In June 2019, two sex workers, one of whom was pregnant, were jailed for nine months in Ireland. The two Romanian women were selling sexual services from a flat they shared for safety when they were raided by the police. Selling sex is legal in Ireland, which has implemented the so-called Swedish model of sex work regulation. But because there were two of them the police were able to charge both with brothel keeping, which isn’t legal.

This is just one example of complicated risks facing sex workers in Europe today. Those risks don’t disappear under Swedish model, a legal framework promoted as a win-win way for states to protect sex workers while punishing their clients, as has just been shown. Regardless of the model used, sex workers, especially undocumented migrant sex workers, remain at high risk of criminalisation in Europe and consequently of imprisonment and deportation.

Discriminatory policing, profiling, and surveillance by authorities affect many communities of sex workers in Europe. Sex workers who are migrants, homeless, gender non-conformist, or people of colour come into higher than average contact with the police. As a result they also face disproportionate levels of detention and imprisonment.

Constant targeting

In countries where selling sex is an administrative or criminal offense, police routinely target both street-based sex workers and their clients. Sex workers soliciting in hotspots or cruising areas are particularly vulnerable to police harassment. Evidence from Serbia shows a pattern of arbitrary arrest for activities as minor as loitering at locations where sex workers usually solicit clients, offering services to passers-by, or even possessing condoms. Non-sex work related laws, such as traffic regulations or public morality and order offenses, are also routinely used against sex workers in places where selling sex itself is not illegal.

Sex workers aren’t only targeted at their workplaces. Gender and racial profiling makes them vulnerable regardless of where they are or what they are doing. Roma women in the Balkans, for instance, report constant harassment from the police in their daily lives, while Chinese sex workers in Paris report that they are often afraid to leave their homes and workplaces. They fear the police targeting them based on their migration status.