For Grace Mukaneza waking up early in the morning is a battle. This is because all night long she waits along the street to find someone willing to trade money for her body. She perceives herself as having freely chosen prostitution over other available lifestyles.

"Although there was a choice, it was frequently between prostitution and other unpleasant alternatives, like sexual or physical abuse at home, homelessness and extreme poverty,” Mukaneza laments.

The single mother of a two-year old boy risks physical and sexual violence at the hands of clients or being harassed by the police on the streets.

On the two occasions she has been arrested by the police, her partner has never been charged because the aim is not to penalize the buyers though the intention is to send a message that it is not socially acceptable to buy sex, that women are not commodities.

She regrets that female prostitutes are usually considered members of the lowest social class and lacking status yet it does not apply to the men who buy their services reflecting the difference in social disapproval.

This biological theory of criminality to women is because women have for a long time been perceived as inferior to men.
And like many prostitutes, Mukaneza merely internalizes her choice as voluntary and looks at her consent to prostitution as real.

Reports have shown that while some women may choose to engage in prostitution and regard it as work, others some of whom are underage are coerced or sold into the business.

Prostitution is a form of restricted and ultimately destructive choice, especially in countries that offer very limited options for women outside the commercial sex industry.

In criminology, the research and analysis of prostitution falls within the topic of public order crime as Chief Supt Emmanuel Butera, Director of Community Policing explains. According to him, the legal treatment of the social phenomenon is not equal.

"More general concerns with inequality, exploitation, and violence are put forward considering attitudes towards gender roles.” Butera said. He adds that in some jurisdictions, the commercial arrangement between customer and service provider is considered intrinsically criminal.

In other jurisdictions, the actual sale of sexually based services is not a crime for example in the U.K., the Commonwealth of Nations, Europe and Latin America.

The consensual transactions between prostitutes and their clients do not usually produce complainants unless either the clients are robbed by the prostitute or the pimp.

Eventually prostitution has come to be described as a victimless crime. But most modern researchers would identify the prostitutes as the primary victims and family, friends and, sometimes, the clients as the secondary victims.

Medics explain that this has a major illegality with the medical control of sexually transmitted diseases within the community. Some countries like The Netherlands and Germany emphasize the public health aspect in their legislation by rigidly enforcing the periodic medical examination of prostitutes and by providing free compulsory hospitalization for those found infected.

This emphasis on regulation rather than suppression has resulted in a marked decline in the incidence of sexually transmitted. Further, in many countries, whether prostitution is legal or illegal, there is an element of organized crime, particularly in human trafficking for sexual purposes.

Universal and essentialist claims about prostitution are unhelpful because all results of prostitution show it harms women. There is strong co-occurrence between prostitution, drug use, drug selling, and involvement in non-drug crimes, particularly property crime.

Because the activity is considered criminal in many jurisdictions, its substantial revenues are not contributing to the tax revenues of the state.

Its workers are not routinely screened for sexually transmitted disease which is dangerous in cultures favoring unprotected sex since it leads to significant expenditure in the health services.

Ends