Pubdate: Sun, 17 Dec 2006
Source: Scotland On Sunday (UK)
Copyright: 2006 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/405
Author: Neil McKeganey
Note: Neil McKeganey is Professor of Drug Misuse Research at the University
of Glasgow

NEED FOR DRUGS OUTWEIGH RISKS

THE horrendous events in Suffolk have focused attention once again on 
the reality of street prostitution in the UK. Who are these women? 
Why do they take these risks? And how can they continue to work when 
there is a killer on the streets? The answer to almost all these 
questions can be summed up in one word - drugs.

Drug addiction exerts a vice-like grip far greater than their 
instinct for self-preservation. The women in Suffolk will huddle 
together and they will talk of the murdered and feel a sense of some 
safety in numbers. But clients don't stop at groups of women, so the 
groups will disperse, and when the cars stop the women will get in on 
their own. From that point on their lives hang by a thread.

In interviews I carried out with women working on the streets across 
Scotland the story was depressingly familiar. Almost all of the women 
were driven to sell sex by the need to feed their drug habit. In the 
minds of many men the typical image of the prostitute is someone 
standing on the street displaying a blatant sexuality in their 
clothes and their manner. The reality is rather different, with so 
many of these women displaying the hollow-eyed, painfully thin 
features of advanced addiction.

Many entertained ideas that they would leave prostitution once they 
had earned enough money to survive. But survival for these women was 
not about long-term planning, but from one day to the next.

I asked them what kept them working when they knew the risks they 
were taking. Beth came up with her answer: "What keeps me working? 
That's easy - it's the money. If I stayed at home like at Christmas 
I'd be worrying about not having the money for drugs and thinking all 
the time of the customers th at were out here."

Would these women's lives be any better if they were allowed to work 
in a managed zone? The Scottish Executive and the Home Office have 
ruled out such a suggestion. Among the chorus of voices from 
politicians, civil servants, counsellors and feminists there is an 
unbroken line that prostitution is a form of violence to women that 
can never be facilitated by the provision of an area where it can 
take place. Among those I interviewed there was hardly a single voice 
that did not extol the benefits of a managed zone. "You would feel 
that much safer coming out at night. Working in a tolerance zone the 
girls feel much safer - it's loads better."

Neither the women in Suffolk nor the women in Scotland will get the 
tolerance zones they need because, in the end, while their deaths may 
horrify and fascinate, they don't threaten us.

We don't want to help these women in a way that conflicts with our 
other principles. As a result, they will be left largely to fend for themselves.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine