Sex Work and Hate Crime: Innovating Policy, Practice and Theory

This book brings together literature, empirical research findings and policy analysis to examine how some forces in England have adopted the approach of treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes. The book draws on two research projects across three police forces, one carried out in Merseyside, the force which pioneered this innovative approach of including sex workers in its hate crime policies and procedures and now known as the Merseyside model. This book highlights how sex work researchers and activists have long documented high levels of targeted violence and harassment towards sex workers and sex work theorists and activists have consistently over decades identified discrimination and hostility towards sex workers or 'whore stigma' as on of the drivers of violence towards sex workers (Pheterson, Social text, 37, 39-64, 1993)