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Legal Red Light Districts Don’t Keep Sex Workers Safe
Just before Christmas of 2015, 21-year-old Daria Pionko, a street-based sex worker, was murdered in the Holbeck district of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Sadly, violence is a fact of life for street workers; they are 12 times more likely than other women to be murdered in the UK. But Pionko was working in Britain’s first-ever legal red light district, a project whose intention is to protect workers from violence. Her death raised questions: Can sex workers ever truly be safe inside the system that criminalizes and demonizes their existence? Or do we have to dismantle that system in order to truly achieve justice, equality, and safety for sex workers?
The red light district, which was made official in October 2014 and permanent in January 2016, was initiated by local group Safer Leeds in collaboration with sex workers charities and law enforcement. In the legalized red light area, street workers are permitted to solicit clientele between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. The decriminalization of sex work at any level is an important stepping stone toward recognizing the human rights of sex workers, but the zone and the legislation supporting it have messy implications which fail to annihilate the systemic and historical violence sex workers face in the process of making a living.