Beyond the Gaze:The working practices, regulation and safety of Internet-based sex work in the UK

Technology, particularly digital communication, has had a profound impact on how we organise our lives, conduct our relationships and the transactions of commerce and retail. The sex industry has followed this trend, with the online sex markets expanding and diversifying, changing the shape of how sex is bought and sold. Yet no regulation and very little policing focuses on the Internet-based sex markets. Our overarching question is: How has the Internet shaped the 21st Century adult commercial sex industry in the UK and what is the role of regulation? Our research focuses on the gaps in knowledge, in terms of how the market is structured, how it functions and how it is currently regulated. We are concerned with those individuals who work legally in their own homes, or as escorts doing outcalls to hotels and clients' homes, all away from the ordinary gaze of policing. There has been no attention to the interactions between technology and types of commercial sex such as webcam sex; performing live sex acts and chat; sexual story telling; and how niche markets have developed both allowing sex workers to innovate as well as opening up working opportunities. Therefore our overall inquiry seeks to explain how regulation interacts with the Internet setting in relation to the experience of vulnerability and safety. Is working via the Internet safer for sex workers? Are there unintended safety issues? Are sex workers made more vulnerable by the isolation of the Internet or does technology provide mechanisms to enhance safety? Therefore the aims of this research are threefold: a)to understand the wider theoretical significance of new technologies for changing the social practice of sexual consumption and the sex industry. b) to map the trends and understand the working practices in Internet-based sex work markets within the broader processes of the regulation and policing of sex work in the UK. c) to facilitate the integration of Internet-based sex work into safety and health-related provision, policies and agencies.
We intend to answer these questions using a mixed methodology to gather new empirical knowledge, and have designed a project consisting of a large national online survey of sex workers; qualitative interviews with 80 sex workers and 40 interviews those involved in the policing and regulation of online sex work activities (such as the police, Home Office representative, IT specialists). Peer researchers will assist in the recruitment of participants, promoting the project as well as reviewing the progress of the Impact Plan. In addition, there is an integrated service provision and developmental role built into the project team through a Research, Support and Development Netreach Officer. Beyond the academy, the project has three key beneficiary groups who are collaborators on the project: 1) Police through the Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Lead for Prostitution, policy makers (local and national government. 2) Sex workers who work online and the broader sex work community. 3) sex work projects and practitioners who work with sex workers - both statutory and third sector, including sexual health practitioners who deliver specific clinical services to sex workers. These groups will benefit in the following ways: 1) a practitioner outreach service with sex workers (all genders) via the Internet (known as Netreach) will be delivered on a weekly basis providing information on safety, signposting to health, welfare and offering a confidential listening service for 3 years. 2) In collaboration with partners the UK Network of Sex Work Projects, the development of a Netreach toolkit for good practice models of Internet outreach. 3) Reduction in violence and crimes against sex workers and broader access to justice for this group. 4) Overall impact aims are to inform and influence legislation and policy in the regulation of prostitution through engaging in government processes and expert witness requests.

There are three core groups of beneficiaries to the research: 1) Police through the Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Lead for Prostitution, policy makers (local and national government - particularly those involved in Prostitution Forums) involved in debating, planning and implementing sex work regulation. 2) Sex workers who work online and the broader sex work community. 3) Sex work projects and practitioners who work with sex workers - both statutory and third sector, including sexual health practitioners who deliver specific clinical services to sex workers. We have designed the research project with these three groups - engaging them with the research process so far by consulting key informants in our existing networks and gathering opinion from the UK Network of Sex Work projects and Genesis Leeds. As a result the overall theoretical questions that drive the project forward have been informed by specific needs identified by sex workers and sex work projects who are at the frontline of the industry and service provision supporting sex workers. Therefore our three groups of stakeholders have been influential in designing the Impact Plan, determining what would be the most effective outcomes of the project for sex workers, practitioners, the police and policy makers. We have designed the project to ensure these three groups of stakeholders will benefit in the following ways: 1) Importantly, we will improve access to safety, support, and information to sex workers who work online (usually isolated and without links to support) including promotion of the Home Office funded National Ugly Mug crime reporting scheme for sex workers (part of UKNSWP). Such activities will have some reduction on violence and crimes experienced by sex workers, improving the reporting of crimes and access to justice more broadly for this group. This is a primary impact objective due to the high levels of violence and hate crimes that sex workers experience, their disengagement from services and crime reporting systems and their overall vulnerability as online and home based workers; 2) A key impact objective is to inform and influence legislation and policy processes in the development of the regulation of prostitution in the UK and beyond, by for example, presenting evidence to government and securing invites as expert witnesses. Such opportunities will be both generated by exploiting current links with government and reacted to during the life of the project and beyond as part of the Impact Plan (see Pathways to Impact document); 3) We will achieve impact through a direct service provision role to sex workers and relevant health projects through the activities of the Research, Support and Development Netreach Officer which has an integrated 'delivery and impact' element to the job description (see Pathways to Impact). This role will deliver practitioner outreach with sex workers (all genders) via the Internet (known as Netreach) on a weekly basis providing information on safety, signposting to health, welfare, and other relevant services, and offering a confidential listening service. 4) In collaboration with peer-researchers, the UK Network of Sex Work Projects and sex work-led organisations, we will produce a Netreach resource toolkit (building on the European Correlation Network) which will have positive impacts for the sex work community. The Netreach toolkit will be promoted nationally and via peer 'netreach champions' and the sex worker led consortium Saafe. The Netreach tool will be a free resource for the 150 UKNSWP sex work projects in the UK to use and adapt - a tool for guidance and good practice of how to initiate and provide outreach via the Internet to isolated sex workers. We expect there will be considerable interest in this toolkit across Europe especially given the shrinking of the third sector resources to develop such initiatives in recent years.