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Article Excerpt
IN ALMOST EVERY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESEARCH ARTICLE on the clients of prostitutes published over the past 20 years, one of the first things the reader encounters is a lament about how little published research there is. But it would not be appropriate to start the current article in this way, because there is now a substantial literature on clients. In Europe and the U.K., as more funding became available for research on populations at high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, more attention was given to clients (e.g., Thomas, Plant and Plant, 1990; Barnard, McKeganey and Leyland, 1993; and McKeganey, 1994 in the U.K.; de Graaf, 1995; and Vanwesenbeeck, de Graaf, van Zessen, Straver and Visser, 1993 in the Netherlands). In the U.S. there is some relatively early research literature (e.g., Winick, 1962; Holzman and Pines, 1982) and a kindred interest in the role of the client in disease transmission (e.g., Leonard, 1990). More recently, client research across North America has received a new impetus, the availability of customer research subjects in "john schools" (e.g., in the U.S., Busch, Bell, Hotaling and Monto, 2002; Monto, 1998; Monto and Hotaling, 2001; and Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, 2004; in Canada, Fischer, Wortley, Webster and Kirst, 2002; Wortley, Fischer and Webster, 2002; and Kennedy, Klein, Gorzalka and Yuille, 2004), programs that are designed to "educate" men charged with attempting to purchase sex from a female police decoy posing as a street prostitute.
In what follows, we review Canadian research on clients, and present selected findings from a mail-back questionnaire survey of 80 such men. The paper describes the general demographic characteristics of the sample and their sex-buying behaviour. Because of heightened concern about the large number of street-level sex workers who have gone missing or been murdered over the past twenty years in Canada, and in order to reflect on the prohibitionist argument that violence in prostitution is ubiquitous, the final section of the paper focusses on our respondents' self-reported commission of violence against sex workers and other people, and their experiences being victimized by sex workers.
Canadian Research on Clients
The first substantial federal funding of research on prostitution in Canada occurred in the 1980s, when the federal government established the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution (Fraser Committee, 1985) and asked it to "consider alternatives, report findings and recommend solutions to the problems associated with pornography and prostitution in Canada" (6).
To facilitate the work of the Committee, the Department of Justice funded five exploratory regional prostitution surveys (Crook, 1984; Fleischman, 1984; Gemme, Murphy, Bourque, Nemeh and Payment, 1984; Lautt, 1984; Lowman, 1984). Each survey attempted to provide as broad an empirical picture of prostitution as practicable in the six-month period the researchers were given to execute it. Interviews were conducted with anyone involved in, affected by, or trying to control the sex trade. While the research teams had little trouble contacting sex sellers, producing a total of 278 interviews between them, only two teams managed to interview clients: Crook (1984) obtained 18 interviews, and Gemme, Murphy, Bourque, Nemeh and Payment (1984) obtained 33. (1) All the clients were men.
Gemme, Murphy, Bourque, Nemeh and Payment's interviews must have been relatively short, as the published findings are limited to the participants' age (predominantly 35-45 years old), income ("higher than average"), marital status ("generally married"), education (roughly 50% had at least some university education), the frequency of their sex purchases (13 purchased once a week, 13 once a month--the others purchased less frequently), and a choice of six pre-coded reasons for buying sex--the most frequently chosen (73% of respondents) being the desire for "a brief, uncomplicated sexual encounter."
Crook's (1984) 18 clients' average age was 29.6 years, all were Caucasian, and 89% were born in Canada. When it came to their reasons for buying sex, 33% stated that they first sought out a prostitute because they could not find sexual fulfilment elsewhere, 28% said they were lonely and seeking companionship, and 33% said they were "curious."
In 1987 the Department of Justice Canada sponsored five more regional prostitution studies as part of its evaluation of the "communicating law," the section of the Criminal Code governing street prostitution as of December 20, 1985. Again, the result of attempts to interview clients was disappointing. In Vancouver, Lowman (1989) obtained 17, and Gemme, Payment and Malenfant (1989) obtained six in Montreal. However, because police were now charging clients under the communicating law, a new source of information emerged.
On the basis of information culled from police reports, Gemme, Payment and Malenfant (1989), Lowman (1989) and Moyer and Carrington (1989) were able to describe the general characteristics of men charged under the communicating law, including their age, place of birth, occupation, "race," marital status, and area of residence.
While these descriptions reveal noticeable regional variations--such as the proportions of immigrant men, married men, White men, and men with previous criminal records--they suggest that communicating law enforcement captures men mostly from the lower socio-economic segment of the prostitution trade. Because men who can afford to frequent off-street venues are able to buy sex without being charged, any sample of clients based on the enforcement of the communicating law is highly skewed.
Opportunities for research on street-level clients opened up further with the creation of the first Canadian john school in Toronto in 1996. There are perhaps a dozen similar programs across Canada at the time of writing. The "school" is a diversion program for men charged under the communicating law.
Studies of john school students undoubtedly do provide useful data on the demographic characteristics of street-level buyers. In Vancouver, ages of john school students (n = 365) ranged from 18 to 89 years with a mean of 37.5, 54.3% were married or in a common-law relationship, 64% had some post-secondary education, 81% were employed full time, and 64% were White (Kennedy, Klein, Gorzalka and Yuille, 2004). A sample of Toronto john school students (n = 366) ranged in age from 19 to 76, with a mean age of 37 years (the average age of men in Toronto is 41 years); 52% had not gone beyond high school, 81% were employed full time, and 66% were foreign born (Wortley and Fischer, 2002; Wortley, Fischer and Webster, 2002; Fischer, Wortley, Webster and Kirst, 2002). Like Moyer and Carrington before them, in their study of communicating law offenders in Toronto Wortley and Fischer (2002: 378) concluded that, "relatively few John School participants come from an affluent social background or are employed in professional/managerial occupations," in which case, "the...
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