Policed Abandonment: The Role of Policing in Sex Workers’ Access to Justice

Policing strategies play a central role in shaping sex workers' vulnerability to violence and their access to justice. Under punitive sex work laws and other repressive policies used to target sex workers, these strategies often prioritise surveillance and punishment over sex workers’ rights and safety. As enforcers of these laws, the police are tasked with both implementing sex work-related policies and protecting individuals from crime. This dual role can create tensions that hinder sex workers' access to care and legal protection when they experience violence and abuse. My presentation explores the role of law enforcement in restricting sex workers’ access to justice as victims of crime. It builds on a feminist participatory action research project conducted by the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance in cooperation with 13 national sex worker-led and sex workers' rights organisations. Drawing on 199 in-depth interviews with sex workers across 11 European countries, it analyses their everyday encounters with the police and investigates their experiences when seeking help or attempting to report violence and other crimes committed against them. Our data reveals that the intense, punishment-oriented policing documented in all the countries studied constitutes a major barrier to justice for sex workers. Instead of offering protection and facilitating justice, the police often create dangerous environments for sex workers, further undermining their safety and depriving them of legal protection. Consequently, repressive and punitive law enforcement strategies foster conditions that can be conceptually understood as ‘policed abandonment’—a mode of sex work governance characterised by both over-policing and the persistent denial of rights and access to state support for sex workers.