in June, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed a bill into law that is supposed to partially decriminalize sex work throughout the state. The new law, LD 1435, would institute what’s known as the “Nordic Model” of prostitution laws, which seeks to criminalize people who pay for sex while eliminating criminal charges for sex workers, ostensibly giving sex workers and victims of sex trafficking who report abuse and/or exploitation immunity from prosecution.
The law was passed alongside an act sealing survivors’ records of prostitution convictions and mandating that the state offer the comprehensive services that they need to help them rebuild their lives.
“We are long overdue to better protect and decriminalize sellers engaged in prostitution,” Rep. Lois Reckitt, who sponsored the bill, said in an official statement.
“LD 1435 is the responsible, effective way to help the sex trade’s most vulnerable.”
However, while the Nordic Model has earned popularity in countries such as Canada, Ireland, Sweden and France by allegedly decreasing demand for sex work and successfully confronting sexual exploitation, advocates and members of the sex work industry argue that it actually does more harm than good.
“The Nordic model takes police resources away from investigating human trafficking and wastes them on punishing consensual sex work,” said Valentine Vonbettie, a sex worker and Co-President of the Oregon Sex Worker’s Committee, in a written statement to TCR.
A 2019 study from Sweden found that the Nordic model failed to reduce demand for prostitution, to deter people from engaging in sex work, or to provide meaningful resources to victims of human trafficking in or out of the sex industry.
In Canada, which passed similar legislation in 2014, another study found that the model impeded the occupational safety of sex workers, that criminalizing clients reduced workers’ ability to negotiate the terms of sexual transactions—including type of service, price, and sexual health—led to increased risk of robbery and assault, and that client fear of being prosecuted or ‘outed’ by police enhanced feelings of shame, which was linked to increased aggression by clients.
“The Nordic model forces workers back into the black market — where they become invisible again,” said Vonbettie.
“And since all sex work is illegal under this model, it also becomes impossible to tell who is being forced to sell sex and who is doing it consensually.”
In fact, since Ireland implemented the Nordic model in 2017, it fell from the Tier 1 to Tier 2 watchlist ranking of countries with increasing trafficking problems. And while Ireland has since been raised to Tier 2, it has remained at said level for the past two years, with Northern Ireland’s 2022 numbers alone spiking 50 percent over those from 2021.
Meanwhile, Amnesty international reports that, rather than decreasing their contact with the police, under the Nordic model sex workers actually remain subject to a high level of targeted policing and penalization.
In Maine, the new law keeps in place the crime of promoting prostitution, rephrasing it as “promoting commercial sexual exploitation,” effectively criminalizing things like soliciting on the streets or offering paid sex to someone at a public venue like a bar or club. Sex workers who work together for safety would also be targeted and criminalized, further forcing them into unsafe environments and potential reliance on abusive business relationships.
“Even if sex workers aren’t necessarily being investigated for prostitution related offenses, there are still all kinds of what are called tertiary offenses that they can be charged with,” said Samantha Majic, Associate Professor of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“So things like loitering, New York’s so-called ‘walking while trans’ law, someone having drugs on them, or an immigration issue, all result in a sex worker being picked up and arrested even though they aren’t doing something that’s criminalized anymore.”
And regardless of the intent of the Nordic model, Majic, who researches policy and activism around the sex work industry, says that the laws will always come down harder on sellers of sex vs. buyers.
“Usually the people who are buying are in more of a position of economic privilege, so they may be more likely to get a lawyer and are very rarely arrested or investigated in the same way as the seller in the first place,” said Majic.
Failures like these, and others, are why a majority of advocates and people involved in sex work around the country, and in Maine, stand against the Nordic model.
“What [this bill] fails to acknowledge is that there are also adults capable of making informed decisions about their own bodies and livelihoods, who are neither criminals nor victims,” said Destie Sprague, in submitted testimony on behalf of the Maine Women’s Lobby.
“This type of approach has unanticipated harmful consequences for people on all sides of the issue.”
Instead, Sprague, and others like her, support full decriminalization, which removes criminal penalties for the buying and selling of sexual acts, specifically those categorized as prostitution.
In an article for TCR, Elle Stanger, an activist, adult entertainer, and sex educator, pointed out that “scientists, public health experts, and researchers have noted the benefits of full decriminalization for decades. The spread of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) is lower, victim reporting is high, and all types of sex workers are safer in places where consensual sex work is decriminalized.”
“When decriminalization happens sex work is treated as a real job and sex workers have the same social protection as everyone else,” said Vonbettie.
A 2020 report from Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, found that 52 percent of U.S voters said they either strongly support or somewhat support decriminalization.
As of today, six states are considering laws that would either decriminalize prostitution or institute stronger criminal penalties against sex work.
