Summary: Attitudes Toward Prostitution

Attitudes Across Cultures Toward Prostitution Prostitution is a global issue that affects individuals in many aspects of life. Many governmental jurisdictions have attempted to regulate and control the negative effects of the human trafficking industry. In certain locations, such as Sweden and Norway, legal statutes have been adopted that include the legalization of selling sex, but not the purchase of sex. Norway changed their laws in 2009, ten years after Sweden, from being legal to making it illegal to purchase sexual services (Jakobsson & Kotsadam, 2011). However, in other locations, such as the United States and European countries, it may be entirely legal, or entirely illegal. There are multiple different legal statutes in place regarding

Their laws punish the purchase of sex not the sale. In other words, they target the individual who is purchasing sex, who many believe to be the one committing the worse act.

Jakobsson and Kotsadam (2017) used a 2008 Internet survey that was targeted to discover attitudes toward different aspects of prostitution, while also controlling for other socio-demographic factors to investigate perceptions. Participants included 1,716 Norwegian individuals and 1,815 Swedish individuals ranging in age from 15-65. The questionnaire assisted the researchers in determining many factors contributing to attitudes toward prostitution. The first being that higher education level, being religious, and supporting gender equality was related to believing that buying sex is morally unacceptable. While younger people were found to believe it is more morally acceptable to purchase sex. This raises concern for younger people due to their already increased vulnerability to individuals looking to recruit members to become sex workers or recruiters themselves. The study also investigated attitudes of individuals toward their current laws regarding prostitution. Being an older participant was related to not wanting to criminalize buying sex. However, overall, the authors concluded that they "favor a criminalization of prostitution since we believe

It is also illegal to operate a brothel or other form of pimping service. Morton, Klein, and Gorzalka, (2012) designed a study to investigate knowledge of and attitudes toward current Canadian laws regarding prostitution. 238 undergraduate students were recruited for the purpose of the study. 14 scenarios referring to the sex industry were administered to measure knowledge of current laws. 7 more items were administered to determine attitudes toward scenarios that may include different factors such as; when both parties enjoy sex with the customer, percentage of customers married, percentage of men and women believed to seek out prostitutes, the percentage of male prostitutes believed to be heterosexual, and the percentage of female consumers. Last, two open ended questions were added in order to give individuals the ability to describe what they believed to be the positive and negative aspects of working within the sex industry and their personal attitudes toward the legislation. 42.5% of participants believed that laws should be modified to increase legalization of prostitution. While 35.8% believed the exact opposite, that the laws should focus to increase criminalization. Individuals were overall aware of the current laws regarding prostitution. However, they were unclear about the bawdy house and communication laws. The law states that one cannot be in public communicating with another