South Australian Sex Workers Allege Police Harassment as the State Considers Decriminalisation

Over the past two years, charges for sex-work offences in South Australia have spiked. The upward swing appears to have come in the wake of a bill that passed through the Upper House of the State Parliament in 2017, the ABC reports: a bill that aimed towards decriminalising sex work in the state.

In the 2017-18 financial year, South Australian Police laid 211 charges for sex-work related offences, according to statistics compiled by the parliamentary library for the Greens. In the 2016 calendar year, before the decriminalisation bill passed the Upper House, that number was just 11—marking a staggering increase of 200 charges within the space of 18 months. More than 80 per cent of those were for either “keeping a brothel” or for “receiving money in a paid brothel”, while Acting Assistant Commissioner John Venditto has claimed that more than 50 per cent related to an operation targeting an increase in “Asian prostitution”.

“The figures in 2017–18 are abnormal because of the response to Asian prostitution that came into South Australia,” he told a parliamentary committee this week. “In particular, the type of prostitution that was setting up in hotel rooms.”

Whatever the cause, though, sex workers insist they’re being harassed and intimidated by SA Police officers.

“Each time they’ve come into the unit, they’ve burst in—there’s no warrants,” one worker told the ABC, revealing that she’d been raided six times in the past few years. “I’ve asked for warrants and they won’t give me one… They [once] warned me if they come back again, they will be arresting me.”

Chief Inspector Greg Hutchins—the man in charge of the Licensing Enforcement Branch—said raids and visits to sex-work related premises were prompted by complaints from concerned indiviuals, and suggested that this was where the initial spike was happening.

“The police focus… in this area is on responding to complaints from members of the public, organised crime investigations, ensuring children are not exploited, possession and trafficking of illicit drugs, sexual servitude and people trafficking,” he told the ABC. “In the 2017-18 year there were 123 reports to Crime Stoppers about this industry—a 50 per cent increase from the year before.”

An identical bill to the one passed in 2017 is due to be debated in Parliament this week, and pressure is mounting from members of the Sex Industry Network (SIN) for it to be passed. It’s thought that the bill will have a good chance, SBS reports, with MPs from both the major parties offering support.

“If this bill gets passed, South Australia will be the first place in the world to fully decriminalise all sex work and set an important international precedent,” said Roxanna Diamond, a PhD candidate at Flinders University where research has been conducted into the rights and safety of sex workers. “It is an area where SA could show political and social leadership, and reclaim the mantle of progressiveness.”

SIN general manager Kat Morrison suggested that SA Police were worried the legislation would pass, depriving them of the power to enforce their will upon the sex industry.

“They are potentially worried that the decriminalisation bill is going to pass through Parliament, and that they’re going to be stripped of some of the power that they currently have as gatekeepers of the sex industry,” Kat told the ABC. “At the end of the day, we’re talking about consensual adults participating in a consensual, commercial, sexual service.”

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