Most UK people support sex work decriminalisation, suggests new poll
Thanks to the rise of internet porn and, more recently, OnlyFans, conversations about sex work are now more mainstream than ever. You’ve likely heard about celebrities selling feet pics, for example, or had your TL filled with discourse about OF stars Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue.
And yet, although there’s benefits to this attention, there’s downsides, too. Sensationalised stories, and usually ones shrouded in misinformation, tend to get more airtime than others, and, despite renewed interest in their industry, sex workers themselves still face a huge amount of stigma, discrimination, and censorship, both online and off.
One group whose stories are too often left out of these conversations are those who sell sex. Not images or videos of it: straight up, full contact, body-on-body sex.
Sex workers, allies, and human rights organisations have long campaigned for the total decriminalisation of sex work, which they say would make sex workers’ jobs much safer.
And now, a new poll by Amnesty International UK, shared exclusively with Cosmopolitan UK, reveals that the majority of the public agrees, with 61% of UK adults surveyed believing it should no longer be a crime for two or more sex workers to work together, while 53% of those surveyed agree that consensual adult sex work should be fully decriminalised.
The current laws on sex work, explained
As the law stands, it’s legal to sell and buy sex, but some activities around sex work remain criminalised. For instance, it’s a crime to manage a brothel, ‘cause or incite prostitution’, and to solicit sex in a public place (this criminalises clients, too).
In practice, this means that, while a sex worker can advertise their services online and meet with a client alone in private, sex workers who work together for safety can be charged with ‘brothel-keeping’. Those who share safety tips, advice, or even drive a colleague to a booking can be charged with ‘causing or inciting prostitution’. Meanwhile, street-based sex workers are forced to work in more isolated areas to avoid police detection.
As a result, sex workers have to choose between working safely or working within the law — the latter meaning on their own, and therefore at increased risk of violence.
“Our poll shows that the majority of the UK public wants the law to protect, not punish sex workers,” says Chiara Capraro, Amnesty International UK’s Gender Justice programme director. “Most people go into sex work due to poverty. Years of austerity and the cost of living crisis are pushing more and more women into sex work to support themselves and their families. Rather than keeping these women safe and helping them to leave sex work if they so wish, the current law forces sex workers into harmful, dangerous, and isolating situations and can trap them in a cycle of poverty.”
It’s a picture echoed by Laura Watson, spokesperson for the English Collective of Prostitutes. “Most of the women in our group are mothers working to support children, and we are furious that we are pushed into this job by poverty and then criminalised for trying to survive and keep our families together,” she says.
“Those of us who are migrant and/or women of colour get particularly targeted. Sex workers are facing epidemic levels of rape and other violence but we can’t report to the police because we are frightened about being arrested ourselves for soliciting or brothel-keeping.”
How criminalisation makes sex workers less safe — and traps them in the profession
A 2024 survey by the Women’s Support Project found that 90% of women involved in sex work had experienced violence, while stats from National Ugly Mugs, a charity working to end violence against sex workers, show that reports of violence against sex workers increased from 166 in 2013 to nearly 1,000 in 2019.
Of the 585 reports received by the charity in 2023, only 11% felt safe enough to make a full report to the police. While a Novermber 2024 report by University College London found that the current system of policing in relation to sex work in London “isn’t working for either the police or the policed”.
Criminal cautions or convictions for sex work can also prevent sex workers from leaving the industry if they wanted to, in part because they have to continue working to pay off fines, but also because a so-called ‘prostitute’s caution’ shows up on a person’s enhanced DBS check until they are 100 years old.
It’s worth noting, too, that, unlike other police cautions, a prostitute’s caution doesn’t require a person to admit to an offence or agree to accept it. A police officer can issue a caution if they have ‘reasonable cause’ to believe a sex work law has been broken — there doesn’t need to be tangible evidence of wrongdoing.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Audrey, a spokesperson for Decrim Now, an organisation that campaigns for the full decriminalisation of sex work in the UK, tells Cosmopolitan UK. “Criminalisation inhibits sex workers’ rights and safety as they’re working, but also prohibits them from being able to exit sex work, which would be a very good thing if that’s what they choose to do.”
Most of the laws surrounding sex work in this country, she explains, are remnants of Victorian laws to control working class women: “They’re doing the exact opposite of what most people assume laws surrounding sex work would do, which is to regulate it or make it safer.”
Is it possible to actually decriminalise sex work?
Various cross-party MPs have, in recent years, proposed implementing the Nordic Model in the UK, which would criminalise clients rather than sex workers. But sex workers say this would make their work even more dangerous, forcing them to engage in riskier behaviours in more remote spaces (and therefore further away from help) in order for clients to evade the police.
In France, where the Nordic Model is in place, a 2019 report found that 63% of sex workers said their quality of life had gotten worse under the model, while 42% had been exposed to more violence.
But global examples show decriminalisation is possible. New Zealand became the first country in the world to fully decriminalise sex work in 2003, while Belgium followed suit in 2022. In December last year, the latter even implemented world-first employment rights for sex workers, giving them the same rights as every other worker, including sick days, annual leave, maternity pay, pensions, health insurance, and unemployment benefits.
As well as this, if sex was decriminalised, sex workers could, like all other workers, challenge poor working conditions or bad bosses using existing employment law.
“We’ve seen a sex worker in New Zealand be able to take her boss to an employment tribunal for sexual harassment, and win,” says Audrey. “This not only makes an important point that sex workers are capable of being subject to sexual harassment, but that they should have the ability to refuse that within their own workplaces.”
“We know that it’s possible for the law to change,” adds Megan Isaac, another spokesperson for Decrim Now. “Politicians must take action to decriminalise sex work in the UK, to protect sex workers’ safety, health, and human rights.”
Amnesty International UK is calling for decriminalisation alongside a coalition of sex worker-led organisations, including Decrim Now and the English Collective of Prostitutes. Other organisations like the sex-worker led SWARM (Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement) and National Ugly Mugs, as well as experts from the United Nations and the World Health Organisation also campaign for the decriminalisation of sex work.
If you want to join the fight for sex work decriminalisation, you can write to your MP using Decrim Now’s email tool here. You can find more ways to support sex workers here.
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