Window dressing - The Netherlands' sex trade

The arrest in May of five pimps and four owners of window brothels in De Wallen (the red light district), Amsterdam, provided an illustration of the extent to which organised crime remains intertwined with the sex trade, a decade after the Netherlands passed its controversial Brothel Law. The legislation was intended to reduce the involvement of criminal organisations in prostitution by legalising the sex trade and allowing sex workers to form part of the legal economy. A decade later, the legislation appears to have enjoyed only limited success, with criminals finding new loopholes to exploit for criminal gain.

In particular, the Brothel Law specified that only those eligible to work in the Netherlands could work legally in the sex trade. This immediately discriminated against the presence of illegal immigrants in the sex trade, either from outside the EU or from those countries in the EU not eligible to work in the Netherlands. As a result, criminal groups were able to exploit the potential of trafficking women from outside the EU to work in the sex trade, allowing them to profit from prostitutes working outside the legalised sex trade.