commentary two: Streetwise? A critical review of the Criminal Law Revision Committee's report on 'Prostitution in the Street'

TLDR: For example, the Wolfenden report as discussed by the authors stated that the law has historically focused on the female prostitute and carefully excluded the client from legal sanctions, and that it was not concerned with the "morality" of prostitution but only with those aspects which were offensive or caused a public nuisance.

Abstract: From Finsbury Park to Tooting in London, Broomhall in Sheffield, Chapeltown in Leeds, and Derby Road in Southampton kerb-crawling has for some time been a national problem of major proportions. In most urban centres up and down the country, in the post-war period, as prostitution has become more clandestine and furtive, kerb-drawling has become more blatant and widespread. As a result the level of harassment and intimidation experienced by women living in these areas has increased to a point where many are afraid to walk out on the streets alone especially at night. The legislators, the judiciary and the police, however, have been noticeably reluctant to deal with the problem. Based upon a double standard of morality, the law has historically focused on the female prostitute and carefully excluded the client from legal sanctions. Even the path-breaking Wolfenden Report (1957) which claimed that it was not concerned with the ’morality’ of prostitution, but only with those aspects which were offensive or caused a public nuisance, recognised that kerb-crawling ’is undoubtedly a serious nuisance to many well-behaved women’ and concluded that it did ’not feel able to make any positive recommendation . ’<i> Any hope that the ’progressive ’sixties might bring a changed judicial response were dashed by the Crook v Edmondson (1966) verdict. Employing section 32 of the 1956 Street Offences Act which states that it is an offence for ‘a man persistently to solicit