicious fantasies. We will continue to dig up dead bodies of
prostitutes in secluded urban alleys if we maintain imbecilic criminal
prohibitions on commercial sex.
Prostitution per se is not illegal, but a series of criminal prohibitions makes
it virtually impossible to conduct this legal business in a safe environment.
Pushing sex for hire into a black market opens a Pandora's box of horror.
Hookers cannot rely on state officials to protect them from evil johns. Some
are compelled to work with pimps in order to secure protection and territorial
exclusivity. The sex-trade worker cannot recruit the services of a bona fide
bodyguard, manager, driver or any other type of security personnel because
these employees could be charged with living on the avails of prostitution. The
sex-trade worker cannot extricate herself from the chaotic violence of the
streets by moving indoors because moving into this more secure setting could
lead to more serious bawdy house charges. Left to work on dark, isolated
streets, the sex-trade worker is prohibited from having a meaningful
conversation to screen drive-by johns because "communicating for the purpose of
prostitution" is a crime.
As more and more prostitutes disappear, we must start to question the value of
a law that allows one to work as a prostitute but denies the worker all the
various protections relating to occupational health and safety. Surely we are
not protecting women with the criminal law when these very laws expose women to
daily violence? I can understand the concerns of property owners and members of
the community who do not want their street corners turned into drive-through
sex shops, but this is a matter of proper municipal regulation.
You do not have to read Freud to know that our species is always on the lookout
for sexual outlets. And when the pleasure does not present itself, some will go
to the marketplace to buy a fleeting moment of pleasure. There is nothing the
state can do about this. Every time a prostitute is arrested, there are two to
take her place. This is a bottomless market. I'm sure that some police
officers, lawyers, judges and political leaders have entered this market on
occasion, but they can never admit this because it would undercut their
authority to arrest, prosecute and punish.
We call prostitution the world's oldest profession for good reason.
Prostitution flourished in biblical times. When Jesus reprimanded the priestly
caste for wanting to stone a prostitute, it should have signalled the end of
the punitive approach to this social dilemma. Jesus said only those without sin
should cast the first stone; somehow, over the ages, this has been transformed
into a licence for a multitude of petty sinners to cast many stones in the
direction of hookers. Last I looked, we have been casting 6,000 to 10,000
criminal charges a year, but the business continues to thrive.
It remains unclear what it is we hope to accomplish with prohibitions on
commercial sex. For many people, the issue is not a matter of rational
discourse but a visceral reaction to the commodification of sex. Many people
consider sex to be sacred. It is all about making love, and the
commercialization of sexuality is seen as morally repugnant and degrading. This
Hallmark card approach to sex is fine, but, in a pluralistic, secular society,
the sanitized and sanctified vision of sexuality is just one of many competing
moral perspectives.
Sex-trade workers have had an enormous fall from grace in the past millennium,
going from being sacred temple harlots to marginalized outcasts exposed to all
manner of violence, abuse and ridicule. Even if you believe that all sex work
is degrading or immoral, I cannot see how this can morally justify doing
nothing about abduction and murder. With a shift in legal perspective and the
removal of legal obstacles standing in the way of safe sex work, we may be able
to save lives. In any moral school of thought, the sanctity of life trumps
sexual morality.
Alan Young is an associate professor of law at York University's Osgoode Hall
Law School.
