How people move from deviant to conventional lifestyles is an issue that has attracted considerable interest over the past few years. However, much of this work has focused on men desisting from crime. This book provides one of the first examinations of desistance which is centred on women and, more specifically, how they exit prostitution.

While street prostitutes comprise only a small minority of sex workers, they have the highest rates of physical and sexual abuse, arrest and incarceration, drug addiction, and stigmatization, which stem from both their public visibility and their dangerous work settings. Exiting the trade can be a daunting task for street prostitutes; despite this, many do try at some point to leave sex work behind. Focusing on four different organizations based in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Hartford that help prostitutes get off the streets, Sharon S. OselinOCOsa Leaving Prostitution aexplores the difficulties, rewards, and public responses to female street prostitutesOCO transition out of sex work. Through in-depth interviews and field research with street-level sex workers, Oselin illuminates their pathways into the trade and their experiences while in it, and the host of organizational, social, and individual factors that influence whether they are able to stop working as prostitutes altogether. She also speaks to staff at organizations that aid street prostitutes, and assesses the techniques they use to help these women develop self-esteem, healthy relationships with family and community, and workplace skills. Oselin paints a full picture of the difficulties these women face in moving away from sex work and the approaches that do and do not work to help them transform their lives. Further, she offers recommendations to help improve the quality of life for these women. A powerful ethnographic account, a Leaving Prostitution aprovides an essential understanding of getting out and staying out of sex work."

This anthology of original research studies focuses on why and how sex workers and pimps quit the sex trade. There is an extensive literature on ‘desistance’ with different theories explaining why people quit crime. However, with a few notable exceptions, researchers to date have not focused on desistance among pimps and sex workers. These studies explore a spectrum of quitting the sex trade from voluntarily stopping, ‘drifting,’ and retiring; to intervention-based or coerced stopping due to influences and impositions by programs and/or by specialized courts. This book provides insight into the meaning of this work; how people in the sex trade view their engagement in licit/illicit spheres; and it will inform providers who interface with people from these communities regarding how to support desistance. Further this book may help those engaged in emerging topics related to the sex trade, including: (1) global trends in sex trade decriminalization and/or human trafficking criminalization, (2) the recent emergence of human trafficking intervention courts in the USA, and (3) the development (and impact) of new laws, policies, and intervention programs designed to reduce human trafficking (globally, regionally, country level) and/or more localized efforts to support desistance among participants in the sex trade. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of Criminology, Sociology, Law, Policy, and Psychology. It was originally published as a special issue in the journal Victims & Offenders.

Chapter 1 Why has prostitution become an issue? -- chapter 2 Prostitution myths -- chapter 3 Prostitution, vulnerability and victimisation -- chapter 4 Pathways into prostitution -- chapter 5 Desistance and exiting from prostitution -- chapter 6 The politics of prostitution -- chapter 7 Regulating prostitution.

An astonishingly brave memoir of prostitution and its lingering influence on a woman’s psyche and life. “The best work by anyone on prostitution ever, Rachel Moran’s Paid For fuses the memoirist’s lived poignancy with the philosopher’s conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard University Born into a troubled family, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she was driven into prostitution to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the exploitation she and others endured on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage inherent to prostitution and the inevitable estrangement from one’s body. At twenty-two, Moran escaped the sex trade. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

The Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research unites 45 contributions from researchers, sex workers, activists, and practitioners who live and work in 28 countries throughout the world. Focusing tightly on the contemporary state of sex industry research through eight carefully selected themes, this volume sets a clear agenda for future research, activism, and policymaking. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective on an expanding field frequently divided by political and ideological conflicts, the handbook clearly establishes the parameters of the field while also showcasing the most vibrant contemporary empirical and theoretical work. Unprecedented in its global scope, the Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research will appeal to students, researchers, and policy makers interested in fields such as sociology of gender and sexuality; crime, justice, and the sex industry; sociology of work and professions; and sexual politics.

There is great interest internationally in the development of prostitution policies in the Nordic countries after Sweden, Norway and Iceland have introduced general bans against buying sex whilst selling sex remains legal. In addition, there is a partial ban against buying sex in Finland. This is a different approach from that of several other European countries, where we have seen a decriminalisation of third-party involvement in prostitution as well as to that of the USA which criminalises both the buying and selling of sexual services. Thus the Nordic countries are often treated as representatives of a 'Nordic model' of prostitution policies. In this book - the first on the subject - Skilbrei and Holmström argue that these models of policies or policy regimes tend to ignore the trajectories, contexts and consequences of the full range of approaches to prostitution, thus they are too simplistic and static. Prostitution policies in the Nordic countries are multifaceted and dynamic, and cannot be represented as following a straight path and detached from empirical contexts. Their analysis treats Nordic prostitution policies both as a product of history, of current national and Nordic debates, and of international obligations and changes in the international and national prostitution markets. Furthermore they argue that a broad understanding of the relevant context is necessary so as to place Nordic prostitution policies within broader policy concerns related to gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, social welfare, immigration and organised crime, as well as to neoliberal forms of governance.

Prostitution is often referred to as "oldest profession." Critics of this expression redescribe it as "the oldest oppression." Debates about how best to understand and regulate prostitution are bound up with difficult moral, legal, and political questions. Indeed, it can be approached from numerous angles--is buying and selling sex fundamentally wrong? How can it possibly be regulated? How can sex workers be protected, if they are allowed to work at all? In this concise, for-and-against volume, ethicists Lori Watson and Jessica Flanigan engage with each other on the nature and consequences of sex work, revealing new and profound ways in which to understand it. The volume opens with a joint introduction, before Lori Watson first argues for a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized, also known as the Nordic model. Watson defends the Nordic Model on the grounds that prostitution is an exploitative and unequal practice that only entrenches existing patterns of gendered injustice. Full decriminalization of prostitution only stymies existing occupational health and safety standards and securing worker autonomy and equality. Further, to Watson, drawing a distinction between sex trafficking and prostitution is irrelevant for public policy; what underpins them is demand, which fuels the inequalities of both. That is what needs to be addressed. In a rebuttal, Jessica Flanigan contends that sex work should be fully decriminalized because restrictions on the sale and purchase of sex violate the rights of sex workers and their clients. She argues that decriminalization is preferable to policies that could expose sex workers and their clients to criminal penalties, and leave them at the mercy of public officials. Putting these two views on sex work into conversation with one another, and opening up space for readers to weigh both approaches, the book provides a thorough, accessible exploration of the issues surrounding sex work, written with both sympathy and philosophical rigor.

This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe – the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether pro-prostitution activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved. Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted 250 interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, traveling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and East and South Africa. Visiting legal brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade, and the women being sold by men classed as ‘business entrepreneurs’. Whilst meeting feminist abolitionists, pro-prostitution campaigners, police and government officials, and the men who drive the demand, Bindel uncovered the lies, mythology and criminal activity that shroud this global trade, and suggests here a way forward for the women seeking to abolish the oldest oppression. Informed by the lived human experience of those interviewed, this book will be of great interest to feminists, students, criminal justice advocates, criminologists and human rights activists.

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress documents the violence that runs like a constant thread throughout all types of prostitution, including escort, brothel, trafficking, strip club, and street prostitution. The book presents clinical examples, analysis, and original research, counteracting common myths about the harmlessness of prostitution. It explores the connections between prostitution, incest, sexual harassment, rape, and battering; looks at peer support programs for women escaping prostitution; examines clinical symptoms common among prostitutes; and much more.