Jane Scoular

Jane Scoular
University of Strathclyde · School of Law

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102
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Publications

Publications (102)
Chapter
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In this chapter, we report on sex workers’ responses to incidents of unwanted contact—such as the removal of a condom, non-payment, or other client behaviours that crossed their boundaries. We examine the actions sex workers take during and after these violations, exploring their motivations and the influence of formal law, workplace rules, and soc...
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The concluding chapter synthesises the findings from the entire book, emphasising the need for legal frameworks that respect the dynamic nature of consent in sex work. It highlights the disparities between legal definitions and the lived realities of sex workers, calling for inclusive policies that empower sex workers and enhance their safety. The...
Chapter
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In this chapter, we examine how sex workers learn to negotiate with clients and how they set and maintain boundaries within commercial sex transactions. Expectations for a commercial sex transaction in terms of what services will and will not be provided are set up in the negotiation process. This negotiation constitutes a verbal contract which, in...
Chapter
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This book examines how sex workers navigate different legal environments—criminalised, partially criminalised, legalised, and decriminalised—and how these contexts influence their experiences and definitions of sexual violence and unwanted sexual contact. In this chapter, we introduce the book’s main goals and foundational concepts. We start by out...
Chapter
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This chapter explores two primary questions: What range of unwanted contact incidents do sex workers most frequently encounter? Moreover, how does the law influence their understanding, interpretation, and definition of these incidents? We highlight the concept of transactional legal consciousness, distinguishing it from rape consciousness, to expl...
Chapter
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In this chapter, we examine how sex workers interact with the criminal legal system, focusing on the challenges they face in reporting violations and seeking justice. Research shows that sex workers rarely engage with the police and broader criminal justice system, facing injustices, discrimination, and limited access to justice worldwide. To advan...
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This chapter lays out the various formal laws, legal regulations and court cases that directly concern prostitution, sexual violence, workers’ rights, and criminal justice processes, as pertinent to addressing unwanted sexual contact in the context of sex work. We discuss the formal law for each of our case-study jurisdictions: the UK (England and...
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In this chapter we outline the details of the study. We explain the methodological decisions around methods, recruitment, and analysis. This chapter shows clearly the trauma-informed design which underpins this study given the subject of sexual violence. We detail the ethical principles of the project which is reinforced through the participatory a...
Article
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Background Globally, the most important human rights and public health issue that sex workers face is their experience of high levels of violence (Kinnell, 2006, Kinnell, 2008, Alexander, 1999). Deering’s systematic review estimated levels of sexual violence in sex working populations as being between 14% and 54% (Deering et al, 2014). Aims This i...
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It has been well established at a global level that sex workers are often victims of direct violence in the course of their work, targeted by their ‘perceived vulnerability’ as a marginalised group. In one police force in England (Merseyside) since 2006 they have addressed this victimisation through adopting a ‘hate crime’ approach to policing crim...
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Leigh Goodmark's work on domestic violence argues for alternatives to criminal justice to 'solve' issues of gendered violence. The criminalisation of sex work and prostitution is rarely discussed in this context-a rather odd omission given the increasing trend towards 'criminalising demand' and counter-calls for decriminalisation in this domain. In...
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Drawing on the largest study of the United Kingdom online market in sexual labour to date, this article examines the legal and regulatory consequences as aspects of sex work increasingly take place within an online environment. Our research shows that while governmental policy has not kept abreast of these changes, the application of current laws (...
Chapter
This chapter draws on findings from the Beyond the Gaze (BtG) research project, the largest UK study to date of the working practices, safety and regulation of the online sex markets. BtG has produced some significant data sets which shed light on the characteristics and regulation of contemporary sex work, particularly for independent escorts and...
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Full-text available
This chapter draws on findings from the Beyond the Gaze (BtG) research project, the largest UK study to date of the working practices, safety and regulation of the online sex markets. BtG has produced some significant data sets which shed light on the characteristics and regulation of contemporary sex work, particularly for independent escorts and...
Article
Study Aim: This paper tries to grapple with some of the questions about counting numbers in the sex industry as an adjunct to a much larger sociological study of the ways in which digital technology has changed the commercial sex industry. The project sets out to reflect on the ethics of counting online and what this means to the sex work community...
Article
It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the int...
Article
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The rise of the internet and related digital technologies has had a profound impact on many aspects of people’s working and social lives, including the buying and selling of sexual services. In addition to providing new ways to advertise for sex workers who provide services to clients in person, the internet has also seen the development of complet...
Chapter
Full-text available
Technology, particularly digital communication, has had a profound impact on how we organise our lives, conduct our relationships and the transactions of commerce and retail (van Dijk in The network society, Sage, London, 1991/2012). Sex work is part of this digitally networked society. Increasingly sex is sold via the internet. Most sex workers an...
Chapter
This chapter considers the legal and regulatory consequences of the increased use of digital technology in sex work. We consider how police are attempting to respond to a rapidly changing environment and the pressures this brings to traditional policing rationales and practices. The BtG study confirms that currently, there is limited awareness of o...
Chapter
In this chapter, we explore the types of crimes that Internet-based sex workers’ experience, and the rise of new forms of crimes such as harassment, stalking, unwanted contact and misuse of information and images. We assess the role of the Internet and technology in safety strategies, uncovering some of the ways in which technology benefits sex wor...
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This chapter reviews some of the core findings from the Beyond the Gaze dataset to consider the characteristics and working patterns of sex workers who market or provide services via the Internet. Specifically, this project has included sex workers of all genders, highlighting diverse practices and experiences when compared with the existing litera...
Chapter
The conclusion draws out some key messages from Beyond the Gaze which has assessed the impact of digital technologies on work, safety, crimes and policing. Technology has indelibly shaped contemporary forms of commercial sex, but quantifying this market is difficult. Online mediums provide greater fluidity, flexibility and autonomy, but there are a...
Chapter
The diversity of online working practices is reflected in the huge proliferation of online spaces used to facilitate commercial sex. These are broken down, in this chapter, into twelve distinct categories which enable the organisational features of online sex markets to be explored. Platforms and websites adopt varying business models, which in tur...
Book
This book takes readers behind the screen to uncover how digital technologies have affected the UK sex industry. The authors use extensive new datasets to explore the working practices, safety and regulation of the sex industry, for female, male and trans sex workers primarily working in the UK. Insights are given as to how sex workers use the inte...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the contemporary regulation of sex work in England and Wales, placing this in the context of debates concerning morality, evidence and the efficacy of policy. Design/methodology/approach This brief paper is based on reflections on the authors’ research and their contribution to policy debates over th...
Book
The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and cont...
Article
An increasingly dominant neo-abolitionist perspective on the issue of prostitution is currently taking hold across Europe. Pioneered in Sweden, this approach considers prostitution as inherently oppressive and seeks to tackle the dynamics of supply and demand by criminalizing purchasers and offering support to sellers who are regarded as victims. A...
Article
The UK seems set to follow the increasingly abolitionist trend that is taking hold in Europe in response to the issue of prostitution. While some argue that an abolitionist approach signals a serious attempt to tackle the injustices and gendered aspects of commercial sex, we are less optimistic. Drawing upon the findings of the first study to evalu...
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The aim of this chapter is to assess critically contemporary legal reforms that operate according to an abolitionist vision.
Article
There has been an exponential rise in use of the term vulnerability across a number of political and policy arenas, including child protection, sexual offences, poverty, development, care for the elderly, patient autonomy, globalisation, war, public health and ecology. Yet despite its increasing deployment, the exact meaning and parameters of this...
Article
Following Matthews’ (2005) recent examination of prostitution’s changing regulatory framework, we offer a critical account of the move from ‘enforcement’ (punishment) to ‘multi-agency’ (regulatory) responses as, in part, a consequence of new forms of governance. We focus on the increasing salience of exiting - a move favoured by Matthews as signali...
Article
Sexuality and international relations (IR) have long been seen as entirely separate fields of enquiry. In recent years, feminist interventions in IR have undermined this separation by examining the interplay of gender and sexual identities in nationalism and militarization, the role of women in the globalized sex industry and the activities of tran...
Article
In this article, we explore both a neglected geography (the location of sexually oriented business) and a neglected instrument of sociospatial control (premises licensing). Arguing the former is increasingly shaped by the latter, we suggest that licensing provides a flexible means by which the state is able to reconcile the growing demand for “adul...
Article
This volume seeks to respond to a particular moment in the study of commercial sex and its governance, pinpointed by an unprecedented rise in, and increased visibility of, sexual commerce and consumption and corresponding growth in associated forms of regulation. Whilst common themes of controlling sexuality and changes in regulatory frameworks kni...
Article
In the context of a Europe where sex work laws have undergone considerable revision in the last decade (Kilvington et al, 2001), the reforms in Sweden have excited much comment because of the unique prohibitionist stance adopted by the Swedish government, which has criminalised the purchase (but not the sale) of sexual services (see especially Ekbu...
Article
In the UK media, the Netherlands is often described as sexually liberal because of the seeming availability and visibility of commercial sex and pornographic materials. But Kilvington et al (2001) argue that the majority of the population remain strongly censorious, and the moral attitude of the Dutch towards prostitution is not so different from t...
Article
Though Scotland’s prostitution scene shares many characteristics with that existing in England and Wales, legal responses and national prostitution policies have often been markedly different. Moreover, the interpretation and enforcement of the law has varied considerably within and between Scottish cities, with policing and management having devel...
Article
Traditionally, prostitution has not been criminalized in England and Wales, regarded as a private transaction conducted between two consenting adults. However, there are many pieces of legislation that seek to regulate and punish a wide variety of acts associated with prostitution in the interests of public health, social well-being and moral order...
Article
Contemporary prostitution policy within the European Union has coalesced around the view that female prostitution is rarely voluntary, and often a consequence of sex trafficking. Responding, different nation-states have, however, adopted antithetical legal positions based on prohibition (Sweden), abolition (UK) or legalization (Netherlands). Despit...
Article
Over the last decade there has been growing debate in the UK on the best way to regulate sex work. Pivotal in such debates have been two major consultation exercises (Home Office, 2004; Scottish Executive, 2005) that have considered the reform of prostitution laws that have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. As such, increasing attention h...
Article
This study examines how residential areas characterized as being used by female street sex workers are shared by different sections of the community. In light of debates about managing ‘the street scene’, researchers from Staffordshire, Loughborough and Strathclyde Universities considered whether residential streets could serve as shared spaces whe...
Article
In a field dominated by research on street-based prostitution, Teela Sanders’s first book ‘Sex Work: A Risky Business’ offers a much needed analysis of the complexityand plurality of contemporary sex markets.Grounded in the lived experiences of 55 women operating in a range of settings (from saunas, escort agencies and streets to private flats) in...
Article
Prostitution is often viewed in feminist theory as the sine qua non of the female condition under patriarchy. Frequently cited as ‘the absolute embodiment of patriarchal male privilege’ (Kesler, 2002: 19), the highly gendered nature of commercial sex appears to offer a graphic example of male domination, exercised through the medium of sexuality. T...
Article
There is substantial literature on how fears of Other populations are prompting the increased surveillance and regulation of public spaces at the heart of Western cities. Yet, in contrast to the consumer-oriented spaces of the city centre, there has been relatively little attention devoted to the quality of the street spaces in residential neighbor...
Article
Signalling an important contribution to the field, Phoenix and Oerton’s ‘Illicit and Illegal: Sex, Regulation and Social Control’ offers a critical account of contemporary efforts to regulate sex. The book begins with the paradox that cannot have escaped the attention of many readers in the field: that the apparent increase in freedom, choice, and...
Article
Sasaki analyses the significance of silence in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, arguing that ‘silence is both a language of connection and a strategy of resistance’ (p. 135) and unsettling the white western assumption that speaking out is always a healthy option. This gave me some purchase on my discomfort with the idea, so fundamental to Gilligan and her coll...
Article
Most towns and cities in the UK and USA possess a number of venues offering sexually orientated entertainment in the form of exotic dance, striptease or lap dancing. Traditionally subject to moral and legal censure, the majority of these sex-related businesses have tended to be situated in marginal urban spaces. As such, their increasing visibility...
Article
The protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act 2001 (Hereinafter, the PFA Act) received Royal assent on 6 November 2001 and came into force on 6 February 2002.
Article
Asylum seekers - Social security (persons from abroad) Regulations 1996 - Government withdrawel of benefit from Asylum
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A comprehensive review of Law and Policy in relation to prostitution has recently begun in the UK
Article
Drawing on recent empirical work that considers the relationship between different legal approaches to the 'problem' of prostitution.
Article
The "Subject" of prostitution.
Article
Law's Presumptions:contact and domestic violence.
Article
Drawing on recent empirical work that considers the relationship between different legal approaches to the ‘problem’ of prostitution, this article argues that the frequently drawn distinction between apparently diametrically opposed positions, such as prohibitionism and legalization, is certainly less significant than is often assumed and may, in f...
Article
Prostitution is often viewed in feminist theory as the sine qua non of the female condition under patriarchy. Frequently cited as ‘the absolute embodiment of patriarchal male privilege’ (Kesler, 2002: 19), the highly gendered nature of commercial sex appears to offer a graphic example of male domination, exercised through the medium of sexuality. T...
Article
Criminalising "Punters".
Chapter
This article considers the likely success of recent reforms of prostitution policy by reflecting on a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded study that examined the experiences of those living and working in areas of street sex work. This empirical work points to some of the dangers of policy frameworks and techniques of control that continue to...
Chapter
Introduction Recent reforms of prostitution policy in the UK have been abolitionist in tone, with concerns about community safety and violence against women encouraging zero-tolerance strategies. In relation to street sex work, such strategies include a range of interventions – from voluntary referrals to compulsory intervention orders and Anti-Soc...
Article
Full-text available
The experience of cocaine and ‘crack’ use among participants involved in (n = 19) or exiting (n = 10) prostitution in Glasgow, Scotland, is described. In-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews enquired about their use and experience of using cocaine and their perception of its effect on working practice. Twenty-three of 29 participants had us...
Article
In this article, we explore both a neglected geography (the location of sexually oriented business) and a neglected instrument of sociospatial control (premises licensing). Arguing the former is increasingly shaped by the latter, we suggest that licensing provides a flexible means by which the state is able to reconcile the growing demand for "adul...
Article
Full-text available
This is the authors' own final version of the book chapter. The book, Safer sex in the city, is available from: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754626152 Over the last decade there has been considerable political debate in Britain concerning the efficacy of prostitution law. Sex work – at least in its visible and more traditional forms - is disappe...
Article
Full-text available
This article was published in the journal Human Geography [© Sage Publications]. The definitive version is available at http://phg.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/3/363 Most towns and cities in the UK and US possess a number of venues offering sexually-oriented entertainment in the form of exotic dance, striptease or lap dancing. Traditionally...
Article
Full-text available
Contemporary prostitution policy within the European Union has coalesced around the view that female prostitution is rarely voluntary, and often a consequence of sex trafficking. Responding, different nation-states have, however, adopted antithetical legal positions based on prohibition (Sweden), abolition (UK) or legalisation (Netherlands). Despit...
Article
There is substantial literature on how fears of Other populations are prompting the increased surveillance and regulation of public spaces at the heart of Western cities. Yet, in contrast to the consumer-oriented spaces of the city centre, there has been relatively little attention devoted to the quality of the street spaces in residential neighbou...
Chapter
Measures to tackle anti-social behaviour and nuisance to residents, particularly in urban areas, have been a major focus of UK Government policies over recent years. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and subsequent legislation such as the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 introduced stricter powers, particularly through the use of anti-social behaviour...
Chapter
This chapter examines the impact of gentrification and prostitution on urban neighbourhood space. The studies in five British cities suggest there are a multitude of tensions that may arise in areas of street sex working, and, irrespective of the cause of these tensions, the result is a differentiated landscape of tolerance. The chapter argues that...
Chapter
Conceived as a series of policies intended to bring people back into cities, urban renaissance offers a new vision of environmentally sustainable, socially balanced, and aesthetically inspired urban regeneration. While clearly informed by New Labour's specific concerns about active citizenship, social inclusion, and community participation, urban r...
Article
Full-text available
Following Matthews' (2005) recent examination of prostitution's changing regulatory framework, we offer a critical account of the move from ‘enforcement’ (punishment) to ‘multi-agency’ (regulatory) responses as, in part, a consequence of new forms of governance. We focus on the increasing salience of exiting—a move favoured by Matthews as signallin...
Article
This article considers the likely success of recent reforms of prostitution policy by reflecting on a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded study that examined the experiences of those living and working in areas of street sex work. This empirical work points to some of the dangers of policy frameworks and techniques of control that continue to...
Article
In 2003, the Minister for Justice constituted the Expert Group with the aim of considering the legal, policing, health and social justice issues surrounding prostitution in Scotland.
Article
Prostitution is often viewed in feminist theory as the sine qua non of the female condition under patriarchy. Frequently cited as 'the absolute embodiment of patriarchal male privilege' (Kesler, 2002: 19), the highly gendered nature of commercial sex appears to offer a graphic example of male domination, exercised through the medium of sexuality. T...
Article
A comprehensive review of law and policy in relation to prostitution has recently begun in the UK, marking the first major re-examination of the issue since the Wolfenden Report in the 1950s ('Sex law to get major overhaul' The Guardian, December 30th 2003). A Home Office consultation paper on the subject was due to be published in the summer of 20...
Article
This report considers the policy background against which "Routes out of prostitution" a Social Inclusion Partnership ("S") is operating.
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The position of equity in Scots Law is an uncertain one.
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Alternative dispute resolution has been described by Simon Roberts as a fugitive label attached to a range of disparate and contradictory, but entangled projects.
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In 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act made it illegal for a man to rape his wife. This transformation was achieved simply by removing the word 'unlawful' from the statutory definition of rape as it appeared in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976.

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