Skinny compromise on ban on buying sex services

EDITORIAL

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The draft bill to bring in a ban on the purchase of sex services has raised the temperature in Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee. Next week the topic is likely to be the subject of impassioned debate in plenary session.
      At least three or four distinct lines can be found among the MPs. Some would not like to see any such restrictions, and others want a limited ban, which at present looks like becoming the stand taken by Parliament. Then again, there are those who support the government's initial proposal, which would outlaw buyers of sex altogether, and another group would furthermore put a ban on the selling of such services.
     
Parliament has only bad alternatives to mull over, as everyone has equally valid grounds for his or her stand on the matter.
      Already the entire issue of payment for sexual services is more often than not hard to prove. A complete ban on the buying and selling of sex would drive the entire business "underground", when it would be totally in the hands of organised crime, and this would certainly do nothing to improve the position of women.
      Now what is coming before the MPs is a watered-down version of the law that would declare it a crime to pay for sex to a person whom one has cause to believe is a victim of pimping or human trafficking. In other circumstances, the buying of sex from someone who is not a minor would remain permitted.
     
This version can with good cause be described as a skinny compromise decision. Without a doubt, organised crime can find ways and means to make the business look legitimate. The buyer of sex has difficulty determining whether the purveyor of the services is a private entrepreneur or the victim of pimping. Even more difficult, in the case of charges being brought, is for the courts to prove that the buyer should have known how things really stood.
      Paid sex often cheapens women and turns them into an object, since the services are usually bought from women.
     
Laws should adhere to two basic premises: it should be possible to respect them, and it should be possible to ensure that adherence to them can be upheld.
      At least on the latter count, the prospective law on the purchase of sexual services signally fails the test.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.6.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Amended prostitution bill likely to pass (9.6.2006)
  Criminalisation of buying sex does not scare away regular clients (7.4.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat