In Berlin, prostitution is wide-spread. According to estimates, there are more than sex workers who offer their services in apartments, brothels and on the street. But its main purpose is to keep track of the sex workers. They are legal sex workers. But four to five times as many prostitutes have not entered that registration office. Berlin wants sex workers to be safe. The new rules about registrations are supposed to help the authorities track down women who are being forced into prostitution, along with the criminals responsible.
Among the latter are members of Arab clans. And there are Eastern European gangs and individuals who commit those kinds of crimes. In the past years, court proceedings in Germany, Switzerland and other countries have shown how Bulgarian traffickers work. Once they arrive, they are being beaten, threatened and forced into prostitution. To the German police and prosecution, it is almost impossible to identify ladies forced into becoming sex workers.
In a few cases, they were informed by women who had the courage and the opportunity to escape from the brutal mafiosi who brought them into that situation. The main purpose of those boxes would be to bring some order into the chaos some neighborhoods are confronted with. Many years ago, mostly German prostitutes offered their services there. Today most of them are Eastern Europeans.
On one stretch of that street, up to a dozen sex workers wait for customers during the day, and many more in the evening and at night. The problem is that they stand in front of schools and apartment blocks. The whole thing is not a good sight, neither for children, nor other residents. Finding used condoms or syringes on the street is not good either. Inhabitants in that neighborhood have been complaining a lot. Berliners who live there and some politicians keep on demanding restricted areas, where prostitution is forbidden.
The Berlin Senate is rejecting that demand. A while ago, Berlin officials started studying the situation in other cities. No city official wants to bring that experience to Berlin. Cologne has been a little more successful. According to city officials there, the strategy is working in the sense that there has been less violence against sex workers.
