Sex worker-led provision of services in New Zealand: Optimising health and safety in a decriminalised context

Abstract

Decriminalisation recognises sex work as work; it provides opportunities for promoting the health of sex workers and therefore goes a long way to addressing health and human rights inequities for this sector of the population. This chapter focuses on three scenarios (among many) where decriminalisation of sex work in New Zealand has been successful in promoting sex workers' health, safety, and wellbeing and, in so doing, provides a blueprint for best practice in working with sex workers. Although services for sex workers are available in many countries, they tend to focus on street-based sex workers, who are perceived as the most vulnerable and thus most in need. A decriminalised context provides greater access to peer support (Harcourt 2010), which is much better positioned to address the complex needs of all sex workers. It also allows for sex workers to engage with others in the community for more effective policy as well as service provision (O'Neill and Pitcher, Sex work matters: exploring money, power and intimacy in the sex industry, Zed Books, London, 2010). In this chapter, we discuss: How access to police has been improved for sex workers who wish to report sexual assault How decriminalisation has enabled interagency collaboration when working with sex workers who have concerns about practices within certain brothels How new sex workers access information on safe practices in a decriminalised environment. We use the research literature from New Zealand and elsewhere to expand on the real-life stories of the engagement between New Zealand Prostitutes Collective and sex workers, agencies, and individuals to illustrate the three scenarios.