Sex Work and Occupational Homicide: Analysis of a U.K. Murder Database

Stewart Cunningham,P.G. Macioti,Pippa Grenfell,Teela Sanders,Lucy Platt

doi:10.1177/1088767918754306

Stewart Cunningham, P.G. Macioti + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767918754306

Copy DOI

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of occupational homicides of sex workers in the United Kingdom, 1990-2016. Characteristics of 110 people murdered between 1990 and 2016 are explored including the location of their murder, ethnicity, migration status, and gender. Key changes over time are noted including an increase in the number of sex workers murdered indoors as well as an increase in murdered migrant sex workers. By developing the concept of “occupational homicide,” we argue that sex worker homicide should be viewed as an occupational issue and that the distinction between work-related homicide and nonwork-related homicide should be accounted for in future studies and is essential to inform prostitution policy.

Highlights

In the literature on sex work and homicide, a consistent theme is the extraordinarily high risk of murder faced by those who sell sex
Murders that were committed by friends, acquaintances, and family members or in other circumstances unrelated to the victim’s involvement in sex work were classified as nonwork related. It has been established though in nonsex work studies that murders can still take place in the workplace but be committed by family members: 33% of workplace homicides against women in the United States were committed by a personal relation, the majority (78%) being intimate partners (Tiesman, Gurka, Konda, Coben, & Amandus, 2012). While these are classed as examples of both workplace homicide and intimate partner violence, we argue that our classification of sex worker homicides committed by family members as nonwork related is valid as it enables a focus on the occupational factors that make sex workers so vulnerable to homicide at the hands of strangers and clients, who represent the majority of perpetrators (Brewer et al, 2006; Neville, 2012; Salfati, 2008)
The results of the literature review as well as the empirical analysis of the National Ugly Mug sex work murder database show that sex workers are, by a large margin, the occupational group at most risk of homicide in the United Kingdom and the United States

Summary

Introduction

In the literature on sex work and homicide, a consistent theme is the extraordinarily high risk of murder faced by those who sell sex. It has been estimated that cis-gendered female sex workers in the United States are 18 times more likely to be murdered than women of the same age and race from the general population As this article focuses on the U.K. context, it is important to first set out the country’s legal approach to sex work. It is not a crime for two consenting adults to sell or pay for sex. Like in the United Kingdom, there are often a host of laws which criminalize the activities around the selling of sex: pandering, procuring, promoting prostitution, solicitation, or agreeing to engage as a seller or buyer. The differences are most likely in the enforcement of the laws, as the United States appears to be stringent in their efforts to arrest, prosecute, and imprison whereas the United Kingdom approaches range from enforcement (fines not prison) to harm reduction and welfare/protection approaches including the first managed street sex work zone (see Sanders & Laing, 2018)

Method

Findings

Conclusion and Future Research