Written evidence to be reported to the House
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
3:30 pm
Ann Lucas: We broadly support it. You will know that we very clearly see the sex worker as the victim and we are glad that they will not be fined any more. We believe that there is crime and the criminals are the punters and the pimps.
There is, outside here, a big debate as to whether you are starting another vicious circle. However, I believe that this structure has to be available because otherwise when you hit the bottom where do you go? If there is nothing else you just go further down if that is at all possible. We found in our research that these girls and women live the most chaotic lives.
One view is that short-termism is never a good thing because it takes people such a long time to spiral into the lives that they lead and yearly targets are not going to work. It can take a long, long time to get somebody’s life put back together when it has taken years of abuse to fall apart.