Soft prohibitionism to face street sex work: Civic ordinances and the Gag Act

Abstract

In Spain the exercise of sex work is not regulated. Although the neo-abolitionist model, which fully identifies human trafficking and prostitution and punishes exploitative behaviour in prostitution and the consumption of sexual services, has triumphed at the political level, has only been apparently adopted at a normative level. Under criminal law, prostitution and the exploitation of the prostitution of others are punishable, even with the consent of the prostituted person, if that person is of age, along with the facilitation of the prostitution of minors and disabled persons in need of special protection, in addition to the purchase of services of a sexual nature and the consumption of pornography only when they are provided by minors or disabled. However, the massive approval of civic ordinances in Spain from the new millennial meant the adoption of a soft prohibitionist model, since most of these sanction the offering of sexual services in the street, imposing fines on both sex workers and sexually exploited persons themselves. The adoption of this prohibitionist model has been reinforced with the approval of the Gag Law, which also ends up sanctioning sex workers who offer themselves on the street. The application of these norms is leading to the criminalization of street sex work, without adequately addressing the cases of sexual exploitation and without offering, at the same time, a legal alternative to the practice of sex work.