Kerbcrawler rehabilitation programmes: Curing the 'deviant' male and reinforcing the 'respectable' moral order

Abstract

This paper has two aims: to outline the current policy and ideology behind 'tackling demand' for commercial sex through targeting 'kerbcrawlers' and to critique support for and rise of 'kerbcrawler rehabilitation programmes' in the UK. Such attempts to 'reform' sexual 'deviants' through a criminal treatment process are criticized on accounts of ineffectiveness; resource intensiveness; the content of the programme; the disregard for legal process and theory; and the damaging effects of the programme. The messages behind the policy and rehabilitation programmes are examined through the discourse of respectability, and the desire to reinforce a sexual order by scapegoating this group of men as the sexual 'other' alongside female street sex workers. The discourses behind New Labour prostitution policy are examined where it is argued that the governance of prostitution through criminalization amounts to 'moral engineering'. © Critical Social Policy Ltd 2009.