Assessing the Impact of Sex Work Decriminalization: A feasibility study

Timeframe

2024-2025

Funding

University of Cincinnati

COMPASS staff

Barry Milne
Lisa Underwood

Collaborators

University of Cincinnati
Aaron Murnan
JC Barnes

Community partners

Te Waka Kaimahi Kairau o Aotearoa | The New Zealand Sex Workers’ Collective

Description

The decriminalization of sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand through the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 (PRA) has been uniformly hailed as a success, through protecting the rights of those in the sex work industry and by preventing social harms. Despite this, other countries and states investigating decriminalization often confront sceptics who seek ‘hard’ evidence of the impact of the reform on health, justice and other outcomes. This project seeks to assess the feasibility of identifying sex workers using the range of administrative data sources in Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), to see whether routinely collected data on health, justice, and other outcomes improved for sex workers following the PRA.