The police must be careful not to be “draconian” because they only target six workers, both politicians and campaigners said.
A bail bond, unlike other capital bonds, does not require the person to admit to the crime or agree to receive it. The police can issue them to anyone they have “reasonable cause” to believe that prostitution laws have been broken, requiring little proof.
Police warrants, which are typically issued for minor crimes, are removed from someone’s record after six years and do not need to be disclosed to employers, but a sex worker’s warrant will show on a DBS check until they are 100 years old. .
Six workers and lawmakers demanded that capital forces immediately stop issuing bailouts, which “capture people in conditions that we know and can isolate.”
Labor MP Nadia Whittome said: “It is absolutely disgraceful. I have discovered a misogynistic police force that has proven to routinely fail and even endanger women, and it is the people who are responsible for issuing these policies that can ruin the lives of the most vulnerable women. You wouldn’t believe this could happen in the UK.
Whitetome added: “I think everything” [prostitute’s] guarantees – regardless of the status of an employee, former or current, must be removed from their records. The government should invest in anti-poverty measures to ensure that fewer people feel that working is the best sex in the circumstances they are in.”
In November, the movement called for a meeting of the mayor of London Sadiq Khan The metropolitan police to stop issuing prostitution warrants, considering them as “extraordinary legal”.
Green party member Zöe Garbett’s reaction was followed by conservative Andrea Boff, who said: “Whatever you take about sex work, it seems unfair that a young man who is forced into the streets to sell sex will have to live with that guarantee for the rest of his life. It does not stand up to natural justice and therefore he must go.
English Collective Prostitution (ECP) published by to announce in November, arguing that prostitution convictions keep sex workers stuck in sex work.
The research looked at “jobs that are more commonly done by women, as sex workers are mostly women. These jobs include carers, children, community center workers, medical professionals, social workers and doctors. All these jobs have increased DBS checks for employment.
“I was offered jobs and I didn’t have to say anything,” one woman told the report. “The social services asked if it would be considered to make an emergency postponement. It is excellent to have money and life and skills. But I could not even think about it when I checked and I found it.
Women told the ECP how having a prostitute’s warning on their record also deterred them from reporting rape, domestic violence and other crimes.
Campaigners argue that prostitution charges can quickly lead to convictions. The Street Offenses Act 1959 makes it an offense to “persistently” stop or harass someone in the street. Human rights lawyer Alice Hardy, who has worked on multiple cases to overturn sex worker warrants, said that if a sex worker has two warrants that could meet the definition of “persistent,” essentially they cannot be convicted by warrants. competition
Hardy also questioned some of the “reasonable reasons” presented by the capital. “I remember the incident where the officer said he saw a man talking,” Hardy said. “When” [the police officer] When he came, the man was gone. that was the testimony. It is not such that it would stand in court.
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Women told the ECP that they were issued with vouchers when there was no work, and in cases when the recipient was not even a sex worker.
“Having a certificate of prostitution and/or notorious sex workers for the offense of prostitution makes us an easy target for officials and other authorities to discriminate and deny our rights,” the report says.
Police forces do not record the number of prostitutes. Sam Hanks, lecturer in criminology at Swansea University, said: “They can give these warrants that have a big impact on people’s lives, but there is no trace. That creates this gas situation where the police are constantly saying: ‘We are not enforcing this, we are not prosecuting, we are here for sex. To preserve the works”. And of course it is difficult to meet this narrative except for the six workers who say that they are still cautious and have been prosecuted.
“We capture people in situations that we notice and move on,” he added.
Laura Watson, spokeswoman for the ECP said: “We have women in our group who have seen many injustices because of these draconian measures in their evidence. Just like those who are unable to leave prostitution, those who are unable to even ask or want to ask for jobs. Access to justice and access to housing were also problems for prostituted women.
“We want adulterous warnings and convictions for the crimes of prostitution carved out of women’s records and we also want to decriminalize them, so that women do not have to face these injustices just to work to refuse the poverty that is imposed on them.”
The home office declined to comment.