Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business (20 page)

The cases were selected because of both their similarities and important differences. They are major northern European cities, each with at least one geographically distinct red-light district (RLD) hosting visible commercial sex businesses. Each RLD has existed for decades. The three cities were
not
selected because they are “representative” of the nation as a whole; in fact, no city could be considered representative, as the sexual landscape of each differs in at least some respects from that of other cities in each nation. The national contexts themselves differ somewhat in their legal regimes—prostitution being de facto legal in parts of Belgium and de jure legal in Germany and the Netherlands. And each city’s RLD differs from the others in appearance, constellation of businesses (erotic and other), the location and visibility of sex workers, and the kinds of people one normally finds on the street. The three cases also differ in the types of prostitution located elsewhere in the city, outside the red-light district. In short, although prostitution is permitted and regulated in each setting, the cities differ significantly in the social ecology of sex work. A
red-light district
is defined here as an area where sexually oriented businesses are clustered and publicly visible and does not include areas where prostitution is confined to street-level transactions. In the three cities examined here, street prostitution is almost nonexistent.

Antwerp’s model is that of a
single-purpose
RLD organized around window prostitution. Its ecology differs radically from the much more
variegated
vice zones in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. In the latter settings, indoor prostitution is mixed in with conventional businesses (bars, cafes, snack shops), other erotic businesses (strip clubs, peep shows, live sex shows, shops selling porn and sex toys), or other vice (marijuana bars, head shops, gambling arcades). Both the clients and nearby residents are likely to view a multiuse entertainment zone that includes commercial sex differently than a single-use prostitution zone. The former allows the visitor to engage in “a package of activities that comprise the night-out, … [and] advantages are maximized by the location of prostitution close to other entertainment facilities.”
²
Yet there can be advantages to a single-use zone as well, namely, public order, safety, and manageability by the authorities. Antwerp scores high on these measures and presents the greatest challenge to the traditional notion that vice districts are always run-down, disorderly, and dangerous. And Antwerp is by no means unique: several other cities host single-use, tranquil, and orderly RLDs—including a number of German and Dutch cities.

Ethnographic material is crucial for shedding light on the ways different red-light landscapes shape the perceptions and experiences of individuals who enter or reside in such zones. Scholars are just beginning to draw connections
between the structure and ambience of red-light areas and the experiences of residents, visitors, workers, and clients. As Phil Hubbard recently wrote, the “affective geographies of these spaces could benefit from further scrutiny … [including] the way in which the ambience of particular settings contributes to the consumer experience by heightening or arousing specific desires … [and] the ways in which sex workers perform particular idealized identities to appeal to particular types of clientele.”
³
These structural-experiential links are explored to some extent in this chapter and the next. I would add that the ecology of a particular red-light district is important not only sociologically but also for public policy. Different kinds of arrangements present distinctive challenges for law enforcement and order maintenance, are more or less likely to generate complaints from local residents and merchants, and increase or decrease the chances that a commercial sex sector will, at some point, become politicized and perhaps subjected to greater restrictions. Comparative analysis of different cases can help us assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternative models and perhaps contribute to the larger project of identifying arrangements that may be judged “best practices”—an admittedly complex undertaking addressed in the book’s conclusion.

Historically, American red-light areas were the deliberate creation of city officials, motivated by the state’s interest in controlling vice and insulating respectable areas from it.
⁴
European cities also experimented with official zoning, though many RLDs evolved more spontaneously (often in dockside areas frequented by sailors).
⁵
Today, some cities have tried to manage prostitution by relegating much of it to specific zones (Hamburg, Singapore, Tokyo), while other cities have no RLD whatsoever (e.g., Berlin, Vienna). In each of the three cities I studied, sexual commerce takes place both inside and outside designated red-light districts. The general pattern is one in which most if not all visible prostitution (in identifiable brothels, window units, or on the street) is geographically concentrated in particular locations, while less visible types (escorts, discreet or clandestine brothels) are dispersed throughout the city. Segregation is never watertight in practice, and zoning restrictions will always meet resistance from individuals who prefer to operate in the shadows. In fact, the amount of prostitution
outside
a designated RLD may be substantially greater than what takes place within it. Therefore, it is important to examine both the RLD and what lies beyond it.

It is worth noting that the populations of the three cities differ, with Amsterdam and Frankfurt being significantly larger than Antwerp—numbers that translate into different local client pools.
⁶
Amsterdam also has many
more tourists than Frankfurt and Antwerp do, thereby creating a larger pool of foreign sex customers (in 2007, 3.9 million tourists visited Amsterdam, 1.5 million visited Frankfurt, and 636,000 visited Antwerp).
⁷
English is the lingua franca in these tourist-centered RLDs—captured in business names and signage, an obvious means of appealing to an international audience.

A useful starting point, which might be overlooked, is to recognize that the legal sex workers in the three settings do not risk arrest and punishment for prostitution: they are able to work with little fear of legal penalties. And this is true regardless of whether the system is one of de facto or de jure legalization. The sale of sex, per se, is not illegal in these three contexts, though third-party involvement (e.g., brothel ownership) has been either illegal in the past or is currently illegal yet tolerated (Antwerp). In other words, the owners and managers have been at greater risk for sanctions than have the sex workers themselves. Workers and third parties who operate underground, outside the legal system, are by definition subject to sanctions. This includes immigrants who lack work permits and persons who engage in street prostitution, which is forbidden in all three cities and constitutes a small share of the market in the three nations.
⁸

Belgium is a more conservative country than are Germany and the Netherlands. According to the World Values Survey, fewer Belgian than German and Dutch citizens approve of abortion and homosexuality, for example.
⁹
The most recent poll on prostitution that included all three nations dates from 1990, when 46 percent of Belgians said that prostitution is “never justified,” compared to 33 percent in Germany and 20 percent in the Netherlands.
¹⁰
This partly explains why prostitution is only de facto legal in a few Belgian cities, rather than formally legal at the national level. Federal law in Belgium outlaws third-party involvement in prostitution, effectively criminalizing brothels, escort agencies, and other managed types. However, some of these are tolerated and regulated in some cities. Such extralegal regulation is somewhat precarious. As one Antwerp official told me, “We have to be careful in regulating prostitution as a whole because then we’d be contravening the law.”
¹¹
In fact, the regulation that does take place is technically in violation of federal law but permitted for pragmatic reasons, mirroring the de facto legalization that existed in the Netherlands prior to 2000.

Over the past decade, several legalization bills have been introduced in parliament, some of which were closely modeled on the Dutch or German
laws. None passed, and competing proposals have been introduced as well, including bills that would criminalize clients (inspired by Sweden) or force local governments to close existing brothels and window prostitution.
¹²

Window prostitution exists in Brussels and Antwerp and a few small cities (Ghent, Liège). Brussels’s RLD is located away from the city center, near the city’s north train station, whereas Antwerp’s is closer to the city center but some distance from the main square. Other types of prostitution can be found in Brussels and Antwerp, in some bars and in brothels located in residential areas; the following analysis of Antwerp focuses on its windowed red-light district.

In the 1990s, Antwerp faced a growing problem with prostitution on the streets and in indoor locations scattered around the city. Window prostitution existed on three streets behind the central train station (about 60 windows in the 1990s) and in 17 streets around the old sailor’s dockside area (the
Schipperskwartier
), where sailors stayed while in port and where prostitution has long thrived (comprising about 280 windows in the 1990s).
¹³
Things deteriorated as organized-crime groups moved into the area in the 1990s. Eastern European women were brought to the windows, there were occasional outbreaks of violence between competing crime groups, and conventional businesses and residents moved out. In 1998, residents signed a petition asking the city to clean up the district, and in 1999, the city council passed a plan with four goals: to confine prostitution to a specific red-light zone and remove it from other parts of the city, to eliminate organized crime, to reduce public nuisances, and to improve working conditions for prostitutes.
¹⁴
Street prostitution was considered a public nuisance, and the authorities began to crack down on it. In 2000, the city’s social-democrat mayor began the process of squeezing prostitution out of certain areas and confining it to a three-block “tolerance zone” of neon-lit window rooms located in the old dockside area (about 20 minutes’ walk from the central town square). Permits are required of owners who rent windows to sex workers, and the permits must be signed by the mayor, so it would be wrong to consider the rules simply informal. There is also a separate building code for window rooms, and compliance with the code is monitored by city officials.

The renovation of most of the units in recent years means that “the working conditions for prostitutes thereby improved drastically.”
¹⁵
Antwerp’s mayor describes the post-2000 changes in positive terms: “We have concentrated
prostitution into three streets and that means we can put in place tough criteria. Most of these people are working in extremely good conditions. It was not like this five years ago. Now we have been able to create a situation where women are more independent [and] they are safe.”
¹⁶
A 30-minute documentary, “Skippers’ Quarter,” confirms this verdict under the banner “Antwerp’s prize-winning approach to urban renewal in its red-light district.”
¹⁷
The film shows how the city dealt with problems in the area, and the award recognizes the city’s creative approach to urban planning. According to the official in charge of the city’s prostitution policy, Antwerp has largely succeeded in redistributing visible prostitution into this RLD. There is clandestine brothel and bar prostitution outside the area; however, most street prostitutes relocated to Brussels. The city has also tackled the large organized-crime groups, though pimps remain a problem. The official told me, “We got the big organized-crime groups out of the picture, but the individual pimps are more common, and it’s very difficult to get rid of all the [third-party] in-betweens.”
¹⁸
Police patrol the area in civilian clothes, monitoring anyone they think might be a pimp, and they do the same undercover work to combat male prostitution in parks. A city bylaw allows officers to stop, question, and search anyone in the RLD.

In the 1990s, approximately 4,000 cars drove through the Skippers’ Quarter daily on their “tour d’amour,” which gave the area a rather disorderly flavor: one observer recounted how “at four in the morning the place was packed with slow-moving cars, horns ablazing, the lads in the cars shouting at the girls in the windows dancing about.”
¹⁹
Today, the RLD is a strictly pedestrian zone, with cars banned to minimize public nuisances (noise, traffic jams). There are no minors or illegals operating in the window area.
²⁰
A small police station sits in the center of the RLD with a visible
Politie
sign. Officers patrol the area day and night, periodically visiting every sex worker and examining passports to confirm that they are adults and that they are citizens of Belgium or another European Union nation or possess documents allowing them to work in Belgium. Crimes in the prostitution sector, including assault and rape, have decreased substantially since the RLD was reinvented in 2000–2001,
²¹
and the police report that they have a generally positive relationship with the workers. A member of the prostitution squad, for example, stated, “Rather than being an enemy, the girls know we are here to help them and that helps us to gain their trust so we can prevent crime.”
²²
Additionally, residents’ “complaints related to prostitution have stopped almost completely,” according to an official report.
²³
In 2002, the city installed a health clinic in the heart of the RLD, which offers prostitutes
anonymous and free psychological counseling, tests and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and assistance for those who wish to leave the trade. The center’s website states that “anonymity is guaranteed,” with visitors identified only by their working names and birthdates and test results remaining confidential.
²⁴
The health center provided 2,785 of these consultations in 2008.
²⁵
It also sponsors a mobile outreach worker who visits prostitutes at their workplaces; she is a former prostitute trusted by the workers. If she learns of problems, she can pass the information along to the police or other authorities.
²⁶