Is crime displacement inevitable? Lessons from the enforcement of laws against prostitution-related human trafficking in Cyprus
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Author | Angelo Constantinou |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370815617190 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 13(2) 214 –230
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370815617190
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Is crime displacement
inevitable? Lessons from the
enforcement of laws against
prostitution-related human
trafficking in Cyprus
Angelo Constantinou
Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Abstract
This article problematizes the common assertion that policies purported to counter prostitution
and prostitution-related human trafficking effectively reduce such crime. The paradigm of Cyprus
is employed for illustrating that legal action against prostitution (and sex trafficking), intended
to reduce the opportunities for purchasing sex on the island, has given rise to the displacement
of crime. To affirm this, police intelligence (n = 1103) gathered over the course of 11 years is
analysed. If anything, the findings presented here complement the (small) corpus of quantitative
studies that address the effectiveness of anti-trafficking policies.
Keywords
Crime policy, police intelligence, quantitative research, sex trafficking, situational prevention
Introduction
The regulation of prostitution is not a novelty but a long-established endeavour, which
has made its presence known since the embryonic collective attempts to curb venereal
diseases, and later to frame trafficking in humans (or the white flesh trade as it was then
termed), at the beginning of the 20th century. Interestingly, policies on the matter have
traditionally been divided into one main binary, namely abolition and toleration of
prostitution. Along the way, and especially in the course of the last two decades, the topic
of prostitution (as an antecedent of human trafficking for sexual purposes) has been
Corresponding author:
Angelo Constantinou, School of Economics and Management, Department of Police Studies, Open
University of Cyprus, 33, Giannou Kranidioti Avenue 2220, Latsia, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Email: angelos.constantinou@ouc.ac.cy
617190EUC0010.1177/1477370815617190European Journal of CriminologyConstantinou
research-article2015
Article
Constantinou 215
revisited by theoreticians, technocrats, and practitioners, for purportedly ‘sharpening’ its
definition, ‘enhancing’ its delineation, and ‘highlighting’ its causation and effect. Yet
debates over the effects of prostitution – collective and individual – have been particu-
larly heated, for these debates range from seeing prostitution as deleterious to the socie-
ties that host it and to the individuals who engage in it (Barry, 1979; Dworkin, 1981;
Jeffreys, 1997; MacKinnon and Dworkin, 1997), to seeing it as emancipating and liberat-
ing both to populations who elect to practise it and to the societies that embrace it
(Chapkis, 1997; Doezema, 2005; McLeod, 1982; Sullivan, 1997).
As a result, to date, a number of legal remedies for prostitution (legalization, prohibi-
tion, regulation, and decriminalization) have seen the light. Similarly, although sex traf-
ficking is more or less linked to prostituted acts – albeit this connection is not always
clearly acknowledged in legal instruments (Munro, 2005: 96) – a series of legal frame-
works have been established for directing national authorities towards ‘better’ curbing
prostitution-related human trafficking. Such frameworks consist of particular transna-
tional legislations,1 whose provisions, in part, are closely based on the sexual acts of
trafficked persons. In other words, these frameworks are linked to whether or not a sex-
ual act that is performed by a trafficked individual is induced by any form of coercion
(including the vulnerable position of the recipient) or is merely the outcome of a rational,
volitional, unmediated, and consented autonomic decision (in which case it does not
qualify as sex trafficking).
That said, the concepts of sexual exploitation and prostitution become profoundly
relevant in conceptualizing sex trafficking. This being the case, within the context of this
study, sexual exploitation is considered to be any paid sexual act that is made possible
after the mediation, control, or facilitation of a third party. Prostitution, in contrast, is
regarded as rational, individual, and unmediated paid sex between two consenting (adult)
parties. In this vein, I intend not to get entangled with conceptual polemics linked to the
sex work/prostitution dichotomy (Doezema and Kempadoo, 1998; O’Connell Davidson,
2003), but to empirically illustrate that the outcomes of criminal justice policies (regard-
less of their point of reference) that aim at combating human trafficking and illegal pros-
titution not only do not live up to their standards but, more importantly, do not constitute
a remedy to the problem.
More to the point, the actual capacity and power of legal measures against prostitution
and trafficking to fulfil their purpose (to deal effectively with prostitution and sex traf-
ficking), aside from a limited number of studies that have sought to estimate the effec-
tiveness of such policies (Cho et al., 2013; Jakobsson and Kotsadam, 2013; Kovary and
Pruyt, 2012; Sarkany, 2012), have not undergone rigorous empirical analysis, much less
criminological examination. Nonetheless, the assertion of these few recent studies, more
or less, to some extent underscores a positive relationship between the legalization of
prostitution and human trafficking. Yet these studies have not accounted for the crime
displacement effect – a basic corollary of crime prevention policies.
This article applies criminological theory and utilizes statistical tools to illustrate that
the abolition of the artiste visa policy, which was implemented in Cyprus in 2009 (and
drew on anti-human trafficking/prostitution abolitionist ideology), while originally aim-
ing at curtailing prostitution and sex trafficking, actually caused the displacement of
prostitution-related crimes. The article attempts first to delineate the policy in question
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