Faces Behind the Voices

The 2003 Prostitution Reform Act decriminalised sex work in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Under decriminalisation, street-based sex workers can work free of prosecution and police harassment. Indoor sex workers can legally choose to work with friends for safety. Earning off of the proceeds of sex work through a commercial sex business is legal. Clients of sex workers are not criminalised so sex workers are not forced to work underground in situations that expose them to the risk of violence. Sex workers in Aotearoa/New Zealand are not afraid of reporting to the police. Under the New Zealand model, sex workers have access to the criminal justice system, to health and social services without fear of being discriminated against.

Faces Behind the Voices was a peer-led collaboration with the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC). The videos and text provide reflections on the lived experiences of sex workers under the New Zealand model of decriminalisation and context from:

• Jason Hewett, formerly from the New Zealand Police, about the relationship between sex workers and the police

• Dr Annette Nesdale from the Health Ministry of Health (New Zealand) about access to health services

• Jan Logie from the New Zealand Green Party MP for a feminist perspective on decriminalisation

The voices of New Zealand sex workers might appear as remote by distance as Aotearoa/New Zealand from Europe, but their experiences of working under decriminalisation are vital to the policy debates around prostitution reform in countries far, far from Aotearoa.

• Sex workers’ rights - what and why?

• Sex worker input

• Confidentiality

• Process: writing

• Process: photography

• Funding and outcomes

• Reading for non-sex workers