ISSUE 5 2008 - Sweet & Maxwell

Crim. L.R. Public Nuisance Injunctions Against On-Street 369
sex work. Local authorities can still use their powers under s.222 of the Local
Government Act 1972 to stop the individual from committing a particular offence
where criminal proceedings proved inadequate to bring the problem to an end.
However, the crime targeted could not be one of public nuisance if the crime
did not exist, nor could an injunction be used to stop a non-existent offence.
Accordingly, local authorities would have to revert to using the many statutory laws
which are more defined, for which a criminal standard of proof is required, and to
which the stick to beat the offender has been adjudged appropriate by Parliament.
Without doubt civil remedies can offer a range of advantages that the criminal law
cannot match in either scope or flexibility. It is not surprising therefore that there
is no indication to date that local authorities will refrain from using, or threatening
to use the PNI against sex workers. 118 By utilising the civil law, punishments can
be meted out to offenders while bypassing the criminal law’s cumbersome and
time-consuming constraints. Yet, of course, the criminal law’s cumbersomeness
and time constraints are there to serve a purpose. As Ashworth contends, human
rights have little significance where they are ‘‘simply ... ‘weighed’ against the
public interest and then discarded, and also because it implies that the defendants
are ‘outside’ the community’’. 119 However, the rights of the community have always
‘‘trumped’’ the rights of the sex worker—the outsider. Nevertheless, arguably, as
long as it is the visibility of sex workers that is at issue for local authorities rather
than sex worker welfare, on-street sex work will continue in the Ladywood area
of Birmingham—an area that in the run up to the issuing of the PNIs against sex
workers appeared on the list of the top 10 poorest parliamentary constituencies. 120
Strategies of zero tolerance may oust sex workers from a targeted area for a time but
they do not provide a long-term solution. 121 More often than not, as the breaches
of a quarter of the injunctions issued against sex workers in Ladywood and the
breaches of ASBOs in that same area indicate, 122 such strategies stand to return
sex workers to the clutches of the criminal justice system.
118 There is no wording to this effect either on Birmingham City Council’s website or
indeed the many Home Office/Government sites such as Respect, http://www.respect.gov.uk
[Accessed February 20, 2008]. In fact, the very opposite is true, the use of PNIs to tackle
street sex work is very much encouraged.
119 Ashworth, ‘‘Social Control and ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’’’ (2004) 120 L.Q.R. 263 at
290–291.
120 ‘‘Report Reveals Britain’s 10 Most Poor Areas’’, Society Guardian, February 18, 2002,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/feb/18/socialexclusion [Accessed February 19, 2008].
121 The work of Street Watch in Balsall Heath was held up as a success, see M.
Lean, ‘‘The Red Lights go Green in Birmingham’’’ (1996) For a Change Magazine,
http://www.forachange.net/browse/1504.html [Accessed March 5, 2008]. However, as already
noted, the actions of Street Watch led to the displacement of sex workers into
Edgbaston/Ladywood, Sanders, ‘‘The Risks of Street Prostitution’’ (2004) 41 Urban Studies
1703. Several years later the deployment of ASBOs in the Ladywood area were thought to
be ‘‘the’’ effective deterrent; see Orr-Munro, ‘‘Curbing Street Sex’’, Police Review, July 28,
2002, but still, the City Council had to issue PNIs little more than a year later.
122 With regard to PNIs see Birmingham City Council, Legal Services Briefing Note,
(2004), para.4.12; Jones and Sagar, ‘‘Crime and Disorder Act 1998’’ [2001] Crim. L.R. 873,
which highlighted breaches of ASBOs by sex workers in Birmingham.
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