Last week, it hit the news that the German equivalent of the job centre had offered a teenage girl work as a hostess in a brothel. The nineteen year old job hunter was sent the offer after showing an interest in finding “a decent housekeeping job”. Prostitution is legal in Germany, and although it was stressed that the work was not prostitution, the centre was aware that the establishment in question was a brothel.
After a similar case in 2005 involving an unemployed IT professional, the woman in question looked into suing the job centre. She found out however, that it had not broken the law. In fact, job centres that do not penalise those who reject offers by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.
Under Germany’s welfare reforms in 2002 prostitution was legalised. Alongside paying tax and employee health insurance, brothel owners are now allowed access to the official database of jobseekers. This means that the law stating that any woman under the age of 55 who has been unemployed for more than a year can be forced to take an available position. And this now includes jobs in the sex industry.
Germany’s primary motivation in legalising prostitution was the high rate of criminal trafficking and forced sexual exploitation, and with prostitutes having such bad working conditions and zero government benefits, Germany decided to rectify the problem with legalisation.
Ladies of the night are required to buy a “sex ticket” at the start of each shift which acts as insurance: if a prostitute is assaulted by a client (or anything else untoward), they are able to bring the attacker up on criminal and civil charges without the fear of legal repercussions falling upon themselves. The ticket is also a means of charging street workers tax, rendering prostitution on par with any other legal profession. In Germany, prostitutes are actively contributing to the economy.
Whilst such legislation appears a strong argument for the legalisation of prostitution in Britain, critics remain vocal and problems have occurred. The number of prostitutes in Germany has, according to most figures, risen substantially since the reform. Such high supply in combination with the tax reforms have driven established brothels out of market and forced others to lower prices: the competition in Cologne being so high as to force the Pascha brothel to offer senior citizens a €25 afternoon special.
Yet despite such inevitable drawbacks, the German model far exceeds our own. Prostitution in Britain is a murky affair. Torn between the slightly more progressive rulings which allow the exchange of sexual intercourse for money and the movement inhibiting, restrictive 2009 Policing and Crime Act, British prostitutes are left in a limbo of legality. With the constant requirement of staying one step beyond the law, prostitutes are forced to hide their actions and create an underworld of crime. The resultant industry has earned prostitution a bad reputation in Britain, with a 2008 CATI survey recording only 21% of people as agreeing with the decriminalisation of primary aspects of the trade. One simply has to cast ones mind back to the 2006 Ipswich murders and the cries of “political correctness gone mad” as the BBC dubbed those in question ‘women working as prostitutes’ to realise Britain’s attitude concerning the sex industry.
These are not new arguments. Prostitution is, as my A-level Ethics teacher regularly reminded us, the oldest profession in the book, and the debate concerning its legality has been a long one. But in light of the recent wave of feminist atrocities, the Egyptian protests and the Mumbai rape case to name but two, now is the time to act. We must harness the mood of such events and push for real reforms. It may be in conflict with some of the more conservative aspects of our dispositions, but the protection of women in a trade rife with dangers has to be our primary concern. I do not pretend that the German model can be directly transferred onto our shores, nor will I claim that legalisation is the solution to all of the sex trade’s problems, nonetheless, I do believe that this debate needs to be reopened and substantial changes made to a unique and troubled industry.
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