Criminalizing the Payment for Sex in Northern Ireland: Sketching the Contours of a Moral Panic
![handle is hein.journals/bjcrim57 and id is 197 raw text is:
doi:10.1093/bjc/azv107 BRIT.]. CRIMINOL. (2017) 57, 194-214
Advance Access publication 28 September 2015
CRIMINALIZING THE PAYMENT FOR SEX IN NORTHERN
IRELAND: SKETCHING THE CONTOURS OF A MORAL PANIC
GRAHAM ELLISON*
This paper examines recent legislative developments in Northern Ireland around Lord Morrow's
Human Trafficking & Exploitation (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill
that was passed unanimously in the Northern Ireland Assembly and which uniquely in the United
Kingdom now makes it a criminal offence to pay for sexual services. I suggest that issues around
sex trafficking, sexual slavery and prostitution in Northern Ireland bear all the hallmarks of Stan
Cohen's famous articulation of a moral panic (Cohen 1972) but also argue that his original for-
mulation needs to be recast slightly to take account of the horizontal structuring of moral panics in
contemporary society.
Key words: prostitution, sex trafficking, Christian right, feminism, moral panic
Introduction
Sex work or prostitution-the term varies depending on one's ideological position on
the nature of commercial sex (Weitzer 2011a)-has once again been thrust into the
spotlight in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Northern Ireland Assembly's deci-
sion to legislate for Lord Morrow's Human Trafficking & Exploitation (Further Provisions
and Support for Victims) Bill that includes a number of provisions to provide support to
victims of human trafficking but controversially includes specific provisions to make it
a criminal offence to pay for sexual services. This particular clause is modelled on the
so-called 'Nordic Model' of criminalization of demand that it is argued will reduce the
opportunities for commercial sex and by extension the potential for human traffick-
ing for sexual exploitation (see Ekberg 2004). In many respects, this Bill is a symptom
of more general anxieties around 'trafficking' that have been developing across the
United Kingdom and globally for the past decade and a half with the phenomenon
described as the 'modern day slave trade' (Bales 1999).
The discussion that follows has two aims. First, I analyse the contours of the traffick-
ing debate in Northern Ireland and note how this has been refracted almost exclusively
through the lens of sexual exploitation. I argue that this debate bears all the hallmarks
of Stan Cohen's famous articulation of a moral panic (Cohen 1972), insofar as official
pronouncements, media reports and the claims of advocacy groups all amplify the size
of the problem that bears little relationship to its actual occurrence. Further, since
as David Garland argues we need to examine the symptomatic nature of such panics
(Garland 2008: 11), I suggest that debates around sex trafficking and prostitution point
to a host of other issues around the nature of female sexuality and subjectivity in what
*Graham Ellison, Institute of Criminology and CriminalJustice, School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 iNN, Northern
Ireland; g.ellisonCqub.ac.uk.
' The 'Nordic model' is a policy framework, associated primarily with Scandinavianjurisdictions. It criminalizes the buyer of
sex, not the seller. In practice, there is significant disagreement about the effectiveness of the model (see Levy 2014).
194
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Criminalizing the Payment for Sex in Northern Ireland: Sketching the Contours of a Moral Panic
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