NEED FOR DRUGS OUTWEIGH RISKS

THE horrendous events in Suffolk have focused attention once again on
the reality of street prostitution in the UK. Who are these women?
Why do they take these risks? And how can they continue to work when
there is a killer on the streets? The answer to almost all these
questions can be summed up in one word - drugs.

Drug addiction exerts a vice-like grip far greater than their
instinct for self-preservation. The women in Suffolk will huddle
together and they will talk of the murdered and feel a sense of some
safety in numbers. But clients don't stop at groups of women, so the
groups will disperse, and when the cars stop the women will get in on
their own. From that point on their lives hang by a thread.

In interviews I carried out with women working on the streets across
Scotland the story was depressingly familiar. Almost all of the women
were driven to sell sex by the need to feed their drug habit. In the
minds of many men the typical image of the prostitute is someone
standing on the street displaying a blatant sexuality in their
clothes and their manner. The reality is rather different, with so
many of these women displaying the hollow-eyed, painfully thin
features of advanced addiction.

Many entertained ideas that they would leave prostitution once they
had earned enough money to survive. But survival for these women was
not about long-term planning, but from one day to the next.

I asked them what kept them working when they knew the risks they
were taking. Beth came up with her answer: "What keeps me working?
That's easy - it's the money. If I stayed at home like at Christmas
I'd be worrying about not having the money for drugs and thinking all
the time of the customers th at were out here."

Would these women's lives be any better if they were allowed to work
in a managed zone? The Scottish Executive and the Home Office have
ruled out such a suggestion. Among the chorus of voices from
politicians, civil servants, counsellors and feminists there is an
unbroken line that prostitution is a form of violence to women that
can never be facilitated by the provision of an area where it can
take place. Among those I interviewed there was hardly a single voice
that did not extol the benefits of a managed zone. "You would feel
that much safer coming out at night. Working in a tolerance zone the
girls feel much safer - it's loads better."

Neither the women in Suffolk nor the women in Scotland will get the
tolerance zones they need because, in the end, while their deaths may
horrify and fascinate, they don't threaten us.

We don't want to help these women in a way that conflicts with our
other principles. As a result, they will be left largely to fend for themselves.