Prostitute’s cautions are trapping thousands of women in the UK into a cycle of poverty forcing them to accept lower paid work or to live on benefits.
One woman told the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) in a 2024 report “It’s stopped me from applying for any job”.
She said: “I ended up living on benefits with my children. It caused me all kinds of problems and I had no money.”
Laura Watson, a spokesperson for the ECP told BBC Woman’s Hour: “We really want to let people know that these are mothers working to feed themselves and their children and they are punished for life just for trying to make a better life for yourself or your child where you have very little other options.”
A prostitutes caution is a specific type of caution reserved for the punishment of sex workers. It is a UK police warning for suspected prostitution-related offenses, including loitering or soliciting. Unlike other cautions, a ‘prostitute’s caution’, does not require a person to admit an offence or agree to it.
According to the ECP thousands of women in the UK have received a prostitutes caution. Last year, the organisation released their ‘Proceed with Caution’ report.
The research was conducted by sex workers, who interviewed their colleagues and friends on the impact of ‘prostitute’s cautions’ and convictions on their lives.
Nadia Whittombe, MP for Nottingham East, told BBC Woman’s Hour: “The current situation is that the state pushes people into poverty. We know poverty is the main driver behind sex work, then the state criminalises sex work further trapping them. We need full decriminalisation of sex work because we know that is what is proven to keep women safe.”
Following the report, the ECP emphasised the need for a full decriminalisation of sex work arguing prostitutes cautions are “a deliberate policy against women designed to keep women in poverty by penalising those of us who use sex work to escape from it”.
Police in the UK do not publicly track the number of cautions issued to individuals involved in prostitution. While there’s no official data on the number of cautions, it’s known that these cautions can have significant long-term consequences for those involved.
Another woman, told the ECP, she was kept out of jobs she would have been ideally suited for. “There are many jobs I would have loved to do, jobs I’ve been offered and had to say no to,” she said.
“Caring for my daughter over the years I’ve learned things like supervising medications, doing injections, tube feeds and the rest. Social services asked if I’d considered doing emergency respite. It’s excellent money and would have suited my life and skills. It’s perfect for me and would have fitted around what I need to do with my own child.
“But I couldn’t even think about it as they would have done the checks and found out and I would have lost my own child. I have a disabled child. If convicted of a sexual offence while looking after someone with a learning difficulty, you’re considered to be putting that person in moral danger. So it’s a big no-no. You don’t apply for the jobs that suit you and the ones you’d like to do.”
The report also revealed how a prostitute’s caution can prevent people securing housing. One woman explained: “I was lucky in that I already had a council house before I started working in prostitution and am still there. But if I moved to a different place, one of the questions on the forms is: “do you have a record?” If you declare it, they can withhold housing options, or put you in specially allocated areas, which would be places you didn’t want to live in. If you don’t declare, they can evict you because you’ve lied. It affects a lot of people.”
The cautions also have the power to prevent someone from entering the UK. The Home Office decides if a person is “undesirable to admit the person to the UK, based on their character, conduct, or associations because they pose a threat to UK society”.
In some cases, the cautions stop people travelling abroad. One women who participated in the research said: “One of my relatives is in America. I couldn’t go as they need a background check for the visa. There are so many things I can’t do.”
Prostitutes cautions and/or convictions can also lead to deportation. The ECP reported of one particular police operation in which a Romanian woman was arrested multiple times over a very short period and as a result she got six convictions for loitering and soliciting. She was given a letter saying she was a “persistent offender” whose presence in the UK was deemed “undesirable”.
Police cautions, which are typically issued for minor crimes, are filtered out from someone’s record after six years and do not need to be disclosed to employers, but a prostitute’s caution will show up on a sex worker’s enhanced DBS check until they are 100-years-old.
Despite recent proposed amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to try and combat the issues a ‘prostitutes caution’ gives women. Women’s Grid found that these changes still did not enable the removal of criminal records for “loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution”.
