Northumbria Journals
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The Limits of Vulnerability: Arguments Against the Inclusion of Sex Workers Within Hate Crime Policy in England and Wales
Get PDFOn 23rd September 2020, the Law Commission launched their Hate Crime consultation paper, which suggested including ‘sex worker’ as a protected characteristic when considering hate motivated violence. The inclusion of sex workers in policing hate crime policy had already been implemented in Merseyside in 2002, and Yorkshire in 2017 (Sanders and Campbell, 2020). From a policing perspective, this approach has its advantages: it encourages a more coordinated approach to crimes against sex workers, as well as having an educative and awareness raising function around the discrimination they face (Sanders and Campbell, 2020; Chakoraborti and Garland, 2012). However, those who advocate for this approach caution that whilst it is an important first step to address crimes against sex workers, it can only go so far in a legal framework where sex work is still criminalised (Campbell, 2019; Campbell, 2014; Platt et al., 2018). This article challenges the idea that increased hate crime legislation will reduce violence against sex workers, suggesting that it may in fact put sex workers in even greater harm by increasing their interaction with the police. We emphasise that there is limited evidence that higher sentences deter hate crime offenders, and it is almost impossible to assess whether this type of legislation even provides the educative function it claims to. This paper argues that full decriminalisation of sex work is the most effective first step to responding to violence against sex workers, rather than increased legislation and tougher sentencing (CPS, 2019). In doing so, we add to the growing body of literature evidencing how full decriminalisation increases safety of sex workers. We also aim to contribute to a broader understanding that harsher sentencing and increased carceral responses do not best protect vulnerable communities of any sort
The Art of Adapting Open Educational Resources for Street Law: Copyright the Card Game a Case Study
Get PDFThe Street Law community is well practiced in designing bespoke activities for particular community groups. Starting with a blank canvas can often be the easier forma. How often do we consider inviting our Street Law students to adapt works, games, and materials designed for one purpose or audience (i.e. not Street Law) and transform them into a different format? This paper highlights a case study involving undergraduate law students adapting an openly licensed card game originally designed for use with academic librarians, and using it as a tool to raise awareness with sixth form students about the laws and issues of copyright
The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era, Brenda Cossman [NYU Press, 2021, 280pp, £25.99 (hardback)]
Get PDFBook Review of The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era, Brenda Cossman [NYU Press, 2021, 280pp, £25.99 (hardback)
Measuring the Impact of Clinic Participation on Law Graduates: A Small Case Study
Get PDFIn an academic environment where there is an increasing emphasis on impact, it is rather surprising that there is a paucity of studies on the effect (if any) of participation in a clinical legal education programme on the career trajectory of law graduates. In this article, after considering the methodologies behind and outcomes of two such studies conducted in North America, the author describes how he devised a survey, which was sent to a group of law students at the University of Galway’s externship-based clinical programme it its pilot year, and analyses the responses. In short, this study – like the other two – suggests that clinic participation has a marked impact on lawyers in terms of enhancing practical legal skills, but a less significant impact when it comes to inspiring graduates to embark upon public interest-oriented legal careers or undertake pro bono work. The article acknowledges that there are myriad factors influencing these choices and that it is foolish to extrapolate excessively from these studies. It concludes by arguing that, no matter these “failings” with respect to the social justice imperative that helps define clinical legal education, the capacity of programmes to equip future lawyers with key skills and to instil in them, at the very least, a cognisance of the shortcomings of the law and legal system means that our work is still eminently worthwhile
Holistic Legal Support for Litigants in Person: The North and Mid Wales Law Clinic Partnership
No full textIn 2020 the Access to Justice Foundation and Ministry of Justice launched the Legal Support for Litigants in Person (LSLIP) Grant, a two-year programme funding a range of earlier intervention services for litigants in person. Eleven projects were funded to deliver advice on a national, regional, and local scale, to litigants in person at different stages of their problem in various areas of civil and family law. Partnership working and earlier intervention were central to these activities, to achieve improved outcomes for clients. One such project became known as the North and Mid Wales Law Clinic (NMWLC), including seven Local Citizens Advice (CA) branches (six in North Wales plus Powys in Mid Wales) and Bangor University.
The NMWLC delivers a service to support Litigants in Person (LiP) at every stage of their journey, providing generalist holistic advice designed to identify LiPs early on, preventing escalation of their legal problems, reducing financial hardship, and resolving issues with information to support self-help. The partnership provides generalist advice, and specialist advice and casework in the areas of Family Law, Employment Law, and Powers of Attorney and Deputyship (the latter being areas where local demand was identified by CA and partners). Through the project law students are supported to train as General Advisers and to assist specialist advisers and caseworkers.
The project provided a unique way to develop clinical legal education (CLE), not least as it commenced fully online during the Covid-19 pandemic, focused on preventing escalation of legal problems, including through triage and partnership, and occurred in a small law department where existing provision (aside from in criminal law) was largely based on simulated activity. This article evaluates the first two years of the NMWLC from a CLE perspective, focusing on the experiences of student volunteers, exploring the challenges and opportunities of online working, and how the initiative fits with CLE models
From Legislative Intent to Hospice Practice: Exploring the Genealogy of The Mental Capacity Act 2005
Get PDFThe Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) regulates decision-making for people without capacity. Post-legislative scrutiny of the Act in 2014 by a House of Lords Select Committee concluded that the MCA was neither well understood nor working well in practice. The aim of the research discussed in this article was to consider how the Act’s principles are understood and interpreted in hospice practice, specifically considering the patient’s role in the decision-making process.
The research proceeded through four distinct, but linked, phases which, together, offered a ‘life story’ of the MCA from legislative intent to current hospice practice (in 2019). The research was informed by relational theory and legal consciousness theory and the methods described are underpinned by a narrative approach to analysis. Phase one was an innovative genealogical analysis of policy and legislative documents (n=24) influencing the ‘coming to be’ of the MCA. In phase two, a systematic review of Court of Protection judgments (n=63) ‘historicises’ the empirical research, which was the focus of phases three and four (group interviews and individual interviews, respectively). Staff from two participating hospices participated in two group interviews and six individual interviews (13 participants), providing empirical data. Template analysis was used in all four phases of the study, and adapted to facilitate a synthesis of the findings across the study as a whole
Webcam Performers Resisting Social Harms: “You're on the Web Masturbating… It's Just about Minimising the Footprint”
Get PDFThis article will bring together Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of Smooth Space and zemiological debates of social harms to respond to the question set by Jane Scoular (2015): does the law matter in sex work? The regulation and policing of performers by hosting sites allow sites to avoid state-level legislation. However, site regulations cause performers to experience harm that traditional concepts of the law cannot address because the law is powerless against the intrinsic injuries done by neo-liberalism. The damages experienced by female performers were not generally criminal but nonetheless harmful to those experiencing them, even though generally no laws were transgressed. When performers did experience crime, the non-territorial nature of the internet prevented action from being taken. This article will explore the irrelevance of the law in the context of webcamming and the potential harms caused by academia’s fixed gaze on the customer, preventing consideration of the damages done to webcam performers by other social actors
Racial Profiling and The Larger Impact of Covid-19 on Migrant Sex Workers in France
Get PDFIn this article we will discuss the first Coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown and its immediate aftermath on the lives of migrant sex workers living and working in France, drawing on original interviews gathered between May and July 2020. Since 2016 in France, sex workers have worked under the so-called Swedish model legal framework criminalising the demand of sexual services. This has meant that sex workers, both migrant and non-migrant, have had to find various strategies to continue working within a criminalised environment infringing upon their rights and safety. Research in the French context has largely shown that the introduction of the Swedish model increased the financial precarity and impacted in significant, detrimental ways the physical and mental health of sex workers (Le Bail & Giametta 2018). In the context of the existing hardship to which migrant sex workers were exposed under this repressive regime in France, this article investigates if and how the law enforcement and emergency measures around the Covid-19 crisis aggravated their already precarious living conditions. Our analysis here demonstrates that both institutional racism (e.g., government policies and law enforcement targeting racialized migrants) and interpersonal stigmatisation (e.g., poor treatment and stereotyping by clients and civil society) must be combated to reduce the discrimination against migrant sex workers that is amplified in times of crisis
Impacts of Colonial Legacies on the Rights and Security of Sex Workers in Southern Africa
Get PDFThis article will explore the relationship between sex work and the law in four Southern African countries – Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe – to shed light on the persistent barriers to promoting the rights and security of sex workers. In these countries, as across Southern Africa, criminal laws on sex work introduced by colonial powers have profoundly shaped contemporary societal attitudes towards sex work and women who sell sex. More recently, the question of sex work has often been linked to HIV and AIDS and decriminalisation has been promoted as part of a wider strategy to protect ‘key populations’, including sex workers, who are perceived as being at greater risk of HIV infection. Based on our research with young women engaged in selling sex, we found that repression continues in various forms within and outside of the law. Though sex work is no longer fully criminalised in most countries in the region, the relics of the colonial past permeate contemporary norms and attitudes to sex work thus locking the selling of sex within the grey areas of the law and contributing to situations of vulnerability for sex workers. Our four case studies demonstrate that transformations in dominant social norms and representations around sex work have been far slower and less far reaching than many assumed they would be, even in the countries which have adopted more progressive laws and policies. The situations of vulnerability experienced by sex workers also escalated during the COVID-19 crisis, highlighting the critical need for state intervention to improve their legal, economic and social position
