Sex Work Governance Models: Variations in a Criminalized Context

BACKGROUND: Under current laws, sex workers are effectively criminalized, which can lead to harmful impacts beyond arrest and prosecution for sex work–specific offenses, including eviction, search and seizure, surveillance, harassment, and deportation. Although these laws are federal, they are realized in and by policy communities at the municipal level. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Based on a qualitative and inductive study of local policy actors affected by or involved in the implementation of prostitution laws, including 65 semistructured interviews in 2014, 2015, and 2016, we identify five different governance models within a shared legal framework of criminalization. We derive these models from an exploration of interactions among actors and organizations based in selected Canadian cities, all of which are bound by federal laws that criminalize the buying of sex thus effectively criminalizing prostitution. RESULTS: Our study surfaces a diversity of traditional and non-traditional policy players who interpret and implement prostitution laws or advocate for and support sex workers. Focusing on equilibrium moments in relationships among these actors, we identify ideational frames that appear to shape dynamics among them and, in turn, give rise to different governance models. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings of different models within the same, overarching legal context are notable because it demonstrates the variability of a single law when it is implemented in local contexts. This is a contribution not just to understanding how prostitution is governed in particular contexts but also to policy and governance theory more generally. Our findings can serve in future, deductive studies that seek to determine the causes and implications of different governance models in the policy area of prostitution and beyond.