Written Evidence to NI Committee for Justice in respect of The Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Further Provisions and Support for Victims) Bill

I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to provide written evidence in respect of the above Bill. I am a Reader in Criminology in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast where I have taught and researched for the past decade. My principal research interests over the years have concerned policing and its governance, but also how particular social problems can best be regulated by law enforcement and other officials in terms of a broader harm reduction strategy. To this end I am currently principal investigator on a project funded by the British Academy to investigate the policing and regulation of male and female prostitution in four cities where the regulatory framework differs significantly. The cities in the study are Belfast, Manchester, Prague and Berlin. The project has a number of aims but one of these is to assess the regulatory models in these cities in light of sex purchase legislation that exists in some of the Nordic countries, of which the so-called ‘Swedish model’ is perhaps the best known.