Author of TORL's fav study says no evidence Nordic Model works

[liffey]

h/t Wendy Lyon

http://researchprojectkorea.wordpres...alse-optimism/

The article is Copyright, so I shouldn't quote the whole thing. Please use the link above.

Finnish politicians who want to follow Sweden’s approach and introduce a total ban on buying sex should think twice. There is nothing to support the claim that prostitution in Sweden has decreased since the country established the law in 1999, says Jari Kuosmanen, associate professor at the University of Gothenburg, who was the first to evaluate the effects of the law. According to him, the problem is that politicians didn’t base the legislative change on research.

Prostitution in Sweden has become a political issue, for better or for worse, he says. There are politicians who travel to Nordic countries and praise the law without having any evidence of its success. Instead of basing their statements on research, politicians cite the government’s assumptions, which according to Kuosmanen, are often biased.

His colleagues and him were thwarted by social welfare authorities when they proposed to establish a prostitution research centre. “The risk is of course that we researcher find something out that goes against the purpose of the law.”

[liffey]

(Apologies if this has been been posted here before. It's a hell of a read. Emphasis mine below.)

Ann Jordan's Issue Paper from Rightswork.org examines the impact of the Swedish Penal Code from 1999. She concludes:

'Not surprisingly, the experiment has failed. In the thirteen years since the law was enacted, the Swedish government has been unable to prove that the law has reduced the number of sex buyers or sellers or stopped trafficking. All it has to show for its efforts are a (contested) public support for the law and more danger for street-based sex workers. Despite this failure, the government has chosen to ignore the evidence and proclaim the law to be a success; it also continues to advocate that other countries should adopt a similar law.'

Auteur:
Ann Jordan

Source (institute/publication):
Rightswork.org / American University Washington College of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Download this resource:
Issue-Paper-4[1].pdf

[samlad]

Of course it works. It portrays a zero tolerance to the immoral nature of paying for sex

[talkabout]

It works because there is widespread public support for it (all a politician wants) as there would be here.Issues of sex workers themselves will often be ignored because "Big Brother" always knows best.