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Committee tackles issue of street-level prostitution

Enforcement isn't working, there are huge gaps in service and prostitutes believe they have no self worth – these are all known facts leading a street-level prostitution committee seeking a better way to deal with sex-trade workers.
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The current system of arresting prostitutes only to release them back out into the streets isn't working, according to a committee that is striving to improve the way prostitutes are dealt with in the city. File photo.
Enforcement isn't working, there are huge gaps in service and prostitutes believe they have no self worth – these are all known facts leading a street-level prostitution committee seeking a better way to deal with sex-trade workers.

Those three facts are only a few listed by the committee as part of a problem-based learning system that will eventually lead to an action plan put in place by Greater Sudbury Police Service and social agencies that deal with prostitutes on a regular basis.

Committee members believe the entire system has failed in preventing prostitutes from exiting the situation. Just like it takes an entire village to raise a child, it will take an entire system to eradicate the prostitution situation in Sudbury.

The committee has been meeting since about September 2011. Const. Randy Hosken is leading the discussions as part of GSPS' community response unit. The unit was created to offer a new approach to dealing with community issues, such as prostitution, by using problem solving to deal with these issues. Strategies like crime prevention through social development (CPTSD) deal with quality of life issues and rehabilitating the offender to prevent crime.

The community response unit is designed to encourage a shared responsibility with the public. Officers work with community and professional partners to attempt to identify the root cause of the problem through analysis and implementation of solutions that go beyond the traditional reactive law enforcement approach.

“If we continue down (the current) path, we won't get anywhere,” Hosken said. “The girls will get out of jail and then end up right back on the streets.”

The committee brings to the table a number of community stakeholders with representation from the Donovan area and the downtown core, business and property owners, the city, social agencies and police, Hosken said.

The one thing that has been made abundantly clear throughout the years, is that enforcement alone isn't the answer, he added.

“It's a piece of the puzzle, but it's not the ultimate answer,” he said. “History has shown us it doesn't make prostitution go away, and there are other steps we will have to take if we want to get sex-trade workers off the streets.”

The committee is working on the five steps of problem-based learning, he said.

The first step was to identify the problem, which in this case is the fact Sudbury has an issue with street-level prostitution, he said.

The next steps include brainstorming ideas, writing down known facts, learning issues and then implementing an action plan.

“It's like a brain-storming session, and no idea is rejected,” he said. “We compile those ideas, and then we move into the known facts, or what we know about the issue. Having all the different agencies and residents who deal with prostitution or see it first-hand means there is a lot of knowledge in the room.”

The committee wants to have the entire picture before it comes up with the action plan, Hosken said. The goal is to have a multi-tiered, multi-agency approach.

“We don't want prostitution to be just a police issue; it has to be a community issue,” he said. “We want to have buy-in from all the different stakeholders and see what they can contribute to the action plan.”

There is no timeline set for that action plan to come to fruition, he added.

“We're still very early into this project. We're hoping to get to the action plan soon, but then it has to be put into process. If we rush into an action plan, then we will make even more mistakes.”

Crime prevention solutions like Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) look at the factors that bring the victim, offender and location together to complete what is commonly referred to as the crime triangle. Changes to the environment or educating the victim can help to disrupt this triangle and reduce the repetitiveness of crimes occurring.

Posted by Mark Gentili

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Arron Pickard

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