The Lost Art of Regulated Tolerance? Fifteen Years of Regulating Vices in Amsterdam
| Author | Wim Huisman,Hans Nelen |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2014.00687.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2014
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 604±26
The Lost Art of Regulated Tolerance? Fifteen Years of
Regulating Vices in Amsterdam
Wim Huisman* and Hans Nelen**
Fifteen years ago, Brants explored the idiosyncrasies of Dutch policy
with regard to prostitution, focusing on the situation in the Dutch
capital. Amsterdam was on the brink of the enactment of new policies
and legislation regarding the legalization of prostitution and the crack-
down on organized crime. This article presents a short description and
analysis of the latest developments in the prostitution sector in the
Netherlands and, in particular, the developments in the red light district
of Amsterdam since the publication of Brants's article. The analysis
reveals that the majority of her predictions have come true. However,
what she did not foresee was that the Netherlands would be in the
middle of a transitional stage: Dutch policy has undergone a paradigm
shift from a pragmatic, rational approach towards a state of
moralization.
INTRODUCTION
Fifteen years ago, our colleague Chrisje Brants published an article in this
journal on developments with regard to prostitution in Amsterdam. The title
of the article, `The Fine Art of Regulated Tolerance', refers to the pragmatic
approach the Dutch have adopted in dealing with complex social problems,
that is, drugs and prostitution.
1
Brants convincingly argued that the Dutch
604
*VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
w.huisman@vu.nl
** Maastricht University, Bouillonstraat 1±3, 6211 LH, Maastricht, The
Netherlands
hans.nelen@maastrichtuniversity.nl
The authors would like to thank Frances Gilligan for correcting the English.
1 C. Brants, `The Fine Art of Regulated Tolerance: Prostitution in Amsterdam' (1998)
25 J. of Law and Society 621.
ß2014 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2014 Cardiff University Law School
attitude towards these issues is founded in social, political, and legal
tradition. Pragmatic tolerance is firmly rooted in a culture of compromise,
which inevitably leads to contradiction in policy and therefore to new
problems for which new compromises must be sought.
2
At the time Brants
wrote her article, new legislation was about to be implemented intending to
abolish the ban on the exploitation of prostitution. This legislation came into
effect in 2000 and actually legalized the prostitution sector as such. At the
same time, new laws were introduced to increase penalties for human
trafficking. Moreover, the city of Amsterdam, in cooperation with the police,
public prosecutor, and a number of other agencies, also took new initiatives
to contain the organized crime problem in the heart of the prostitution sector,
the notorious `red light district'.
Brants concluded that the new policy in Amsterdam had taken regulated
tolerance to its extreme limits and predicted that legalization of the
prostitution sector would make little difference. The problems described in
her article would probably not be solved. Furthermore, she anticipated that
the new policy would be largely self-defeating.
3
Brants warned of the
counterproductive effect of the new regulating policy: licensing, high costs,
and tighter administrative controls would price small brothel owners and
parts of the prostitution population out of the market. Her first warning was
related to the risk that the prostitution business would be controlled by a
limited number of people, leading to a concentration of power and money;
the second warning was that financially weak prostitutes would disappear
into illegality and informal sectors of the sex industry. Her main concern in
that respect was the position of (illegal) immigrants.
The aim of this article is to reflect on recent developments in the prostitu-
tion sector in the Netherlands, and in the red light district of Amsterdam, in
particular, since the publication of Brants's article in 1998. What does the
current situation in this sector look like? What has happened in the
prostitution industry since the legalization in 2000? What is the rationale of
the current policy and what kind of crime control efforts have been displayed
by various parties in order to prevent organized crime flourishing in this
sector? What do we know about the effects of these efforts? Finally, did
Brants's predictions come true?
Of course, not all of these questions can be answered in detail. The article
attempts to give an overview of the main developments in the prostitution
sector in order to substantiate the central premise that the Netherlands is in
the middle of a transitional stage. The Dutch `vice' policy indicates a
paradigm shift from a pragmatic, rational approach towards a position of
moralization. In the first part of the article, the most important developments
605
2 id., p. 622. Y. Buruma, `Dutch Tolerance: On Drugs, Prostitution, and Euthanasia' in
Crime and Justice in the Netherlands, eds. M. Tonry and C. Bijleveld (2008) 73.
3 Brants, id.
ß2014 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2014 Cardiff University Law School
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