Kerbcrawler rehabilitation programmes: Curing the `deviant' male and reinforcing the `respectable' moral order

Abstract

This paper has two aims: to outline the current policy and ideology behind `tackling demand' for commercial sex through targeting `kerbcrawlers' and to critique support for and rise of `kerbcrawler rehabilitation programmes' in the UK. Such attempts to `reform' sexual `deviants' through a criminal treatment process are criticized on accounts of ineffectiveness; resource intensiveness; the content of the programme; the disregard for legal process and theory; and the damaging effects of the programme. The messages behind the policy and rehabilitation programmes are examined through the discourse of respectability, and the desire to reinforce a sexual order by scapegoating this group of men as the sexual `other' alongside female street sex workers. The discourses behind New Labour prostitution policy are examined where it is argued that the governance of prostitution through criminalization amounts to `moral engineering'.