SAFE on the STREETS

[Like its two immediate predecessors, this is a new piece, not to be found in my book which is freely downloadable by clicking the Common Sense link in the right-hand sidebar ... ]

So, how indeed can sex workers be protected? Suffolk Constabulary, confronted by an unprecedented series of murders of women prostitutes, have been taking some stick for "not doing enough", whatever that may be, to keep the women safe. In their turn, police spokesmen have begun to sound a touch exasperated that prostitutes are still out alone at night in a land that sounds faintly absurd to anyone who has vainly sought an edible evening meal in the town: "the red-light district of Ipswich".

Those women still working the Ipswich streets say they simply can't afford not to. You can see their dilemma, whether it be to feed a drug habit or to feed fatherless children. Like any other parent, they are under the cosh of capitalism's high season and its central obligation: to give the kids a fabulous (i.e. expensive) Christmas. If anything is still sacred to this season of the year, it is the spending of money. If the shops don't have "a good Christmas", then evidently no one else can have one either. Those long-lost yule traditions – carol-singing, a good long walk, non-electrical decorations, parlour games, exchanging family news – cost nothing. They have been replaced by the shopping spree, the blow-out, the hi-tech goods, the 24-hour television and the doubling of the power bill on lights all over the house. It's particularly tough for an unskilled mother who is the sole breadwinner.

But if a red-light district is policed, it will die. The johns will move out and look elsewhere. It is in the nature of casual and anonymous sexual encounters that they take place in the shadows. Al fresco group sex aside (and that is less rarefied than you might think), anyone partaking of a furtive sexual encounter does it on a one-to-one basis, not with the possibility of other people seeing. And that requires a high degree of trust on both sides concerning the unspoken rules. Anyone – be they hunter or hunted, looking for cash or just looking to get their rocks off – steps into this world knowing that it carries risks. If there's someone out there who has no compunction about killing cold-bloodedly or beating up or passing a sexually-transmitted disease or just robbing, it's easy enough to abuse that trust. As one who has gone out "cruising" in his time – looking for a quick encounter with another guy – I know that the undertone of danger and unpredictability is part of the experience. For some, it's the most important part. No one wants to end up beaten to a pulp with his underpants round his ankles, but the constant need to be watchful and intuitive about strangers and situations adds a piquancy to the quest.

Many of the women working the Ipswich streets will no doubt hate the life – a far higher proportion, I submit, than that of the gay men who haunt the town's cruising grounds. That they find themselves obliged to pursue a desperate course is compounded by the present danger. What's more, the punters must have substantially dwindled in number. Any man out looking for a biddable woman is liable to make himself a murder suspect. Only the really determined are going to run the gamut of police patrols and alerted prostitutes (who are perhaps carrying weapons for self-protection), not to mention the raggle-taggle army of the media.

The press and broadcast coverage seems to me to be simply bizarre. Why do bulletin editors think they are serving a useful function by sending their anchors to Ipswich night after night to go over and over the same bare facts and the same obvious and routine observations? Any half-intelligent viewer could do as good a job from his armchair without setting foot in Suffolk. Anyone who does enter Ipswich is certain to be "interviewed" by a researcher and, provided she says something wholly banal ("yes, it's very worrying"), she's bound to get on air. It all builds up a miasma of worry and concern to no purpose, a sort of vicarious dread, designed, I guess, to drive us off the streets and in front of the telly.

If there are further casualties and even then there are prostitutes still working the streets, the police will surely consider imposing a curfew on any women going out after, say, 9.00pm. I have a pre-emptive suggestion. In a situation like this, it is not women who are the problem. It is men. If anyone should be confined indoors during certain hours of darkness, it should be men.

But the sex workers won't thank the police for any controls on their or their customers' movements. After all, it's only one john who is wreaking havoc. I would imagine that market forces have by now heavily raised the rates to make up the short fall in punters. Whatever the danger, the working girls still need to work. Police, media and others visiting this underworld for a short period tend to forget that such danger has always been the context in which that market conducts itself.