The real price of sex

If you consider kerb crawling *** in Middlesbrough,**** Peterborough, Southampton, London, Bristol, Bournemouth or Leeds in the next 6 weeks - think again.

Vernon Coaker at the Home Office is on your case .." Local communities are fed up with street prostitution" , so a poster campaign supported with radio spots has started this week to remind offenders that conviction could cost them their job,** their driving licence and a £1,000 fine and unwelcome correspondence at their home address.

They are also providing an income for drug addicts and thereby supporting the local drug trade and are resevoirs for sexually transmitted infections.

A research study of 127 male kerb crawlers published in 2004 showed that ages of clients ranged from 17-80 ( median age of 35), almost half were married, two thirds were in full-time employment, and three-quarters had no previous criminal convictions. Although no data is available, anecdotal observation suggests that the home address of the offender is distant to the site of the offence.

Copies of the posters are available here as pdf's

Costs of the campaign to the tax payer and the Home Office, have not been revealed, nor any methodology of how effective the campaign is in terms of reducing the nuisance to local residents or in cracking down on offenders. Toni Fabuloso suspects that the evidence after the recent murders in Ipswich is that the ladies are a highly mobile workforce and will simply move on ... as will their more highly mobile customers... "Admitting he had travelled 20 miles from Trawden to trawl Bank Top for sex, the man promised he would never do it again."

The Government's strategy for dealing with street prostitution was published in January 2006 and can be found at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-paying-the-price/

** Can an employer sack you for having been convicted of kerb crawling - or soliciting ? A Solicitor writes... No....unless you manage Tottenham Hotspur or are a goalkeeper or Jaguar test driver or were Director of Public Prosecutions or a doctor in Darlington or a minister in the United Reformed Church in Middlesbrough.****

*** Chambers - kerb-crawler Noun. Someone who indulges in kerb-crawling, the practice of driving slowly alongside the kerb in order to lure potential sexual partners into the car.