Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business (30 page)

Under BIBOB, anyone who wishes to buy a window unit is subjected to an integrity evaluation by the authorities. Suspicion that the interested party is now or
might
in the future become involved in crime is sufficient to deny the application. This is a recipe for capricious action on the part of the authorities. A government assessment cites Amsterdam business owners’ widespread frustration with BIBOB and a troubling lack of transparency in officials’ decision-making.
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And an analysis of the conditions under which owners now operate concluded, “In some municipalities the brothel owners encounter so many strict and unreasonable regulations [and associated costs] that it is difficult to operate legally.”
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In separate interviews, two brothel owners complained to me about the authorities’ zero-tolerance approach: “Bad things are happening in illegal brothels, but if one small thing happens in my place [a legal brothel], I am closed.”
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Some owners have taken the city to court to challenge such actions, winning almost all cases in which the authorities relied on simple “suspicion” to revoke a license.

A related problem is the refusal of banks to lend money to owners of sex agencies, because, the banks claim, it is difficult to determine if the business is financially clean. Bank officials also say that American banks will not work with them if they loan money to people in the sex industry. This forces owners to seek other sources of capital, which in turn raises questions about whether the money is “dirty.” An aggrieved brothel owner informed me that, despite decriminalization, the “banks still criminalize us” owners: “They say I can’t get a credit card because I’m in the adult entertainment industry. Yet I’ve been a bank customer for 29 years! Since it’s a legal business, we should be treated with respect.”
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When the head of one of the brothel owners’ associations asked the Ministry of Justice to intervene when banks refuse to conduct business with sex entrepreneurs, the ministry responded that it had no power to do so.
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To fix this problem, one Amsterdam politician recently proposed that a special bank be established to make loans to sex operators; he discussed the idea with the Dutch Association of Banks, but this has yet to happen.
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Neither the brothel nor window owners’ associations want to return to the pre-2000 situation of illegal-but-tolerated sex work. A 2006 survey of 49 owners reported, “The majority of operators (84%) regarded the [2000] change in the law as positive. … The operators consider it a good thing for the authorities to intervene in the industry, but do not agree on how.”
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The police have a better reputation among window and brothel owners than do some other government officials. An officer in the window owners’ association told me in 1998, prior to legalization, that the police see owners “as
criminals” and that this was the main concern of other window owners.
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Now, there has been a sea change, according to the same owner reinterviewed a decade later: “The police are our best friend at the moment; we work together with the police. They are happy with us because we take care of things.”
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Another window owner distinguished the police from another monitoring agency, the prostitution control unit of the municipal government that visits businesses to check workers’ passports and work permits. This owner has a “good” relationship with the police but is very critical of the prostitution control teams, who are “looking for trouble,” give women a “hard time” when checking their passports and working papers, and “treat us like we are criminals.” When he has an altercation with the prostitution control squad, this owner calls the police to intervene, which usually resolves the problem.
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In addition to conducting their own visits to the windows, the police do routine uniformed and plainclothes patrols in the RLD to maintain order, which serves the interests of business owners and sex workers alike. Officers occasionally arrest individuals who are causing a nuisance or disturbance on the streets; this happens two or three times a night. They also question individuals who loiter in the area and are suspected of being pimps.

The operators are not opposed to BIBOB in principle, which they consider useful for eliminating criminal activities. But they are opposed to the way BIBOB has been implemented in Amsterdam, with the local authorities accused of using it capriciously to cleanse the RLD of vice. The head of a brothel owners’ association told me, “The biggest problem is how the local authorities
use
the law to fit with their own ideas. Their main goal is how to get them [sex businesses] out, rather than how to regulate them properly.”
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An official in the Consortium of Window Owners feels he is “walking on eggshells,” fearing loss of his business license. He stated that “it’s not fun doing business here anymore.”
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And a community activist in the RLD, Wim Boef, feels that the area has been unfairly stigmatized by city authorities:

All the business people in the red light district support the BIBOB law, because it’s meant to separate the good from the bad. But what’s happening now? It looks like Casa Rosso [the city’s famous, decades-old live sex show palace] may be shut, purely on the basis of “findings” and rumors. It’s a disgrace. Everyone with a business in the 1012 postcode area [the main RLD] is now regarded as a potential criminal. It’s scandalous.
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These views are echoed by other stakeholders. After the closure of some of the windows, some women working in the RLD complained to city officials
that they were being deprived of their livelihood.
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Some of the political parties in Amsterdam have also opposed the crackdown. The Green Party has questioned why the government is so heavily focused on the red-light districts rather than outlying areas. The party supports license revocation only if owners are guilty of criminal offenses, not for economic “renewal” or cleansing vice from the RLD, which is the goal of the most powerful city leaders. As one Green Party councilor remarked, “The government’s only solution is more control, without talking to sex workers and determining whether and where abuse occurs.”
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And owners and their supporters staged a street demonstration in February 2008 protesting the city government’s crackdown and erecting signs in the RLD declaring, “Hands Off the Red Light!!! Enough Is Enough.” Even some officials have expressed frustration about the government’s approach. Two Amsterdam officials who work on prostitution issues told me, “All of the focus is on the red-light district, but the real problems are the ones we cannot see”—that is, the illegal, underground establishments.
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And an official at the Ministry of Justice advocated a more balanced approach as well: “The legal sector is not overregulated. We need regulations, and it goes downhill fast if you don’t check frequently, several times a year. The problem is that the illegal sector is not checked at all. We are trying to get more control over this.”
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City leaders also proposed closing all of the windows in a small red-light district in the Singel area of Amsterdam, which is not part of the main RLD (Singel is discussed further later in the chapter)—this, despite the fact that local residents were generally tolerant of it and the area is relatively problemfree.
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In addition, many of the sex workers in the area do not want to relocate to the large, central RLD. The proposal provoked strong debate in the city council and was eventually defeated.

It stands to reason that limiting the number of licenses available or imposing steep fiscal costs on legal operations will (1) inflate prices in the existing operations and/or (2) push some owners into the illegal sector. Both are occurring in Amsterdam. The decline in the number of window units has led owners to increase rental prices for the remaining units or to force workers to rent for longer periods of time, for example, a week instead of a day. At the same time, narrowing the parameters of the legal sector is almost guaranteed to expand the illegal sector, while the remaining legal operators complain that they face unfair competition from illegal businesses due to the expense of conforming to regulations.
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Some government agencies have warned about this, noting that squeezing the legal operators is “likely to lead to a shift of prostitution to the illegal circuit.”
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“Confronted with unfair competition,”
the Dutch trafficking office warns, legal operators “may feel tempted to leave the legal circuit.”
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If the government is aware of this risk, it has taken few steps to remedy the situation.

Developments in Amsterdam do not necessarily apply to other Dutch cities. Perceived problems and official remedies are not universal across the country.
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In fact, in a government-sponsored survey, a “large majority” of municipalities reported that they had seen no negative effects of the 2000 law. Of the negative effects cited by other cities, most were related to escort agencies working without a license or to prostitutes working without valid documents.
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At the same time, most cities have imposed a freeze on the granting of new licenses; when a sex business closes, the city refuses to license a substitute business, creating a net decline over time. And Amsterdam is not the only city where the authorities have tried to close sex establishments. For example, in Alkmaar in 2009, the authorities attempted to shut all 92 windows using the BIBOB law, accusing the owner of money laundering and claiming that some of the window units had been purchased with ill-gotten money. A court decided in favor of the owner, declaring that the city had not proven its case.
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One of the main objectives of the 2000 decriminalization law was to improve the “social position” of individual sex workers. Such empowerment meant enhancing workers’ position vis-à-vis business owners, managers, and clients (via labor rights) and improving their safety and health. The law appears to have enhanced the safety of workers and reduced coercion in the legal sector,
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but other improvements have fallen short, according to the government, which reports that “labor relations in the licensed sector have barely changed” and that “business owners hold a solid position of power in relation to the women doing the work.”
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What about the new restrictions that I outlined in the preceding section? As is so often the case in struggles over prostitution policies, the voices of the workers themselves are either silent or ignored. Officials claim to be acting on behalf of workers’ interests without consulting them. I noted earlier that the premier sex workers’ organization Red Thread has opposed almost all the recent restrictions on sex work, but it has been marginalized by the government, unlike the routine consultative role enjoyed by comparable organizations in New Zealand. A recent survey of 94 window prostitutes in Amsterdam provides some indication of how they view recent efforts to
expand control over sex workers: 93 percent disagreed with the statement that “politicians know the issues of prostitutes”; 95 percent disagreed with the idea that the city’s plans for the red-light district are “good for prostitutes”; 88 percent thought the current policies toward prostitution were too repressive; but the workers were more evenly split on the plan to require all sex workers to register with the authorities, with just 53 percent opposing this idea.
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Recall that most window workers come from other countries, which may explain why some of them are willing to accept registration, given their distance from family and friends back home.

Has the relationship between sex workers and the police changed since 2000? In addition to the prostitution control units mentioned earlier, a special police squad conducts periodic visits to windows and brothels to check workers’ identities and legal status and to question them about their working conditions, their motives for selling sex, and their co-workers. Police look for any signs of trafficking or exploitation.

Sex workers are not accustomed to having a cordial or supportive relationship with the police, and developing this rapport has been a major challenge for the prostitution squad, according to its leader.
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Officers undergo three months of training during which they are taught to humanize those who sell sex, learn how to interview sex workers properly, and are taught how to spot signs of problems (nonverbal cues, bruises).
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When the unit conducts site visits, it is supposed to operate according to a code of conduct, part of which is reproduced in
table 6.1
. The code attempts to professionalize contacts between officers and sex workers and to prevent officer misconduct.

I accompanied the squad when it visited window workers in June 2008. After a long conversation with one woman, the head officer told me that the woman was providing information on her pimp and that they were building a case against him by periodically visiting her. As the officers made their rounds to various windows, they conversed with the women in a routine, casual, and friendly manner.

The police have dual roles: both monitoring and assisting individual workers and maintaining order in the RLD. Other institutions in Amsterdam also strive to assist and empower sex workers. I have already mentioned the prostitutes’ rights group Red Thread, which conducts outreach with individual women, advocates for sex workers in policy debates, and conducts research on the sex industry. One recent innovation that has helped to empower prostitutes is the creation of government-funded health centers that exclusively serve sex workers. Such centers exist in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague. Amsterdam’s Prostitution and Health Center 292 is located near the city’s main red-light district. Prior to its creation in April 2008, city authorities had less contact with sex workers, but they now have much more contact. The center’s main goals are to improve sex workers’ health, to enhance their social and legal position, and to empower them to resist exploitation and coercion. Not only does it provide free health care (education, contraception, STD/HIV prevention and tests) but also additional services in order to “improve the life skills and self-sufficiency of sex workers within an emancipatory vision.”
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Staff members assist all workers regardless of immigration status, are versed in six languages, and operate both on-site services and outreach to window and brothel locations a few times per week (one of the window owners allows his place to be used for health exams once a month). Some of the peer educators are former prostitutes, and the center operates with a nonjudgmental approach to prostitution. As the director told me, “We don’t judge the women, and we don’t distinguish legal and illegal, young or old workers. We always say everything is anonymous, and our health records only contain the individual’s mobile phone number,” no names or addresses. A brochure states that information is treated with absolute confidentiality by the staff. The director states, “We listen to their stories, but we don’t call the police and report anything [apparent victimization] unless we think there is urgency in doing so.”
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If a sex worker states that she is a trafficking victim, the center will contact the police on the woman’s behalf. In addition to health services, the center sponsors courses in Dutch (about a dozen women attend the class), as well as classes in computers, self-defense, and bookkeeping. Staff also counsel women in life skills regarding tax issues, housing, legal matters, stress-reduction techniques, and other job opportunities. The center provides separate services to male sex workers. Each week, public health workers see approximately 70 clients, social workers see 15–20 clients, and 45 women attend classes and workshops.
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According to city council staff who work on prostitution issues, the center serves a major function: “Empowerment is the main, central issue—either while the person is in the profession or when they want to leave it. The center supports women in the profession as long as they want to do the job.”
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What sex workers learn at the center may enhance their ability to deal with clients, business owners, the authorities, and any parasitical third parties.