Violent and non-violent crimes against sex workers : the influence of the sex market on reporting practices in the United Kingdom

Connelly, LJ; Kamerade, D; Sanders, T

Abstract

Previous research has shown that sex workers experience extremely high rates of victimization but are often reluctant to report their experiences to the police. This paper explores how the markets in which sex workers operate in the United Kingdom impact upon the violent and non-violent crimes they report to a national support organization and their willingness to report victimization to the police. We use a secondary quantitative data analysis of 2,056 crime reports submitted to the UK National Ugly Mugs (NUM) scheme between 2012 and 2016. The findings indicate that although violence is the most common crime type reported to NUM, sex workers operating in different markets report varying relative proportions of different types of victimization. We also argue that there is some variation in the level of willingness to share reports with the police across the different sex markets, even when the type crime, presence of violence, and other variables are taken into account. Our finding that street sex workers are most likely to report victimization directly to the police challenges previously held assumptions that criminalization is the key factor preventing sex workers from engaging with the police.
Key words: sex work; violence; policing; reported victimization

Citation

Connelly, L., Kamerade, D., & Sanders, T. (2021). Violent and non-violent crimes against sex workers : the influence of the sex market on reporting practices in the United Kingdom. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(7-8), NP3938-NP3963. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518780782

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 10, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Jun 21, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 10, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Interpersonal Violence
• Print ISSN: 0886-2605
• Electronic ISSN: 1552-6518
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 7-8
• Pages: NP3938-NP3963
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518780782
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518780782
• Related Public URLs: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jiv