In the article, Augustine Brannigan and Erin Gibbs explore the subject of adolescent prostitution. Since the 1980s, the epidemic of juvenile prostitution has caught the eye of the media. The media saw an alarming increase in the number of juveniles charged with soliciting prostitution. The number of juvenile prostitutes arrested under the YOA ("Young Offenders Act") represented a significant proportion of the street trade. Besides, numerous cases of adults luring adolescents to engage in illicit sex were reported. Brannigan and Gibbs (2005) linked adolescent prostitution to juvenile delinquency, including runaway behavior. The researchers viewed the subject of adolescent prostitution from two perspectives: the delinquency perspective and the victimological perspective. From a delinquency perspective, prostitution is a form of misconduct like drug abuse, drug trafficking, and theft. On the contrariwise, from a victimological perspective, prostitution is viewed as a form of pathological conduct often caused by early sexual abuse. Understanding adolescent prostitution from both perspectives is crucial for developing interventions (Brannigan and Gibbs, 2005). The vulnerable populations often engage in adolescent prostitution. This includes teenagers, young adults, the poor, and the less educated. At the time Brannigan and Gibbs (2005) wrote the article, arrest by police was the only form of intervention in adolescent prostitution. Governments intervene to protect the rights of juveniles in cases where interventions are mandated by the court ( Vallée & Caputo, 2011) . Although this intervention deals relatively swiftly with the delinquency aspect, it does little to address this population's emotional, financial, and other needs. Part of the problem is attributed to the lack of definition of what activities constitute adolescent prostitution. When defining juvenile prostitution, authorities often use different age criteria and consider different kinds of behavior. Some authorities use <21 years as the age criteria when defining juvenile prostitution, while other use <18 Brannigan and Gibbs, 2005). Due to this conflict, it is difficult to estimate the magnitude of adolescent prostitution. The problem of adolescent prostitution is also attributed to the lack of legal forms of intervention. Both the Criminal Code and social service legislation do little to address the issue of juvenile prostitution. Brannigan and Gibbs write, "Prostitution per se does not attract arrest, but communication does – a peculiarity of the Canadian Criminal Code" (Brannigan and Gibbs, 2005, 242). Although the Canadian Criminal Code seems to have been designed to curb juvenile prostitution, society considers prostitution a form of work. Besides, the social welfare intervention only views prostitution from one perspective, namely, the victimization perspective. This indicates that social welfare protection stops at child welfare. These legal ambiguities can be attributed to the lack of social consensus when it comes to the subject of prostitution. This impedes the development of an effective framework that addresses the issue of adolescent prostitution and the needs of vulnerable populations.
References
Branningan, Augustine and Erin Gibbs Van Brunshot (2005). “The adolescent prostitute: Policing delinquency or preventing victimization, Chapter 10, pp. 224-245. In Winterdyk, John (Editor) (3rd Edition) (2005). I ssues and perspectives on young offenders in Canada.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Vallée, M., & Caputo, T. (2011). Crime prevention and community safety for children and youth in Canada . University of Victoria.
