Those figures credited Pentameter with arresting 528 criminals associated with one of the worst crimes threatening our society.
The police described the operation as a success. The reality was that, during six months, they found 96 people to arrest for trafficking, of whom 67 were charged. Forty-seven of those never made it to court. Only 22 people were finally prosecuted for trafficking, including two women who had originally been "rescued" as supposed victims. Seven of them were acquitted. The end result was that, after raiding 822 brothels, flats and massage parlours all over the UK, Pentameter finally convicted of trafficking a grand total of only 15 men and women.
Take a look at two article published in the Guardian.
Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution
Prostitution and trafficking – the anatomy of a moral panic
The English Collective of prostitutes has replied with this missive.
English Collective of Prostitutes
Crossroads Women’s Centre PO Box 287 London NW6 5QU
Telephone 020 7482 2496 Fax 020 7209 4761 Email ecp@allwomencount.net
Guardian trafficking enquiry vindicates sex workers’ experience
Nick Davies' report ("Sex, lies and trafficking -- the anatomy of a moral panic" Guardian, 20 October 2009) vindicates what we have been saying for many years: figures on the numbers of women trafficked into the sex industry are distorted and in many cases purely fabricated.
In our wide experience working with women in most towns and cities throughout the UK, most sex workers have not been trafficked but are working to support families. Does that make prostitution “freely chosen”? Does it make any job freely chosen when economic need is pressing?
Feminism has become identified with a political agenda that considers prostitution uniquely degrading and equal to rape. Consent, the central issue both in rape and in prostitution, is being dismissed in favour of a fundamentalist law and order crusade. NGOs who sign up for this have seen their funding and influence increase. Far from being an independent women’s group, the Poppy Project has become a Home Office front funded to the tune of £9m.
The Poppy Project is now trying to save itself by saying there “there is an awful lot of confusion in the media and other places between trafficking (unwilling victims) and smuggling (willing passengers) . . . they are two very different things.” Yet they were the first to blur that distinction, label most immigrant women as victims of trafficking, and promote legislation which does not require force and coercion in order to prove trafficking.
The impact of this anti-trafficking crusade on the ground has been to increase dramatically the numbers of raids, prosecutions and convictions of sex workers working consensually and often collectively with other women. Immigrant women have been particularly targeted as anti-trafficking laws have been used as an extension of immigration controls to get them deported.
Sex workers have been campaigning against rape and other violence for decades. From 1975 when we started, to 1981 when our we conducted the first research into the situation of prostitute women, 1982 when we took sanctuary in a church for 12-days, 1994 when we campaigned against serial murders, 1995 when we took the first successful private prosecution for rape with Women Against Rape, and 2008 when we initiated the Safety First Coalition in the aftermath of the Ipswich murders, we have been pressing for protection, highlighting how criminalisation makes women vulnerable to rape and other violence, and prevents women from coming forward.
Our calls were ignored because they did not suit the government agenda. While feminists campaign for the criminalisation of clients under the Policing and Crime Bill, they hide all the measures in the Bill which further criminalise women and undermine our safety: increased arrests against women working on the street, forced ‘rehabilitation’ under threat of prison, throwing women out of the safety of premises, increased power to seize women’s hard won earnings and assets. If they are so concerned with our safety, why the silence?
They have also kept quiet about the Welfare Reform Bill which is making its way through Parliament at the same time as the Policing and Crime Bill. Welfare Reform threatens to bring destitution to increasing numbers of single mother families, people with disabilities and others. How many more will end up on the game?
Both the government and their feminist backers have refused to look at New Zealand which decriminalised prostitution over five years ago. A recent comprehensive government review found a reduction in attacks and sex workers are more able to report violence.
Grahame Maxwell, head of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, who doesn’t dispute Nick Davies’ findings is quoted as saying “what we are trying to do is to get it gently back to some kind of reality.”
Let’s start with scrapping the Policing and Crime Bill.
20 October 2009
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