NCJ Number
195993
Date Published
2002
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the tendency of British "protective" policies toward young female prostitutes to become an expanded "net" of punishment.
Abstract
The strategies adopted in a reforming process intended to protect young girls in prostitution from abuse and ensure that they do not end up in custody also create conditions for a greater criminal justice punitiveness that can result in "protective" incarceration. When youth prostitution is symbolically separated from its social and material context, and especially when it is divorced from the anti-youth social policies of two decades, there is only the thinnest of lines between the official recognition of victimization, the emergence of an official ideology of young prostitute victimhood, and increased levels of state disciplinary regulation in the name of protection. By arguing that young prostitutes are different from older prostitutes, the reform policy has made it easier for agencies to perceive prostitutes under 18 years old as vulnerable victims and girls "in need;" however, in leaving unchallenged the dominant criminal justice construction of prostitutes and prostitution as a public nuisance and law enforcement problem, the reform has created a policy in which young prostitutes are viewed as either victims or as offenders, but not both. The techniques and strategies adopted have created the conditions in which official responses are organized around "risk assessment," which in turn has created the conditions for both a greater official punitiveness toward some young prostitutes viewed as "offenders" and a blurring of the boundaries between protection and punishment for others. 10 notes