In the majority of European member states, while the selling of sex by a prostitute is rarely criminalised, a number of related activities (eg, soliciting in a public place, kerb-crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering etc.) qualify as a criminal offence. In recent years, however, a trend to locally penalise the nuisance behaviour of prostitutes (and clients) has increasingly gained foothold in some European cities (or, more properly, in some of their areas). Under these new local regulatory frameworks, while the sale and purchase of sex is generally tolerated, any visible evidence that such an exchange takes place is less so, for the nuisance and affront that visible prostitution is presumed to cause to individuals and communities.

A widespread trend at the local level to criminalise behaviour equally regarded as anti-social, nuisance or uncivil has been explained in criminological literature from different perspectives. For its frequent application in criminological literature (Burney, 2002, 2005; Scoular and O’Neill, 2007; Devroe, 2012; van der Leun and Koemans, 2013 etc.), David Garland’s (2001)” culture of control” perspective is considered one of the most influential. In his book, the author contended that in the historical epoch known as “late modernity,” rising crime rates, an increasing feeling of insecurity and fear of crime have determined the emergence of a “reconfigured field of crime control”(Garland, 2001, p. 6), which has increasingly relied on punitive and expressive practices and measures. Punitive mechanisms have also been applied to curb uncivil behaviour, which (even when consisting of minor disturbances) has been deemed to engender societal and individual insecurities and a fear of being victimised (Burney, 2005; Sampson and Raudenbush, 2004; Bottoms and Wilson, 2004; Peršak, 2014 etc.).