Research for the Review of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003

The Prostitution Reform Act came into force at the end of June 2003. Included in the Act was the establishment of the Prostitution Law Review Committee (PLRC), which is required to review the Act within three to five years of its commencement. In 2005 the Ministry of Justice commissioned the Crime and Justice Research Centre (CJRC) to develop an evaluation framework for this review.

The evaluation framework outlined a series of research projects. CJRC was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to carry out two of research projects:

(i) To review the following areas of literature:

• overseas models of best practice in relation to exiting the industry, with particular reference to under age sex workers
• overseas legalised and decriminalised models of prostitution law reform (in addition to the information the Ministry has in this area); and
• models of best practice in relation to resolving tensions between state legislative aims and local government initiativesand

(ii) To conduct a series of interviews with key informants on the impact and performance of the Act. Informants for this peice of research will be non-government agencies and those who work in the industry (e.g., Brothel Operators).

This research was completed in July 2007. The findings of this research, together with those of the other review research projects, was used by the PLRC to inform their review of the Act which was published in May 2008.

Reports

Key informant interviews

International approaches to decriminalising or legalising prostitution

Exiting prostitution: models of best practice

Central Government Aims and Local Government Responses: The Prostitution Reform Act 2003