Police Violence Against Sex Workers: ESWA’ Policy Brief 2025

Sex workers in Europe have a long history of organising collectively against police violence and abuse. One of the most significant moments in this struggle occurred in June 1975, when around 100 sex workers occupied the Church of Saint-Nizier in Lyon, France, for over a week. They were protesting against police harassment and repression, and demanding social justice and protection. Fifty years on, sex workers in Europe still face a high level of violence at the hands of the police and law enforcement. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the occupation of St Nizier Church, the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) is launching a policy brief which draws on a larger research project developed in cooperation with 13 national partner organisations ’Exposed from all sides’. The Role of Policing in Sex Workers’ Access to Justice. The policy brief builds on this project and on the Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) framework, which fosters structural change and engages affected communities at all stages of the research process.

This policy brief is based on the findings of the 2024 European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance research project and research report: “Exposed from all sides”: The Role of Policing in Sex Workers’ Access to Justice. This research project was funded by PORTICUS, the Open Society Foundations, and the OAK Foundation.

INTRODUCTION

The criminalisation of sex work, along with other restrictive laws targeting sex workers, is a key factor that adversely affects sex workers’ rights, physical and mental health, and vulnerability to violence.

Research indicates that repressive policies drive enforcement strategies that focus on surveillance and punishment, rather than ensuring sex workers’ safety and well-being.

These policies also hamper sex workers’ access to justice and state protection when they experience harm.

 Furthermore, punitive and enforcement-oriented policing strategies contribute to a significant power imbalance between sex workers and police, creating opportunities for misconduct and abuse of power by law enforcement officers. Multiple studies document violations of sex workers’ rights at the hands of police, revealing a vast array of abuses including deliberate neglect, harassment, stigmatisation, and discriminatory treatment. Alarmingly, research also reveals that police officers — state agents whose assumed role is to provide protection and care — themselves perpetrate violence against sex worker communities globally.

Sex workers in Europe have a long history of organising collectively against police violence and abuse. One of the most significant moments in this struggle took place in June 1975, when approximately 100 sex workers occupied the Church of Saint-Nizier in Lyon, France, for over a week.

Their protest aimed to denounce police harassment and repression while demanding social justice and protection. Often regarded as the symbolic birth of the sex workers’ rights movement in Europe, the Lyon occupation inspired similar church takeovers in other French cities and led to the formation of numerous sex worker collectives across Europe, all committed to exposing police abuses and advocating for their rights. To this day, European sex worker collectives continue to mobilise against police violence and harassment, document human rights violations by law enforcement, support their communities in accessing justice and protection, and fight for legal reforms that would enable them to live free from police abuse.

This policy brief builds on and contributes to these community efforts by documenting the scale and various forms of police violence experienced by sex workers in Europe. It focuses specifically on sex workers’ exposure to physical, sexualised, and emotional abuse, as well as threats, blackmail, and coercion from police officers. This occurs in the context of everyday policing, punishment- and enforcementoriented interventions, and in situations where sex workers encounter police officers as victims of crime. It also explores how different factors, including legal models of sex work, working arrangements and settings, and demographic characteristics such as migration status and gender, impact sex workers’ vulnerability to police violence.

Finally, it examines the role of police violence in exacerbating risks to sex workers’ safety and vulnerability to workrelated violence and abuse.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The findings presented in this policy brief draw from a larger research project developed by the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance in cooperation with 13 national partner organisations. Conducted between 2022 and 2024 and described in more detail in the research report “Exposed from all sides”: The Role of Policing in Sex Workers’ Access to Justice, this ESWA project focused on sex workers’ everyday policing and the role of police in their access to justice. It builds on the Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) framework, which fosters structural change and engages affected communities at all stages of the research process. Sex workerled and sex workers’ rights organisations were involved in defining the project’s goals, designing its research methodology, and collecting and analysing the data.

The research findings draw on semistructured, in-depth interviews with sex workers conducted by peer researchers in 11 European countries. The interview transcripts were analysed quantitatively to provide statistical insights and qualitatively, through thematic coding, to gain in-depth insights into participants’ experiences with police. A total of 199 sex workers were interviewed, following a purposive sampling strategy aimed at reflecting the diversity of their working conditions and arrangements, as well as their migration status, sexuality, and gender. Of the 199 research participants, 20.1% worked under criminalisation (in Armenia and North Macedonia) and 27.1% under regulation (Greece, the Netherlands, and Switzerland). At 30.2%, the largest number of participants operated under partial criminalisation (Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom), while sex workers working under the Swedish model (France and Sweden) constituted 14.6% of our sample. Eight percent of participants worked under decriminalisation (Belgium). Given that this legal model was only recently introduced in Belgium and may not yet have significantly impacted policing strategies, for the purposes of our analysis, we have grouped it with countries where sex work is regulated.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this research clearly demonstrate the immense scale and prevalence of harassment and violence experienced by sex workers in Europe at the hands of police. Our data reveals that instead of providing protection and facilitating justice, the police create dangerous environments for sex workers, undermining their rights and safety, and directly exposing them to harm. Across all settings studied, sex workers are subjected to systematic physical, sexualised, and verbal abuse, as well as threats from law enforcement officers. Emotional abuse, harassment, threats, blackmail, and coercion are the most common forms of violence reported by sex workers across Europe, with the highest rates observed among participants in Swedish model contexts. Sex workers operating in criminalised and partially criminalised settings, trans women, and those working in the open scene are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexualised violence by police.

Moreover, our findings highlight that whorephobia, racism, xenophobia, and transphobia are deeply embedded in policing strategies across the European region. This reinforces a long-documented history of (multiply) marginalised and criminalised groups experiencing high levels of police violence, particularly sexualised violence against women and sexual minorities. The prevalence and widespread nature of police violence and harassment in Europe reflects harmful state policies that tolerate and normalise systemic and structural violence perpetrated against sex workers. Criminalisation and other repressive policies targeting sex workers, including stringent migration regulations, foster punitive and enforcement-oriented policing strategies that encourage police abuse and brutality. Advocates of the Swedish model and other punitive approaches to sex work place their trust in police institutions, believing that increased criminalisation of the sex industry will reduce the number of people selling or buying sex. This belief is based on the assumption that law enforcement will shield women who sell sex from violence.

However, our data shows that all forms of criminalisation, including the Swedish model, partial criminalisation, and restrictive regulatory frameworks, as in the case of regularisation, fail to protect sex workers from police abuse. On the contrary, our evidence indicates that increasing the police presence in sex work venues and subjecting sex workers to intensified surveillance and control not only fails to enhance safety but actively increases their exposure to police harassment and violence. Rather than promoting safety and well-being, greater police involvement creates conditions in which abuses of power and police violence are allowed to flourish.

Abusive policing strategies and widespread police violence compromise sex workers’ safety, health, well-being, and fundamental rights. These practices push sex workers into more hazardous work environments and dangerous conditions, depriving them of the means to protect themselves from harassment, exploitation, and abuse by violent clients, third parties, or passers-by. Police violence also severely limits sex workers’ access to justice. Previous experiences of mistreatment, harassment, or violence by police are significant reasons why many sex workers choose not to report crimes committed against them. As a result, violent clients and other perpetrators often go unpunished, fuelling a sense of impunity and fostering predatory conditions. In these conditions, offenders exploit sex workers’ reluctance to engage with law enforcement and the failure by police to act, emboldened by the belief that they are unlikely to face consequences. Furthermore, the normalisation of violence is reinforced when police mistreatment is routine or condoned, embedding a culture where abuse against sex workers is accepted. When abuse comes directly from law enforcement, sex workers are seen as easy targets by others, increasing their vulnerability to further harm. Ultimately, when the police themselves commit violence, sex workers are left with nowhere to turn — violated and abandoned by the very institution meant to protect them, and denied any safe avenue to justice or support.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Highlighting the prevalence of policecondoned violence against sex workers, the abusive nature of law enforcement, and the failures of the state and its institutions to ensure protection and equal access to justice for sex worker communities, this policy brief calls for a transformative justice approach as an alternative to criminalisation and the harmful policing to which sex workers are subjected. The transformative justice approach to ensure sex workers’ access to justice and rights involves several key steps: the decriminalisation of sex work; the repeal of excessive police powers and divestment from policing; and investment in communityled responses to rights violations, violence, and harm.

Decriminalising sex work and repealing all laws that target sex workers, their coworkers, workplaces, or clients, is a crucial step in protecting sex workers from police harassment and violence. Increased criminalisation — as advocated by carceral feminists, policymakers, and anti-sex work activists who seek to eradicate prostitution and “rescue” those selling sex — only places sex worker communities at further risk of repressive policing and heightens their vulnerability to police abuse. Full decriminalisation is the only policy shown to offer protection from police violence and harassment. It is also a necessary first step for addressing the prejudice and discrimination entrenched within police institutions and for enabling support services to serve sex workers and other marginalised communities effectively. A transformative justice approach must also address the widespread nature of police abuse and the systemic lack of accountability.

This research underscores the violent, corrupt, and discriminatory foundations of policing. Reforms such as increasing police diversity, implementing community policing models, or introducing ethics training have consistently proven inadequate, as they fail to address the structural stigma surrounding sex work, as well as deeply rooted racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia — all of which contribute to the mistreatment of sex worker communities. Police violence and brutality are structural problems that demand structural solutions, including a reduction in police powers and a fundamental reduction in the role and influence of policing in society. Rather than expanding police authority, this policy brief calls for a significant curtailment of law enforcement prerogatives and a redirection of resources away from policing and the police. Divesting from policing involves reallocating funding from law enforcement to noncarceral, community-led, and social justiceoriented services.

Transformative justice prioritises investment in communities, based on the premise that communities themselves are best equipped to recognise, respond to, and prevent violence affecting their members. Informed by the lived experiences of sex worker communities, sex worker-led organisations and initiatives are uniquely positioned to deliver safety, support, accountability, and meaningful change for sex workers across Europe. They also play a vital role in improving access to justice and protection from violence — including violence perpetrated by police — without causing further harm, oppression, or control. National stakeholders and international policymakers, including the Council of Europe and European Union institutions, must prioritise the full decriminalisation of sex work, the limitation of police powers, and sustained investment in community-based, non-carceral responses to violence and rights violations experienced by sex workers. Sex workers must be afforded full legal protection and the unrestricted enjoyment of their human rights. Above all, they must be able to live and work free from police violence, harassment, and abuse.

https://www.eswalliance.org/