Male Sex Work: Exploring Regulation in England and Wales

Whilst sex-work policy in England and Wales claims gender-neutrality, local and national prostitution strategies primarily focus on female street-based sex workers. Men who sell sex are generally absent or inadequately considered in such policies, and measures to regulate commercial sex markets are rarely considered in terms of their impact on male working practice. Drawing on the Coordinated Prostitution Strategy for England and Wales, this paper has two aims: first, to offer a gender-based critique of the current policy framework for England and Wales by arguing that sex-work policy is infused by a gendered understanding of sex work in which male identities are neglected or assumed deviant; and second to explore the notion that understanding sex work as it is performed locally is valuable when generating local and national policy. Informed by gendered readings of policy, social understandings of masculinity, and the (in)visibility of male sexual commerce this paper explores male sex work in the context of Manchester, England.     

Controlling Consensual Sex Among Prisoners

Despite recent legal advances for LGBT citizens, including the Supreme Court's recognition of a constitutional right to engage in private, consensual, same‐sex sex, prisons continue to regulate sex in much the same way they have been doing since the nineteenth century. Nationwide, prisons bar consensual sex among prisoners, and those who violate this policy face severe punishment, including administrative segregation. Interviews with prison officials from twenty‐three states uncover beliefs linking consensual sex with violence that places the overall security of the prison at risk. While supporting LGBT rights and the decriminalization of same‐sex sex in society, officials insist that prisons are not suited for similar change. This article explains why prison officials have been so committed to this policy and argues that the time has come to reconsider prison regulation of consensual sex.     

When (Some) Prostitution is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform on Sex Work in Australia

In Australia, prostitution regulation has taken a very different path from many other countries. Law reform has led to the opening of some significant new spaces for legal sex work, including the (very different) regulatory regimes established in two Australian states – Queensland (brothels legal if their owners are licensed) and New South Wales (most commercial sex businesses and some street prostitution decriminalized; no licensing regime). The main research question is: how has regulation impacted on the positive rights of sex workers? I argue that law reform has engaged a mix of neo-liberal and other approaches – not to increase personal or corporate freedom but as part of a practical strategy designed to control a range of social problems, such as police corruption and organized crime. Neo-liberal regulation of prostitution in Australia has always been deployed in tandem with other modes of regulation – including new criminal law and policing strategies, planning law, health regulations, and (of course) moral regulation.     

The Movement to Criminalize Sex Work in the United States

Until recently, prostitution was not a prominent public issue in the United States. Law and public policy were relatively settled. The past decade, however, has witnessed a growing debate over the sex trade and the growth of an organized campaign committed to expanding criminalization. A powerful moral crusade has been successful in reshaping American government policy toward sex work – enhancing penalties for existing offences and creating new crimes. Crusade organizations have advocated a strict abolitionist orientation toward all forms of commercialized sex, which are increasingly conflated with sex trafficking. This paper examines the impact of this movement on legal norms and government policies. I argue that the moral crusade, and its government allies, are responding to the growth of the sex industry in recent years and to fears of its normalization in American society.     

The Gender Gap in Sex Offender Punishment

This paper tests theoretical arguments that suggest court actors hold gendered views of sex offenders that result in a gender gap in sex offender punishment, where women who commit sexual offenses are treated more leniently than their male counterparts. We test this argument with precision matching analyses using 15 years of data on all felony sex offenders sentenced in a single state. Results indicate that gender disparities in sex offender sentencing exist and are pervasive across sex offense types. Specifically, male sex offenders are more likely to be sentenced to prison, and given longer terms, than female sex offenders. Findings are similar across sex offense severity and whether the offense involved a minor victim. These findings suggest that female sex offenders are treated more leniently than their matched male counterparts, even in instances of more serious sex offenses and those involving minor victims. Findings support theoretical arguments that contend that court decision-making is influenced by legally-irrelevant characteristics and raise questions about the source of gendered views of sex offenders and their effects on punishment approaches. Findings also raise questions about the virtue of get-tough sentencing policies that provide leeway for such dramatic variation across different groups of people.     

Effects of the criminalizing policy of sex work in Spain

The aim of this study is to analyse the effects on sex workers of new regulations that ban the practice of street prostitution in Spain. This country has not traditionally maintained a clear policy regarding prostitution. However, in recent years there has been a clear turn towards the criminalization of behaviours related to voluntary prostitution. The city councils of several Spanish cities have banned the practice of street prostitution and sanctioned it with fines issued to both prostitutes and clients. Even if few studies on prostitution have been carried out in Spain, none of them had yet analysed the effects of the adoption of civic ordinances on sex workers.In this paper we present the results of an empirical research carried out with a sample of 79 sex workers – in 20 cases with in-depth interviews – to explore the effects of the new regulation on their labour conditions.     

Accuracy Rates of Sex Estimation by Forensic Anthropologists through Comparison with DNA Typing Results in Forensic Casework

A common task in forensic anthropology involves the estimation of the biological sex of a decedent by exploiting the sexual dimorphism between males and females. Estimation methods are often based on analysis of skeletal collections of known sex and most include a research‐based accuracy rate. However, the accuracy rates of sex estimation methods in actual forensic casework have rarely been studied. This article uses sex determinations based on DNA results from 360 forensic cases to develop accuracy rates for sex estimations conducted by forensic anthropologists. The overall rate of correct sex estimation from these cases is 94.7% with increasing accuracy rates as more skeletal material is available for analysis and as the education level and certification of the examiner increases. Nine of 19 incorrect assessments resulted from cases in which one skeletal element was available, suggesting that the use of an “undetermined” result may be more appropriate for these cases.     

Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Taking a feminist cultural criminological analysis to the regulation of sex work in the United Kingdom, this paper argues against the dominant deviancy and the increasingly abolitionist criminal justice model for regulating sex work. The paper begins by offering a critique of the dominant regulatory regimes which have operated since the Victorian era, amended in part in the 1950s with Wolfenden, and currently being reinscribed with the Home Office strategy on prostitution and various pieces of legislation. The focus is specifically upon research with female sex workers and the usefulness of using Participatory Action research methodologies (PAR) with sex workers, agencies, and policy makers in order to foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work, drawing upon the work of Nancy Fraser.     

Sex offender punishment and the persistence of penal harm in the U.S

The U.S. has dramatically revised its approach to punishment in the last several decades. In particular, people convicted of sex crimes have experienced a remarkable expansion in social control through a wide-range of post-conviction interventions. While this expansion may be largely explained by general punishment trends, there appear to be unique factors that have prevented other penal reforms from similarly modulating sex offender punishment. In part, this continuation of a “penal harm” approach to sex offenders relates to the past under-valuing of sexual victimization. In the “bad old days,” the law and its agents sent mixed messages about sexual violence and sexual offending. Some sexual offending was mere nuisance, some was treatable, and a fraction “deserved” punishment equivalent to other serious criminal offending. In contrast, today's sex offender punishment schemes rarely distinguish formally among gradations of harm or dangerousness. After examining incarceration trends, this article explores the historical context of the current broad brush approach and reviews the unintended consequences. Altogether, this article reinforces the need to return to differentiation among sex offenders, but differentiation based on science and on the experience-based, guided discretion of experts in law enforcement, corrections, and treatment.     

Sex Offender Reintegration: Consequences of the Local Neighborhood Context

In this paper we seek to assess the effects of the neighborhood context on sex offenders’ perceptions of their neighbor’s willingness to support them upon release. We also examine the effect of the neighborhood context on sex offenders’ feelings of stress and the need for secrecy, potential risk factors for recidivism. Using survey data obtained from a sample of 333 in-treatment sex offenders, we find that the neighborhood social context exerts an important influence on sex offenders’ perceptions of neighborhood support. We also find that offenders are less likely to worry about the negative repercussions of their status as a sex offender when they perceive higher levels of neighborhood support. Despite the limitations of the sample, implications of this research indicate a need for policies that promote public awareness of local sex offenders while also offering education and understanding about potential barriers to successful sex offender reintegration.     

性犯罪被害人权利保护的域外经验

与一般刑事犯罪被害人相比,性犯罪被害人在获得社会同情的时候,往往又容易被一般的社会舆论所中伤,其所受到的身心损害既持久又不易恢复;因此,美国、英国、德国、澳大利亚、日本、韩国等国家以及我国的台湾、香港地区主要从性犯罪被害人的知情权、参与权、免受二次受害权、请求赔偿和补偿权出发制定一系列非常细化、有效的规范,以实现对性犯罪被害人的特殊保护。     

Developing Outcome Measures for Criminal Justice Information Sharing: A Study of a Multi-Jurisdictional Officer Notification System for Policing Sex Offenders in Southern California

Information-sharing efforts are broadly assumed by criminal justice and security practitioners to be effective, yet their impact on policing performance has not been thoroughly studied. This paper develops measures for an information-sharing system in a population of sex offenders in Southern California. We compared interagency involvement and policing outcomes for registered sex offenders with (n = 3,919) and without (n = 581) records pertaining to their sex offender status in the Officer Notification System (ONS) of ARJIS. To account for differences in criminal activity, offenders were matched on each of four focal incidents (citations, field interviews, crime cases, and arrests) and compared on outcomes that followed the focal incident. Compared to controls, sex offenders with ONS records were 75 % more likely to be involved with multiple agencies, 92 % more likely to have a citation following a crime case, 34 % more likely to have multiple crime cases (i.e., a crime case following an initial crime case), 44 % more likely to have a field interview following a citation, over 2 times more likely to have a field interview following a crime case, and 20-30 % more likely to have an arrest after a crime case, citation, or field interview. Novel measures of information sharing revealed links between the sharing of information about sex offender registrant status and the frequency and timing of police incidents and inter-agency involvement.     

Sex determination in the subadult ilia: an indirect test of Weaver's nonmetric sexing method

The sexing of subadult remains has been an ongoing problem in physical anthropology for many years. This is due in part to the scarcity of subadult collections of known age and sex which are large enough to be used to develop and test analytical methods. Several methods have been devised but few have produced reliable results. In 1980, Weaver presented a method for sexing subadult ilia using a nonmetric trait (the raised versus nonraised auricular surface), which has an accuracy of 75% in fetal females and 92% in fetal males. His method has not been tested for reliability on a different subadult sample. An indirect test of Weaver's method was made on a sample of subadult South Dakota Arikara Indian ilia by comparing the ratio of raised to nonraised auricular surfaces with an expected 1:1 sex distribution. Bimodal sex distributions in the Arikara formed unrealistic sex ratios, following an age-related shift from a 6:1 raised/nonraised ratio in newborns to a 1:4 ratio in young adolescence. Significant age correlations were found both in the present study and in Weaver's published results. The age-to-sex correlations indicated no confounding in the present study. The results of this test suggest that auricular surface morphology is not sex specific in subadult ilia, but may be related to aspects of shape and morphology in pelvic growth.     

Infants Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: Issues of Gender and Sex

A review of the literature finds that the development of infants exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) may vary across sex as boys display more externalizing behavior, while girls show more internalizing behavior. Given this trend, gender- and sex-based analysis (GSBA) may play a critical role in understanding and improving the adjustment of these infants. Researchers are often encouraged to include gender and sex into their analysis, though they are rarely afforded appropriate direction in this process. The intention of this article is to provide guidance in GSBA for research on infant development in families affected by IPV. We present a discussion on GSBA, a review of the literature, explanations for differences in male and female infant development, a set of research priorities, and directions for future work. Findings suggest that a better understanding of the complexities in the adjustment of violence-exposed infants through GSBA may promote childhood development.     

Sex offender residence restriction laws: Parental perceptions and public policy

Despite a steady decline in sex crime over the past twenty years, new laws, such as residence restrictions, targeting such crime have proliferated. Some scholars have argued that public concern about sexual offending against young children has served as a catalyst for the emergence of these laws. Few studies, however, have empirically tested this claim. To address this gap and to contribute to scholarship on public opinion about crime and justice, this research tests a central implication flowing from prior work—namely, the notion that people with children will be more likely to endorse increased restrictions on where sex offenders can live. Analyses of public opinion data from a 2006 poll of Florida residents suggest that parents are indeed significantly more likely to support such restrictions. Implications of the study for research and policy are discussed.     

Responding to Child Sex Trafficking: Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Greater Mekong Subregion

The rapidly expanding market in enslaved children bought and sold for sex is one of the most inhumane transnational crimes that appears to have been facilitated by globalization and its many effects, such as a growing disparity in wealth between north and south. Child sex trafficking has become one of the most highly publicized social issues of this time, and, because of its global nature, transnational advocacy networks are well placed and central to leading campaigns against it. Transnational advocacy network anti-trafficking efforts have led to significant progress in the Mekong Subregion by bringing the child trafficking issue onto the global social policy agenda, resulting in new child protection legislation and improved interagency collaboration in the region.     

Sex determination from plucked human hairs without epithelial root sheath

For sex determination, it is difficult to examine the sex chromatin in the hair root devoid of the epithelial root sheath because of melanin deposition in the hair cortex cells. In the present study, the possibility of determining sex was sought by observing the frequency of Y chromatin in the nuclei of hair cortex cells from human hair root devoid of epithelial root sheath. The male hair contained nuclei in each of which one brightly fluorescent spot was recognizable. The average frequency of the fluorescent spot in the hair cortex nuclei observed in 90 samples from 30 males was 59.4%; the maximum frequency was 74% and the minimum 37%. On the other hand, the fluorescent spots were rarely found in the nuclei of hair cortex cells from female hair. The frequency of occurrence was 5.3% on average, the maximum frequency being 12%, the minimum 0%. The frequency distribution of the male group and female group exhibited two discontinuous peaks. The frequency of the fluorescent spots can therefore be used as a criterion for determining sex. The fluorescent spot in dried male hair was shown to be detectable in a frequency of 20 – 40% 4 weeks after plucking, indicating that the nuclei of hair cortex cells can be subjected to the examination for at least this period if the hair has been kept in a dry condition.     

Sex determination of Chinese femur by discriminant function

The objective of this study was to provide a method of sex determination for Chinese femur, especially for fragmentary remains. Statistical analysis of 17 measurements based on 141 northeastern Chinese femora shows that all measurements have significant sex differences. Sex determination by the midpoint method of a single measurement can obtain an average accuracy of 76.8%. The results indicate that of all dimensions the maximum head diameter is the best discriminator of sex. It alone can determine the sex of a femur with 85.1% accuracy. The results also show that maximum head diameter, transverse head diameter, epicondylar breadth, upper breadth, and medial condylar length have higher sexual dimorphisms than the dimensions of length. According to the result to stepwise discriminant analysis and the need for sexing fragmentary remains, 22 discriminant functions composed of various combinations of variables were calculated which can determine the sex of the femur correctly 82.3 to 87.2%. The methods of sex determination provided by this paper can be used to sex poorly preserved femora.     

关于性别医疗变更行为的法律思考

随着社会经济和医疗技术的飞速发展,性别变更医疗行为一方面给予了个人选择自己性别的权利的可能,另一方面也给社会带来了诸如性别证明、婚姻、亲属关系、就业、社会福利等一系列法律问题。目前,我国法律对变性手术实施的对象、法律条件、法律程序等缺乏明确的法律规定,如何让“变性”、法律、社会三者相互协调,既保证公民选择自己性别的权利,又保障整个社会的协调发展以达到个人与社会的双赢,是一个值得研究的问题。我国可以借鉴在考察外国相关立法,从性别变更医疗行为的范围、条件和程序诸方面进行规范。