Prostitute’s Caution

Zoë Garbett AM moved, and Andrew Boff AM seconded the following motion:

“This Assembly notes the Crown Prosecution Service’s legal guidance on Section1(1) of the Street Offenses Act 1959 which acknowledges the ‘prostitute’s caution’ is “different from other cautions in that the incident itself need not be a criminal offence nor need it be admitted: instead, it is a way of recording one such incident.”

We also note that 79 so-called ‘prostitute’s cautions’ were issued by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in 2022 and 45 in 2023, including five to men and one to a trans or gender-diverse person.

Prostitute’s cautions differ from police cautions in that the person doesn’t have to admit guilt and there is no right of appeal against a prostitute’s caution. A simple police caution is spent after two and a half years, filtered out from someone’s record after six years and does not need to be disclosed to employers but a ‘prostitute’s caution’ will show up on a woman’s enhanced DBS check until she is 100.

We ask the Mayor to work with the MPS to change this so women and people in sex work are not criminalised and stigmatised for the rest of their lives, by reducing the data retention times of a ‘prostitute’s caution’ to be comparable with a simple police caution.”

Following debate and upon being put to the vote, the motion was agreed unanimously.