Sex workers’ confidence in the police in one Canadian city under the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act

Abstract

ABSTRACT Confidence in the police, a significant concern of sex workers across the globe, is an important gauge of their views of the legitimacy of law enforcement and their likelihood to seek help when in harms’ way. The purpose of this study is to explore sex worker confidence in police in one Canadian city after the enactment of the dramatically revised prostitution law in 2014, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. In 2017–2018, a cross-section of active sex workers (N = 60) from Victoria, Canada, were interviewed about their personal and work lives under the criminal code law. Thematic analysis was carried out using the participants’ answers to these questions: (1) You said you have _____ confidence in the police. Please elaborate on why you feel this way about the police; (2) You said you had _____ interactions with police in the last 12 months? What happened, when, where, why, etc.? Have your interactions with the police changed in recent years? Our findings show the police’s treatment of sex workers is influenced by intersecting stigmas and structural factors that shape the confidence sex workers’ have in law enforcement. We provide greater contextualisation related to the confidence sex workers have in police, why lack of confidence may not always be synonymous with negative experiences, and why their distrust of the ‘institution of policing’ highlights the importance of having public policies that address the fundamental causes of sex worker victimisation and stigmatisation.