“The apprehension of the prostitution phenomenon by the State calls for regulation and not penalization”

Tribune. Five years after the adoption of the law of April 13, 2016 aimed at strengthening the fight against the prostitution system and supporting prostitutes, the results are more than disappointing. In December 2019, after an assessment of the application of the law, an interministerial report highlighted both an increase in the precariousness of people who prostitute in the street and a transfer of paid sex to the Web.

The report is also severe on the support of prostitutes by exit routes: in 2019, only 341 cases were authorized while there are approximately 40,000 prostitutes in France.

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Also, the Médecins du monde association was able to observe that “The health of sex workers has deteriorated not only because they are less able to enforce the use of condoms, because access to prevention and harm reduction tools is made more complicated by the ‘isolation, but also because they work longer and longer to earn less ”.

New forms of soliciting

The pandemic has greatly increased the vulnerability of an already highly precarious population. Violence against street sex workers has increased in quantity and intensity. Worse still, pimping and child prostitution have only increased since the law was passed.

Also, far from having put an end to paid sex, as the promoters of the law claimed, it has encouraged the development of new forms of soliciting organized around the Web in escorting sites often hosted abroad. Escorting highlights another relationship with the body and is a prosperous economic activity. The ProstCost study, carried out in 2015, had estimated the total turnover of prostitution at 3.2 billion euros, ie an average income of 7,300 euros per month for the 37,000 prostitutes in France.

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If the tax administration taxes the income of prostitutes working as a self-employed person, those who use international escorting sites are largely exempt from tax, the amount of tax evasion having been estimated at 853 million euros by the ‘aforementioned study.

A considerable number of escorts freely exercise an activity, avoiding any form of procuring or trafficking, thanks to the creation of a self-managed Internet profile. This one-person activity knows no borders and the countries of destination are chosen according to their legislation and their economic prosperity.

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