Driven into the darker places

By Rosie Stewart and Alice Wright


In a run down café in Camden, where the food is stale and the waitress serves with a sneer, sits Tracey, a local sex worker, preparing herself for a night’s work. She’s accompanied by Allison and Claire, two outreach workers based in the area.

Tracey is here to discuss the installation of a CCTV camera on Market Road in Islington. Funded by the Council, the camera is in place to drive out anti-social behavior and sex workers in an effort to “spruce up the area”. It will come into action at the end of March.


The Council claims the road is a hive of social activity, but the reality is a deserted drive-through between York Way and the Caledonian Road. A poorly lit park runs along the northern side and tennis courts occupy the south side. People seldom go there. Even the bus only passes once every half hour.

Sergeant Franc Francioni, head of the Holloway Safer Neighbourhood Team, says the camera is not there to target the women working in the area, but rather the punters who use them. “This is not about criminalizing the women, it’s about disrupting the trade.”

Sitting under harsh strip lighting, with a Lucky Strike in one hand and a can of Fanta in the other, Tracey, who has worked in the area for the past ten years, has other ideas: “From our side of the fence it's more like this: yes, sometimes it does make us feel safer, except for when they use it to hunt us with.”

When that is the case, she says, they are forced to take more risks. Punters don’t want their registration caught on camera so Tracey and her friends have to take them to places where they can’t be identified. Darker places where there are less people, where it isn’t safe. As Tracey puts it: “The kind of place an attacker would like.”

From talking to experts and the girls on the street, it is obvious that problems with CCTV systems arise when they are used to penalise sex-workers rather than protect them.

Geraldine Flanagan, National Information and participation officer at the UK Network of Sex Projects, says: “The CCTV camera is not the problem in itself, the concern is the attitudes behind the camera. If it is part of a heavy police enforcement programme then the worry is that it will disperse sex workers and force them to work in unsafe areas, making them more vulnerable.”

Tracey, sporting a baker-boy cap and pigtails, doesn’t disguise her fear. “I’m scared. I’m scared for me, I’m scared for my girls as well. We're family, we're a unit. When one of us gets murdered it hurts. This camera is in the wrong place - don't put them where things work, put them where they don't work. Put them by the canals. Even better, why don't we just make it cost effective all round and legalise it [prostitution].”

A few moments later, Tracey is joined by Linda. Suffering from deep vein thrombosis and painfully thin, she draws up a chair by the table. Linda explains that in her efforts to escape CCTV she ended up in Hendon last night. “The cameras make it uncomfortable for us, you don’t go where it’s safe, you don’t know the haunts. But I have to because I’m known around here.”

The CCTV cameras also come between the outreach project and the sex workers. New Horizons Youth Centre has been sending staff like Allison and Claire on to the streets since 1968. They target women working on the street, providing condoms, safety advice and access to a drop-in centre at their premises on Chalton Street. They claim CCTV has made their job harder as it is more difficult to find the women who need their help. Claire says: “It’s frustrating, because they’re still working, but we can’t find them. I don’t think the cameras are going to work. If something happens the police are not going to get there immediately, are they? It’s more of an observation thing.”

Despite assurances from the authorities that the cameras are there to catch kerb-crawlers, Tracey and Linda agree that it is they, rather than their clients, who are targeted. Tracey recalls many incidents with violent punters in which police have “put words into [the punter’s] mouth to help them walk away” - despite her obvious distress and bloodied face.

In between a sandwich and a cigarette Linda chips in with a story about a mutual friend: “Rachel got caught on camera and got an £80 fine on the spot. If she doesn’t pay that within a certain amount of time she’ll end up in jail. And the community police were giggling away telling me about it, saying ‘we had to come in today and watch Rachel for 25 minutes taking it up the bum’. And afterwards she peed on the street and she got an extra £20 for that.”

Allison asks what penalty the punter was given. “Nothing. How are they going to find him? They know her face. They just watch the film and then they hand her the fine.” And what does Linda think about this? “Don’t do nothing under the camera, don’t take the risk.”

There are no quick fix solutions to the issues surrounding the safety of sex workers. Throughout the interview Tracey talks movingly of a family she is determined to protect. As for the CCTV cameras, Tracey says: “You can always tell where you’re going when you look back and see what’s changed. Nothing. Nothing’s changed since my friends were found chopped up in bin bags and in dustbins and in canals in suitcases. These things touch our lives. They’re real. They happen to real people. And we’re not just statistics. This is how we manage.”

The names of the sex workers have been changed to protect their identities.