It would be an extremely interesting thing at the present moment to get to talk to the current Swedish Chancellor of Justice, Anna Skarhead.
Ms Skarhead has a number of duties which chiefly relate to ensuring compliance of the Swedish Government with its legal and constitutional responsibilities, but one aspect of her work noticed on the world stage in January this year came as she released the results of the official review of the first decade of Sweden’s implementation of new laws aimed at reducing prostitution. In WA this should have been interesting news because seven months prior to the release of the Swedish review, WAs Attorney General Christian Porter wrote off the Swedish policy as a failure at a public forum held in Belmont.
No-one should pretend that the Swedish approach, innovative in the kinds of ways it seems the Swedes regularly excel at, is the final answer to the problem of how public authorities are to handle prostitution. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the Swedish model, which rests on a combined approach of recognising women and girls as primary victims permanently exploited, decriminalising women and girls working as prostitutes, criminalising the purchase of sex (overwhelmingly by men) and offering methodical exit strategies towards new lives represents real progress in dealing with an issue that has traditionally been bound by narrow thinking about its solution: complete bans or legalisation. To some the former is seen as inadequate and, eventually, hopeless. The latter appears, to those who have not studied the problem, to offer some degree of control despite the moral and philosophical problems of legalising slavery.
But since Chancellor Skarhead’s release of the report of the Swedish Government Working Party it nevertheless seems clear that Sweden now has serious numbers to back up its claims of real and significant progress over ten years in this area. That is progress no other countries or governments who have attempted control by legalisation can demonstrate.
The main progress in the Swedish situation was summarised by the 2010 report as:
l Between 1998-2008, street prostitution in Sweden fell by half; indoor prostitution has not increased
l Surveys indicated increased public support for a ban and a dropping number of men who admit purchasing sex
l The Report proposed more stringent criminal penalties as well as the establishment of a national centre to gather intelligence and counter prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes, a major problem in European countries and not unknown in Australia.
In short, these are achievements the Attorney General wrote off as not having worked. It would be illuminating to know if Mr Porter sent a delegation to Sweden to study the positives and negatives of the response adopted by that country, but it seems doubtful now that there was any serious intention to do so. Mr Porter’s approach, which even he sounds decreasingly confident of, is beginning to look like mere policy rehash in the light of not only Swden but new approaches emerging elsewhere.
Take Nashville, known worldwide as the home of Country Music. Less well known is the Magdalene Foundation, established in 1997 by Becca Stevens, an Anglican minister. Magdalene is a two-year private residential rehabilitation centre for women with criminal histories of prostitution and drug addiction. According to a fascinating report by the US radio network NPR, the Magdalene Foundation has, since beginning, seen more than 150 women graduate and has raised about US$12 million in private funding.
The Magdalene model employs an approach of providing accomodation, counseling and retraining, based on a 12-step model. Women and girls remain out of prostitution for two years of the programme and NPR journalist Jacki Lyden reported that Reverend Stevens’ initiative is becoming a national model for others trying to help women trapped by prostitution. Presumably referring to the extensive presence of sexual abuse in the lives of prostitution’s victims, Reverend Stevens asserts that women and girls don’t get into prostitution alone and they won’t get out alone. “I have never met a woman coming off the streets of Nashville who chose prostitution as their preferred career at the age of 6, 7, 8 and 9,” Stevens told Ms Lyden during a fascinating programme which can be heard online (go to www.npr.org and search for ‘magdalene’).
Programmes take place in one of Magdalene’s six group homes, where the women live unsupervised. The women also manufacture bath and body oils and candles at a workshop called Thistle Farms — products that Rev. Stevens says promote healing. The thistle flower, Ms Lyden reported, is the women’s emblem.
“Like rough weed, like we are when we were out there on the streets,” says Penny, who’s in the programme. “We just survived through the cold and drought, just like the thistle does. It don’t need no water. It comes up out of the concrete and transforms there into a beautiful flower.”
Magdalene also helps run “john schools,” programmes aimed at educating male clients, those arrested for hiring prostitutes, about various aspects of prostitution. Only first-time offenders may enrol. Each participating convicted first-time offender pays $300 and by participating is able to have his record expunged if the conviction is for a first-time offense. All proceeds go to Magdalene, and in 2010 the programme contributed $100,000.
The disturbing flaw in the Porter approach has always been no analysis of the nature of prostitution and the relationships that are its essence, mere policy by bureaucracy. The essence of the Swedish and Nashville approaches is that they begin by treating those caught up in prostitution – women and clients – as human beings.
Magdalene is something we could have tried – might have, before Mr Porter was let loose on the subject of prostitution law reform. If we had, it is possible that the thistle might have been able to finally flower.