Today marks a monumental step for France, and for the rest of the world, in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation.
Inspired by a Swedish law passed in 1999, the French Assembly passed a law today to derail what it refers to as the “prostitutional system” and to aid those who have been victimized by said system. Other similarly situated countries are keeping an eye on France, and may follow suit in coming years.
Rather than follow the traditional and problematic format of criminalizing the seller of sex, the new law has flipped the script, and the characters, by penalizing the buyers of sex instead. Further, the law abolishes any criminalization of sellers of sex, making it impossible to view sellers of sex as anything other than victims. By putting these measures in place, France has drawn a strong parallel between the purchase of sex and pimping, organized crime and sex trafficking.
Specifically, buyers of sex in France will now be not only be punished with fines, but also will be forced to attend awareness classes on the harms of the sex trade. The penalization combines chastisement and education, creating a perfect storm of dissuasion from purchasing sex again. Although prostitution is legal in France, with the addition of this new law, France now has one of the toughest laws against sex buyers in Europe.
This extraordinary law creates new precedent while also eradicating defunct laws of the past. Previously in France, the model for prostitution was a 2003 law banning passive solicitation by sex workers walking the streets. This antiquated law only served to place the legal pressure on prostitutes, leaving them to fend for themselves without any consequences for the buyers of sex.
Finally, the law bolsters women involved in prostitution rather than criminalizing them, by offering temporary residence, social services and financial compensation to those willing leave the life of selling sex. Rather than sweep the truth under the rug, lawmakers in France have truthfully acknowledged that many prostitutes in France are trafficking victims. For this reason, the law includes the provision of identity papers to prostitutes to empower the women to leave prostitution behind.
The adoption of this policy marks the following of a significant trend in European politics started by Sweden and embraced in Norway and Iceland. Ideally, the law’s success will also spark ideas in other similarly situated countries such as Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Certainly, France’s willingness and excitement in adopting the law, marked by a 64-12 lower house majority in the National Assembly, indicates a shift in perspective along with a welcomed shift in blame from seller to buyer. The law delineates France’s awareness that in any successful business, supply follows demand, and thusly to attack and obliterate an industry, the demand must be first to go.
Web Sources:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-prostitution-crackdown-sex-buyers-face-classes-n551546
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/374720681.html