Thank you for your question. In terms of our local experiences, with local laws and bylaws, we encounter a lot of difficulties as sex workers. At one point the police tried publishing the names of clients who were caught and arrested. This seriously endangered and impacted us as sex workers, because if clients think their names might be published, they don't feel comfortable providing us with their real names when we're seeking to vet them and make sure they're safe clients in those initial discussions. We had to protest that, and it was a difficult process.
We also saw during COVID that our strip clubs were closed much earlier than other clubs were, which pushed sex workers working in strip clubs to find other avenues for sex work. Workers in our community were also heavily impacted by COVID bylaws, and the police heavily enforced those on the sex workers in our community, including things like, when the curfews were in place, not travelling from one place to another after 8 p.m. We actually had street-based sex workers who weren't able to access our services because police would stop them if they were out walking to or from their home or the place they were sleeping outside to access us.
As for decriminalization, at SafeSpace London we really support that because we really see the impacts of this law locally, in terms of our relationships with the police, because the police here do support and work through a PCEPA context.
We cannot improve our relationships with police until decriminalization happens, because as long as there is criminalization, the police will be working through that lens of focusing on sex workers and our job. Right now, we can't go report to police. As a peer support worker, when somebody comes up to me and gives a bad date report, I always ask them if they would like to report it to the police and I offer to go with them to the police station. Even when offered peer support, they still do not feel comfortable going.
That is the extent to which we do not feel safe. We keep hearing a narrative that training the police will help, but it cannot take place until decriminalization happens, because the police cannot be educated to support us until they are no longer working to eradicate us.