Simon Fraser University criminology student Christine Louie conducted a survey of residents in the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona, and found that more than three-quarters of respondents believe prostitution should be legalized.

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NEWS: Student survey reveals community support for sex workers

The government should decriminalize adult prostitution in Canada, according to the majority of responses to a recent survey conducted by Simon Fraser University student Christine Louie. The survey, titled “Community Attitudes to Street Prostitution: The Downtown Eastside and Strathcona,” was conducted as part of Louie’s work toward her honours criminology degree.

The survey suggests that 76 per cent of people who identified as Downtown Eastside or Strathcona residents think adult prostitution should be decriminalized, and that the sale of sex should be legal. Sixty-seven per cent of self-identified business people in the area favoured decriminalization, while 21 per cent supported criminalization. All respondents agreed that street prostitution is more dangerous than other high-risk jobs, and that sex workers need safe working conditions.

One-hundred and sixty-three people participated in the survey, which was conducted online between February and March of this year. Louie distributed a total of 1,069 flyers in February advertising her call for survey participants. While reaching the estimated 11,920-person population of the two neighbourhoods would have required more time and resources than Louie had for her research, the study is significant, despite its limitations. Her supervisor, SFU criminologist John Lowman, notes that the only random-sample survey on street prostitution he knows of was conducted in 1984, and the only other surveys similar to Louie’s were conducted by major newspapers.

“I think the results send a message that two communities affected by street prostitution support law reform, and they are concerned about decreasing the hazards involved in street sex work,” says Louie of her study. “I think that’s a thing the government should pay attention to — particularly during this time... when all these programs are getting cut and we’re more worried about street sex workers being displaced during the Olympics.”

The ongoing displacement that sex workers face, Louie says, demonstrates the need for prostitution law reform. “One community gets it displaced into another community, and another community that doesn’t want it gets it displaced to another area. It’s like this never-ending cycle,” she says. “If there are not any laws or any real change, there’s nowhere for [sex workers] to go, except in isolated areas that are extremely dangerous for them... I don’t think that people in general understand the issue around displacement and the problem it creates. It’s a short-term solution, and I think that’s a problem.”

In addition to providing analysis of her survey results, Louie’s study delineates the history of displacement endured by sex-trade workers on Vancouver’s streets. Over the past 30 years, workers have been moved, often by police acting on the request of residents, from the West End to Mount Pleasant to Grandview-Woodlands to the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona. While these moves have quelled various neighbourhood complaints about street prostitution, the working conditions and safety of sex workers hasn’t improved, particularly in the wake of the Mobile Access Project (MAP) overnight outreach van shutting down on June 12 as a result of funding cuts by the provincial government. The van distributed condoms, clean needles, and first-aid supplies to sex workers while on their strolls. Advocates in support of reinstating MAP’s provincial funding held a candlelight vigil at the van’s regular stops on Tuesday night (June 23).

The cut to MAP’s funding, says SFU’s Lowman, is “unconscionable.” “It’s a reflection of the general attitude that politicians have [toward] the problems of the women on the Downtown Eastside,” he says. “It’s almost like it’s forgotten about the 60 or more women who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside.”

Despite the controversial loss of a service like the MAP van, Pivot Legal Society lawyer Katrina Pacey says Louie’s study shows promise for change, at least on the community level. “What this survey reflects is a result of what this neighbourhood has seen, which is incredible rates of violence and incredibly dangerous conditions,” she says. “I also think it’s very promising that they then see the way to remedy that situation is the decriminalization of sex work.”

Pacey says she and her colleagues at Pivot consider decriminalization to be a “necessary step” in reducing what she sees as many of the potential harms present in the sex industry. “I think people have a concern that if sex work is decriminalized, that it becomes sort of legitimized, or somehow it becomes something that society is seen as promoting,” she says. “And we don’t agree with that... We want sex workers to have control over their working conditions, we want sex workers to be free from violence in their work, we want them to have employment standards and rights, and we want them to be able to exit sex work without a criminal record and without all the scars that one carries as a criminalized person.”

As for the idea that the 2010 Olympics will increase pressure on Vancouver’s sex industry, Pacey says the biggest Olympic threat against sex workers, as with other marginalized communities in the city, is displacement. “I think poor people, people struggling with mental health, people who are marginalized, and part of the visible street population, are going to, in some way or another, end up displaced,” she says.