Canadian Legal Changes and the Historical Decline of Sex Worker Arrests in Toronto Neighborhoods, 1992-2020

• In Event: Intersectionality, Victimization, and Responses to Women's Victimization and Offending

Abstract

Canadian sex workers have faced several challenges and changes to the Criminal Code in recent decades. The aim of this paper is to analyze approximately 30 years of sex work arrests by neighborhood in Canada’s largest city to see if national-level policy changes had any effect on the local streets of Toronto. We also analyze the neighborhood characteristics of socioeconomic disadvantage and visible minority population to test whether citywide policing changes varied by neighborhood. Longitudinal and spatial data come from the Canadian Census and a FOIA request to the Toronto Police (n = 582). We find that sex work arrests have been decreasing in Toronto since the 2000s and have nearly halted since a human rights challenge successfully received a Supreme Court decision. Despite the 2014 law formalizing the Nordic model of sex work criminalizing the buying and advertising of sex, the majority of sex work arrests continue to be for solicitation. These few lingering arrests occur in Toronto’s poorest neighborhoods. Our study raises policy implications and questions as to why the legal codes do not do more to protect sex workers when arresting them has become a low priority for the police.

Authors

• Chris M. Smith, University of Toronto

• Sharon Oselin, University of California, Riverside

• Taylor Domingos, Northwestern University