Does the Broad Criminalization of Procuring in France Pose a Problem? A Study of Enforcement by Police and Magistrates

Abstract

In French criminal law, the definition of procuring is all-encompassing and makes no distinction between supportive and coercive behaviour. The presence of coercion or abuse or a lack of consent on the part of the sex worker is not required to establish the offence of procuring. The result is a broad criminalization of procuring, and the scope of the offence is the subject of debate. While police investigators and magistrates readily point out that the definition facilitates their work, critics deplore that it criminalizes virtually all the relationships that sex workers maintain in their personal lives and in their work. Indeed, the wording of the procuring offence may therefore contribute to the isolation, marginalization, and even endangerment of people who sell sexual services, for example, by making it more difficult to find and stay in accommodation, making it impossible to work together despite the advantages in terms of security, or discouraging them from contacting the police for fear of implicating family or friends. There is therefore a tension between the benefits of a broad definition of procuring and the possible negative effects on the people that its criminalization aims to protect. As prostitution is considered contrary to human dignity, the objective of procuring offences is to prevent prostitution irrespective of the conditions in which it takes place. Hence, despite policies which encourage the protection of sex workers such protection is limited to provisions designed to end their involvement in prostitution. As such, some behaviours that could reduce sex workers’ exposure to certain forms of violence, or restrict the risks of coercion and exploitation, in fact constitute an offence. How, then, do judges and specialized investigators navigate the paradoxes and inconsistencies of procuring under French law, and determine who are the perpetrators and who are the victims?

Keywords: procuring, sex work, prostitution, France, criminal law.