As a UK resident, I had no idea prostitution was legal. Wikipedia says:
In the United Kingdom, prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is not a crime,[2] but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes.
So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.
It is one of those (many) spots where UK law is almost deliberately patchy. We don't make it illegal, but we make it hard to do legally. Having sex for money will never be completely outlawed, as it'll wreck a popular past time amongst the politicians who vote on these things (and their lobbyists & other interests)!
Basically it is illegal to advertise paid sex or go looking/asking for it - but if by chance during some other encounter someone who is willing to pay meets someone who is happy to be paid for it, then there is no crime.
Another oddity is pornography. A small brothel in Grimsby got around the brothel thing by having a camera in every room - that way porn was being filmed which sidesteps the wording of the law nicely by instead being a film studio that happened to work on adult material (apparently customers walked away with the tape afterwards, though to be honest I'd not trust that wasn't the only copy!).
AFAIK it is legal as long as the prostitute is effectively self employed (so not working for a pimp or brothel) and not selling services on the street, and of course over 18. This is where the internet comes in.
There is a certain website known for this which I will not link to here.
Nope, advertising online (or anywhere else) is illegal (offering sexual services for money). Pretty much the only time its legal is if two adults who have otherwise met come to a spontaneous agreement to have sex for money. E.g. if a friend says to me "I need £500 to pay my rent" and I say "how about I pay that for you and you have sex with me". Just to be clear, thats never happened to me. I don't have £500 spare...:)
As far as I can tell the advertising is only illegal if it is in what constitutes a "public place". IANAL but I doubt that a privately owned website would count as such and if it is illegal it doesn't appear to be enforced at all.
Women who work as prostitutes will usually pay taxes as self employed people and can actually claim advertising (as well as various other things that are best left to the imagination) back as business expenses.
A privately owned website that is generally available to the public most certainly does constitute a public place (in the same way that standing in a pub saying "who fancies a shag for £50" wouldn't get you off the hook. If you're soliciting TO the public, it doesn't matter where you are "standing".
Escorts pay tax and deduct expenses for the "Escorting" work they do, not the sex. If they declare the income as income for sex, the police quickly come knocking to arrest you for "living off immoral earnings" (a few have done so in the past as a "protest").
It is only an offence to live off the immoral earnings of others, not your own.
“Public place” includes any highway and any other premises or place to which at the material time the public have or are permitted to havea ccess, whether on payment or otherwise ”.
I wouldn't think a website constitutes a "place" under such a definition. Otherwise posting a picture of your genitals on a website could be viewed as indecent exposure, though IANAL.
Yeah, one sex worker rights activists described the approach politicians take to prostitution as "they don't criminalise us, they just criminalise everyone around us". So if a woman dares to have sex for money whilst living with a partner or with a teenage kid over about 12-14, their partner or kid can be arrested for living on immoral earnings. (Some other countries are even worse; apparently in Sweden landlords risk being arrested if they don't kick out sex workers renting from them upon discovering their line of work because it's illegal to make money from them full stop.)
Be careful with UK laws, there have been some recent additions.
In general two consenting adults who have sex and then exchange money is legal. But being a pimp is illegal; running a brothel is illegal; offering sex for money or offering money for sex is illegal. And there are some fierce laws about coercion and trafficking - the punter is guilty if the sex-worker is coerced even if the punter didn't know. And the UK has a stricter definition of trafficked than most other countries. A woman who is assisted to travel willingly and knowingly to the UK to do sex-work has been trafficked. And the punter is guilty even if they didn't know about it.
So, in the past you'd have someone offering a length of time for £X, and anything else that happened between consenting adults was just good luck, oh, and btw, here's a list of sexual practices that I like, and here's what I do not do.
For a grim website you can have a look at adultwork.com
Sounds easy to find loopholes. Instead of a "brothel", you have a clothes-optional "wellness club" with easy access to a building next door full of luxurious bedrooms, who just happen to be rented rather expensively by a bunch of beautiful women who like to hang out naked at the club... If necessary, the two operations can be run by completely separate companies.
There's a few "massage parlours" with frosted windows and flash(ish) cars parked outside dotted around Cardiff. Everyone knows they're brothels, but nobody really cares; at least that way the police know where the prostitutes are and can keep an eye on them more easily.
In Australia, or at least in my state, brothels are legal but open to health check inspections. Streetwalkers are illegal. It seems a sane approach - safer working conditions and public spaces.
The internet, private networks/listings, friend of a friend...
Japan is just the opposite: prostitution is illegal, but prostitution is defined by law as "penis in the vagina for money". So a lot of institutions have sprung up to offer every other kind of service.
So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.