The Legacy of Canadian Laws - Essay Example

Legal Regulation of the Sex Work Legal Regulation of the Sex Work A majority of the law dictating sex working is derived from indirect efforts to control or regulate prostitution by either citing old laws or by adding gaps in the laws (Edwards, 2011). In Canada, for instance, the invocation of the its Criminal Code to take legal action on illegal brothels shows the application of old laws and echoes the community attitude changes towards prostitution both in the 80s and 90s (Hancock, 2010). Irregularities and gaps in laws related to prostitution reveal the reality that the same acts can be permitted in one region, but prohibited in another (Mackinnon, 2010). Against the background of the heritage of Canadian laws on prostitution or sex working, this essay discusses how prostitution laws in Canada currently stand and takes into consideration law enforcement patterns, as well as the non-enforcement patterns. It also discuss what or who is being controlled by sex working laws and their enforcement. The Legacy of Canadian Laws The history of lawful regulation of sex working in Canada is one of the countrys intervention to try and bring to a stop prostitution under public annoyance provisions in and attempts to utilize the Contagious Diseases Act in Canada in the 1870s, as well as the 1880s (Moscucci, 2012). From about 1910, every Canadian state began using criminal laws on sex working, wherein the act of sex working itself is not an illegal act, but various prostitution-related events are considered illegal. These regulations are mostly based on Canadian laws on barring under-aged individuals on areas used by prostitutes, soliciting, brothel keeping and renting rooms to prostitutes (Moscucci, 2012). The legacy of Canadian law borrowed four notable elements from English law on prostitution. First was the stress on regulation of prostitution under the appearance of public nuisance regulations or the avoidance of annoyance. Under the Criminal Code, it is illegal for a sex worker to publicly importune or solicit with an aim of selling themselves to others and also under the Canadian 1959 Street Offenses dictated that prostitutes are likely to create annoyance or disturbance simply because of their presence, even if no one is annoyed (Moscucci, 2012). Secondly, the critical phrase, common prostitute that applies to women alone, initially appeared in the 1822 English Vagrancy Act and was later incorporated into Canadian law concerning sex working. The effect is that law enforcement officers can overlook a number of formalities in order to arrest common sex workers (Moscucci, 2012). Thirdly, the 1864 Contagious Disease Act entrenched the perception that women sex workers are spreaders of contagious illnesses. The law gave state agents coercive authority to manage women suspected of having venereal illnesses. It was designed to curb to spread of contagious illnesses to Military and Naval stations and gave authorities the power to forcibly arrest sex workers alleged to carrying venereal illnesses upon threat of doing jail time (Moscucci, 2012). Fourthly, the organized use of the law plus its enforcement has been to punish sex workers, but not, by any means, their clients. However, after 1985 following the Sexual Offenses Act, Canadian law considered it an illegal act for a male to solicit a female from a motor vehicle, excluding pedestrians (Moscucci, 2012). Canadian Laws on Prostitution For over 70 years, it was criminal laws, vagrancy laws and contagious diseases acts that controlled sex working. (Hancock, 2010) More recently, after the 80s, other acts have been brought in, in the form of planning law, health laws on AIDS and STIs, as well as prostitution related provisions such as liquor (Lang, 2014). As the law stands from 1991, Quebec and Ontario are the only states to have tried to change acts controlling sex working and the Northwest Territories has a fresh Act being debated in parliament. Nevertheless, at the moment, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba and British Columbia penalize a majority of the elements of prostitution. Particularly, sex workers are allowed to create their own premises in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and British Columbia and none of their states have acts blocking the work of escort agencies (Lang, 2014). Despite of attempts of reform, different Canadian states tirelessly try to manage more clear forms of prostitution like street prostitution. The only state to use some form of discrimination with regards to prostitution is Saskatchewan with their 1979 Prostitution Act that canceled laws on loitering and soliciting with an aim of prostitution, unless behavior created serious affront or alarm (Hancock, 2010). Revealing the authority of the resident lobby, these changes were surpassed by the re-introduction of criminal consequences for street sex working, and more constraints on street sex working in changes in 1983 and 1989, in an effort to limit sex workers to escort agencies or brothels and ensure that they stay off the streets (Lang, 2014). In addition, complaints made by inner city settlers have led to more arrests, exploitation of the Bail Act to stop convicted sex workers from working in some areas and higher mandatory penalties. Brothels have been forbidden, but are being controlled by the police. In Quebec, the announcement of premises as a disorderly house allows prosecution of not only its occupiers but even its owners for utilizing the house for prostitution, while in British Columbia, brothels with a legitimate town planning certificate can function devoid of any penalty (Maugère, 2014). Nevertheless, unauthorized brothels come under different laws that need a different burden of proof. Escorts are legal agents of prostitution since no state law penalizes escort agencies even though managers asking for a cut of takings can legally be charged in a court of law under living on earnings. With regards to law enforcement, three key conclusions can be assumed (Maugère, 2014). Laws are executed overpoweringly against sex workers instead of clients; against street sex workers instead of those who benefit from sex working of those who offer their services in permitted brothels or other escort agencies; and finally against women functioning as prostitutes instead of men. For instance, in Ontario prosecutions for owning a brothel constituted 3% 1983 and 1% in 1984 of people persecuted against prostitution-related cases and from 1980 to 1989 only three individuals were legally charged for procuring brothels (Maugère, 2014). It is significant as well to observe non-enforcement of laws against violence and rape and the known lack of police reaction in case a criminal offense has been done against a prostitute. Criminalizing a number of forms of prostitution has the direct impact of lack of security for prostitutes from robbery, violence and intimidation for people working without permit (Lowman & Louie, 2012). Apart from being frequent, scholars have proposed that violence against sex industry workers is also on the rise. Others have observed that sex workers in Canada are exploited, controlled, assaulted and intimidated beyond the limit of the law, thus nothing can be done to help them (Hancock, 2010). The negative stereotyping of women sex workers compounds their challenge in developing the right to fair and proper treatment under the Canadian law. Invoking the shade of the Contagious Diseases Act, there have been amendments to invoke the Canadian criminal law to compulsorily detain HIV positive prostitutes who are still working (Lowman & Louie, 2012). What or Who is Being Controlled by Prostitution Enforcement and its Legislation? Is it public nuisance or just to manage the spread of diseases such as AIDS or other STIs? Is it to stop organized crime or law enforcement corruption or are there any other significant effects that the public is not aware off? To tackle such issues, it is vital to examine the wider issues of value and interest buried in prostitution legislation and its law enforcement. A Public Nuisance? When looking at law enforcement patterns, we can see how much discretionary power has been granted to the law enforcement body, as well as the discriminatory use of the criminal law, against prostitutes instead of their clients, against females rather than males and against specific sex workers. The stress on specific women plus the most autonomous or visible forms of prostitution alert the public of the truth that policing of prostitution implies more than the management of public nuisance (Lowman & Louie, 2012). The nuisance is moved around instead of eradicating it. If public nuisance is the key problem, then policing would not be discriminating but rather unilateral. If public nuisance is the main problem, then there would be small repellence to the idea of one or two female prostituting secretly from their own homes (Lowman & Louie, 2012). Prevention of AIDS of STDs Preventing the spread of diseases such as AIDS and other STDs have been the center of attention in contemporary years in most states, which have proposed compulsory health checks for prostitutes. The urge for a safe sex education program for prostitutes made the Canadian government fund the Prostitutes Collective (Edwards, 2011). Since prostitution forms the livelihood of a prostitute and since they know the danger of the diseases involved in case they contact them, prostitutes reveal an very good record with regards to the prevention of AIDS in the Canadian Health Department statistics (Hancock, 2010). With regards to the challenge of getting to customers through an education program, prostitutes have a key role in educating customers concerning safe sexual practices. Provided these issues, it would be difficult to defend more directive of prostitutes under the excuse of AIDS prevention. This prevention together with the prevention of public nuisance symbolize key official validation for the center of state resources, policy and regulation of the industry plus unnecessary center on prostitutes instead of customers or the people who stand to benefit from prostitution (Edwards, 2011). In contrast, other areas reveal a lack of state resources, investigation, as well as monitoring by law enforcement officers. Prevention of Organized Crime and Police Corruption There is a common saying in the Canadian sex industry that someone cannot have money and sex devoid of any violence and corruption. This was born out of various commissions about illegal activities happening around Canada (Lang, 2014). Female prostitutes and gay men are fast targets for police officers. What such control symbolizes is that regulations on sex working are a way of overseeing females sexuality together with their autonomous work, whereas also the industry is shaped through the shinning conceptions of mens sexual urges at the same time plus the overseeing of the industry by men (Hancock, 2010). Even in Central Canada, under the policy of toleration and control, the agencies that register sex workers and enforce conditions working, are main run by men plus the owners of the brothels (Lang, 2014). In addition, the countrys stand on the unavoidability of prostitution has effects for merging dual standards of ethics for women and men, the turning into objects for women and supporting a masculine theory of females sexuality. Drawing on various critiques, the state institutionalizes male authority using laws and consider women as second to men (Lang, 2014). Fraser Committee Situation The Fraser Committee (1984) recommendations housed a large parcel of trade-offs; this include (1) the criminal law decriminalization by suggesting that sex workers should be allowed to function from their own homes, (2) the exploitation of laws of planning so as to control their areas of operation, (3) creating a licensing board that will control the industry, as well as vet owners of brothels in case of criminal convictions and (4) create health regulations in order to control the spread of diseases such as AIDS and STDs (Moscucci, 2012). The amendments that the Upper House made to the Bill made the 1986 Prostitution Regulation Act to not be proclaimed. The government did not endorse the suggestion that sex workers be allowed to function in their own homes. Therefore, this still criminalizes street working and show the clear picture of the discretionary of the law enforcement. With the over 60 legally licensed brothels in Canada, the growth of large brothels has been witnessed, a number of owners having many shares, improper concern to ownership issues, as well as neglecting the safety of the prostitutes (Moscucci, 2012). The decentralization of planning-related problems to local authorities seems to not have worked, which constant declines of planning permits and licensing to independent workers (Hancock, 2010). Provided the reputed challenges of justifying the offence of unlawfully running a brothel, the number of unlicensed brothels have gone up, with the law enforcement saying that almost 200 unlicensed brothel operate in Ontario only. When it comes to issues of health, action has been overly slow just to say the least. The declaration of the Act was in 1987, but Health Regulation came into play 1991 (Moscucci, 2012). There seems, as well, to be a serious lack of coordination among bodies that regulate health. In the Canadian Health Department, officers with the duty of implementing the acts barely have any resources to help them do this and any reticent to implement regulations (Moscucci, 2012). For prostitutes, the new law and constant stress on law enforcement on prostitutes has forced them into more concealed and risky sectors of prostitution. Inaction on the Fraser Committee recommendation for a special task force to manage prostitutes grievances of violence has left prostitutes susceptible to not only sexual exploitation, but also violence (Maugère, 2014). Their representatives argue that work conditions in some brothels take advantage of prostitutes like underpaying them (Maugère, 2014). The Canadian Government has set up a number of interdepartmental monitoring committees that look into the issue of sex working, which have all claimed that there is a lack of cooperation with it comes to the implementation of prostitution-related laws. Local governments dismay of brothels, for instance, has made the entire national government a defacto state-wide planning board (Maugère, 2014). The Future The field of prostitution law improvement is epitomized by fear, ignorance, as well as improper communication. Sex working is a hard industry to control as it stretches over a wide a multitude of state laws and since it has such as symbolic importance (Lowman & Louie, 2012). There is a regulation on prostitution in Canada but the ways of coming up with these regulations and their impacts are far much less clear (Hancock, 2010). Provided the local governments opposition to permitting sex working with regards to their planning guidelines and since sex working is normally focuses on local authorities areas instead of others, it seems that a way of decriminalization with a national Licensing Board might be more appealing compared to a delegating planning issues to local authorities (Lowman & Louie, 2012). This will enable the combination of fair treatment of planning, sex working, health issues, training police officers, employment, and allow easy management of tasks of education, investigation, monitoring and other work conditions. It can also be a method of managing complaints. In addition, this can allow the adoption of principles of easing the danger of AIDS and other STDs by making sure that workers are accorded rights, dignity plus protection in their work and making sure that there is minimal exploitation and corruption (Lowman & Louie, 2012). However, in the long run, the government should look more into gender, power and sexuality. Two problems that particularly need to be tackled are mens demands for prostitutes plus the natural susceptibility of females when their power rests on their appeal to men or beauty (Lowman & Louie, 2012). In conclusion, this paper has look at the issue of prostitution in Canada. It has focused on how prostitution laws in Canada currently stand and also taken into consideration law enforcement patterns, together with the non-enforcement patterns. The paper has also discussed what or who is being controlled by sex working laws and their enforcement. It is vital to understand these point in order to understand the nations law on prostitution. As a broad recommendation, the law enforcement should treat prostitutes fairly and come up with laws that will ensure their safe working. References Edwards, S. (2011). Prostitutes: Victim of law, social policy and organised crime, in Gender, Crime and Justice, eds P. Carlen & A. Worrall, Milton Keynes. New York: Open University Press. Hancock, Linda. (2010). Legal regulation of prostitution. Victoria: Deakin University. Lang, E. (2014). The right to remain silent: Prostitution in Canada. Toronto: Kora Press. Lowman, J., & Louie, C. (2012). Public opinion on prostitution law reform in Canada 1. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/La Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale, 54(2), 245-260. Mackinnon, K. (2010). Feminism, Marxism, method and the state: towards a feminist jurisprudence. Signs, 8(3), 90-99. Maugère, A. (2014). Resistance to policy changes in relation to prostitution in Canada: The power of morality. Déviance et Société, 38(1), 29. Moscucci, O. (2012). The science of woman: Gynaecology and gender in Canada, 1800-1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More