are registered. The purpose of the interview is to detect ‘signals’ of trafficking to provide the sex workers with information about support, and to break the sex worker’s isolation, if only momentarily. Proprietors can only rent out rooms to registered sex workers. With the registration measure the city look ahead to the new national law Wrp (Bestuursinformatie Gemeente Utrecht, 2012, 6). The city has evaluated the measures. It concludes that the turnover has decreased. In 1 in 8 interviews intakers concluded that there were signals of trafficking and informed the police about this. The sex worker does obtain a registration in these cases. However the police has doubts about the possibility of the interviews to stop traf ficking. Many women who hardly speak Dutch, English or German can nevertheless arrange for registration within a week (op, cit., 7). The police believe that the “quality of the signals” has improved (op. cit., 8). The city concludes that the collaboration between partners has improved. Sex workers are unhappy with the 4-week minimum rental period as it forces them to continue working when they are ill or have their period (op. cit., 7). The evaluation doesn’t speak of the ‘contamination’ of the registration files; sex workers who move on to an other city are not systematically deregistered as far as we know. By being part rule, part incentive, registration is a hybrid instrument. It acts as rule by mandating sex workers to act in certain ways to be able to engage in desired behavior or obtain access to state-provided services (Stone, 1988, 282). Registration is also meant to act as a disincentive to traffickers and incentive to sex workers to get or remain in touch with officials and social workers. However, both in the cases of rules and incentives there is never a direct correspondence between the measure as designed by authorities and received by the target au dience (Stone, 1988, 272; Wagenaar, 1995). The experiences with registration in Vienna might help us to obtain a better understanding of the way that this policy instrument works in actual practice. Registration is mandatory in Vienna since 1968. Sex workers can only obtain their health check booklet when they register with the police. (In other Länder registration is with public health authorities.) Since 2011 sex workers receive a leaflet when 76
they register that informs them about social services, and contains a referral to Lefö, and NGO for sex work. Lefö declares that they have not observed an increase in the number of sex workers that get in touch with them. Lefö also declares that the mobility of sex workers interferes with the registration procedure. It takes about a week to register when there are no problems. However, when the sex worker has worked abroad for while or when the last STD check was more than three months ago, the sex worker has to undergo a new health check. Until then she cannot be registered and, thus, not work legally. Many sex workers, according to Lefö, don’t bother and move to another part of Austria or work without registration. The police estimates that there were 3000 to 4000 unregistered sex workers working in Austria in 2010.97 One of the problems with incentives is that they mean something else to the receiver ss to the official. One problem with rules is that they lead to evasion or bending by the target audience. When rules are perceived to negatively interfere with the everyday practices or benefit structure of the receiver’s life, he will attempt to tam per with the rule so that it is either ineffective or contributes to the receiver’s benefits. (This is called ‘playing the system’.) One of the reasons is that rules usually contain more than one objective, of which only one is penal ized. In the Austrian system, registration aims at increased visibility and control by the police and the prevention of STD’s. We see both problems at work in the registration system. In the life world of the Austrian sex worker the public health goal of STD prevention interferes with the goal of increased visibility, and in general with the high mobility nature of sex work, and results in evasion of the registration. In Utrecht we see similar conflicts with the aims of the measures. On the one hand the city want to establish a connection with what they see as ‘isolated’ sex workers, on the other hand they impose onerous measures on these sex workers.98 The intended incentive to the sex worker to seek help is interpreted by the latter as one more obstacle towards making a living. Also, it
97 As so often in prostitution, this number cannot be verified. 98 Recently the mayor of Utrecht closed dozens of windows claiming the presence of trafficked sex workers on the premises. As a result 105 sex workers lost their workplace. These sex workers have moved to different cities.
International Comparative Study of Prostitution Policy: Austria and the Netherlands