On the 1st April this year, it became a criminal offence to "pay for sex with someone who has been forced, threatened, exploited or otherwise coerced or deceived into providing the sexual services by someone else who has engaged in such conduct for gain."
This quote comes from the Home Office website which provides an informative insight into the reality of these women's lives on the streets, very few of whom are there by choice.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/reducing-crime/prostitution/
The article also shows how it's not the prostitutes themselves that are thought of as the criminals, but the drug lords who supply them, the traffickers who force them into the country and threaten them and the men who go out looking to pay for sex either because they get a kick out of it or can't get it for free.I think this is a positive step by the government to help reduce and eventually irradicate prostitution, but it is only one step of many that need to be taken.
By flipping this decision on it's head and legalising prostitution wouldn't help the situation at all. Instead it would probably encourage more men to go out and participate and send out the wrong message to young girls considering their future careers and lifestyles. I think everyone knows being a prostitute doesn't mean your going to eventually meet a nice, rich man with good morals and live happily ever after, but legalising it would surely influence girls to think that it's not the worst job in the world and boys to think it's not such a bad thing to pay for.
Many men and women in today's society use their bodies in a commercial way through a variety of professions, but I can't think of one, (apart from being a porn star and as far as I know, most of them have made that choice themselves) where they have to literally sell their body to make ends meet. I don't believe it's a choice that anyone should have to make, or infact would make if they could do something else.
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