New regulations in red districts
The Dutch government has decided to pay much closer attention to the red light district. The people who take advantage of the hot services will be surveilled by cameras.
The Dutch government is paying closer attention to prostitution to try and root out the crime. (jlp)
Reasons for video surveillance
Even though prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, the government is still in a great struggle against crime that is behind the work of the ladies of the night. Drugs, money laundry and selling girls are behind the whole thing. That’s why the mayors of Alkmaar and Utrecht decided to follow in Amsterdam’s footsteps from 2007 and start video surveillance in the parts of the city where there’s prostitution. The leading men hope they will find out which women are involved in the oldest craft voluntarily and which are actually sexual slaves. ''We need to know which women are being forced to work as prostitutes, or if women are abused or exploited,'' Aleid Wolfsen, the mayor explained. ''Filming the area, and knowing which pimps are connected to which women, will increase our opportunities to help the women.'' The mayor also explained to the public that the research made in the Utrecht area showed that more than half of the ladies of the night are coerced into doing their jobs.
Video surveillance will make them determine which girls were forced into the business. (jlp)
Some novelties in brothels as well
There are many brothels in the Netherlands that require a license to function. They have to have a list of their employees, which is sound bureaucratically but still doesn’t show which of the girls are there voluntarily and who was coerced. Now, this should change as well because the girls will have to apply for a licence individually. For ladies of the night, a brothel is definitely a better solution than the street because a research in Australia showed that brothels take better care of the prostitutes’ health. Researcher Basil Donovan from the University of New South Wales in Australia found out that the sexual workers in Sydney, where business is handled by brothels, have no sexually transmitted diseases, which is in sharp contrast to the neighbouring Queensland and Victoria, where most of the business is handled on the street and the number of infections is greater.
Some brothels will lose their license, while the remaining brothels will have to pay strict attention to Dutch laws. (jlp)
Protecting the ladies of the night
The security of prostitutes will be better taken care of on an everyday basis as well as long-term. The prostitutes will not only have the right to apply for a license personally, it will also be easier for them to get help in case they are abused. With their help, the police will have it easier to uncover the dirty deeds of pimps and brothels. There are 125 brothels in Alkmaar, a city north of Amsterdam. 95 of them will not have their licences renewed, only 30 will still be operational. The new regulations will allow the government to check the criminal past of brothel owners as well. The cities don’t intend to fully shut down the activity, they just want to make stricter regulations and get the crime out of the red districts. In other words, they want to clean up prostitution. Now, the police will also have all the jurisdiction to randomly check individuals who hang out in the red districts. The men of the law will even be able to give full-body searches to these people in order to preventively find drugs and weapons.
The police will have more jurisdiction in the red districts. (jlp)
What’s new in Amsterdam? 18 buildings which were previously used for sexual activities were bought by the city in 2007. Now, the buildings will be used for haute couture, or to put it in other words, for high fashion suited for private clients. Have the Dutch become more interested in fashion than in sex?
