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- The offender must admit the offense.In the case of a prostitutes caution, neither of these is required. According to the Crown Prosecution Service:- The behavior leading to a prostitutes caution need not itself be evidence of a criminal offense.
- There is no requirement for a man or woman to admit guilt before being given a prostitutes caution and there is no right of appeal.So sex workers suspected of soliciting (it's legal to buy and sell sex in the UK, but illegal to solicit or work together as a group in a flat) can be slapped with a caution, even if there's not enough evidence to take the matter to court. Want to call foul? Tough: there's no right of appeal.Cautions remain on your record. If you want to go into work that requires you to interact with children or vulnerable adults (i.e. most care jobs), cautions will show up on an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check (previously called a Criminal Records Bureau, or CRB, check). And if a potential employer sees you've got cautions, there's a good chance you won't get the job. In some cases, it's probably not even worth applying.
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There's no point pretending that having prostitution on your record doesn't carry a particular stigma. The thought of a potential boss having this information about you would be enough to put most people off applying for a job in the first place. But if care work is a field into which sex workers are likely to migrate, and if thousands of cautions are being handed out every year that prevent them from doing so, what amounts is a crisis."Once you've got a record you're stuck on the streets. It's a vicious cycle."
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