Johanna Niemi

What We Talk About When We Talk About Buying Sex

This article explores the discourse on prostitution, trafficking, and buying sex. Buying sex or the purchase of sexual services, as the law says, has been a criminal act in Sweden since 1999. In the summer of 2006 Finland followed the lead, making it a crime to purchase sex from a person who has been subjected to trafficking or procuring. These reforms give a signal that the customers are responsible for increasing the international sex trade, but as the author argues, the commercial language used by the law makers may be a double-edged sword.

Tackling Trafficking by Targeting Sex Buyers: Can It Work?:

The European legal instruments on human trafficking encourage states to tackle the demand for services of trafficked persons, for example, by making the use of services of a trafficked person a criminal offense. In Finland, buying sex from a trafficked person is a criminal offense. This article reports the results of an evaluation of the Finnish law and shows that the implementation has been inefficient. The authors argue that with an amendment of the law, the implementation could be improved but a truly efficient policy would require a total ban of sex purchase along the lines of the Swedish model.