According to the Ministry of Interior’s report, in 2014 10,538 people were detained under the Article 6.11 of the Administrative Offenses Code of the Russian Federation (prostitution), which is 21.6% more than in 2013 according to the newspaper “Izvestia”. The crime rate in this area increased by 42.3%. The number of criminal cases increased to 387 cases under the Article 240 of the Criminal Code (incitement to prostitution).
According to the Ministry of Interior’s report, in 2014 10,538 people were detained under the Article 6.11 of the Administrative Offenses Code of the Russian Federation (prostitution), which is 21.6% more than in 2013 according to the newspaper “Izvestia”. The crime rate in this area increased by 42.3%. The number of criminal cases increased to 387 cases under the Article 240 of the Criminal Code (incitement to prostitution).
The leader of the unregistered association of sex workers of Russia “Silver Rose” Irina Maslova thinks that the main reason for the prostitution volume growth is the economic crisis which had led to job cuts. The women who need to continue to feed the family lost their jobs in the first place. Moreover, according to Irina Maslova, due to the unstable situation in Ukraine, a lot of girls came to Russia to search for jobs.
According to the leader of “Silver Rose”, the number of sex workers in Russia in 2014 remained the same, about 3 million people. Irina Maslova stated that we should not trust the reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as most of the detentions is not registered by the detectives. This is due to the fact that there is no legal definition of “prostitution” in the law, therefore it is hard to prove that a woman is engaged in illegal activities. In order to convict the sex workers in criminal activities, the police carries out “test purchases”, which are provocative and illegal.
Meanwhile, the lawyer of the Moscow Bar Association, Igor Danilov, expressed the opposite view. He believes that the Ministry of Internal Affairs data clearly indicate an increase in the number of sex workers.
“If in previous years almost no sex worker came to us to appeal the penalties for prostitution, now we have 3 – 4 such cases each month. The main problem of sex workers is that nobody of them wants to be held responsible under the Article 6.11. of the Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation “Prostitution”. The information on this is entered into the database, and this is something they are trying to avoid by any means, as they do not want that their relatives find out about their profession”, Danilov said.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the following cities are leading in the number of administrative records: St. Petersburg (1322 cases; + 27%), Moscow (1210, + 15%) and Moscow region (941, + 85%). A year earlier, Moscow was leading with 1,427 arrests. Kaluga region is on the fourth place, as there the number of reports increased by more than 40 times, to 866.
In Tyumen, on the contrary, there is a decrease: 659 (-31%), the same in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District: 474 (-45%) and Kurgan: 38 (2013 – 125). In the Sverdlovsk region the number of records remains the same: 71 (2013 – 74). In the Chelyabinsk region a slight increase is noted: 112 (2013 – 81), and in the Yamal the number of administrative reports has doubled: 182 (2013 – 90).
The first place of St.-Petersburg on the number of administrative records in connection with prostitution is determined by its geographical location (port city), thinks Margarita Pozdnyakov, the head of the sociology of deviant behavior department of the Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Science. She also said that the street prostitution is controlled by pimps in the cultural capital of Russian less than in Moscow, and there are fewer migrants among sex workers in St.-Petersburg, as this niche is almost completely occupied by local drug addicted girls.
According to the report the Ministry of Internal Affairs, during the first quarter of 2015, 3433 sex workers were arrested. If the pace persists, the final figure could surpass the results of 2014.
Source: URA
Photo: Aleksandr Mamaev @ URA.ru