Prostitution in Scotland has been similar to that in England under the State of Union , but since devolution , the new Scottish Parliament has pursued its own policies. In Scotland , prostitution itself the exchange of sexual services for money is legal, but associated activities such as public solicitation, operating a brothel , or other forms of pimping are criminal offences.
In , the Civic Government Scotland Act came into force. This prohibited soliciting , but also gave local councils the power to license places of entertainment. Edinburgh Council issued licenses to massage parlours and saunas, effectively allowing brothels.
In return for the police " turning a blind eye ", the prostitutes would stay within this area. This would have allowed tolerance zones to be set up. Aberdeen set up a tolerance zone in the dock area in This act criminalised kerb crawling and as result the tolerance zone was closed. In , the Scottish police forces were merged to form Police Scotland. Previously each local force had had its own policy regarding prostitution. Police Scotland applied one policy to all of Scotland. In April , some sex work charities called for lawmakers in Scotland to reject a sex work policy, after statistics showed that violent crime against sex workers almost doubled after it was introduced in Ireland.
The increase in Ireland was associated with the introduction of the " Nordic Model ", a Swedish law which criminalises people who buy sex, rather than those who sell it. The statistic originated from UglyMugs, an app where sex workers can report incidents of abuse and crime, and receive alerts about dangerous clients. Street prostitution is dealt with under the Civic Government Scotland Act , section 46 1 , which states:.
Operating a brothel is illegal under the Criminal Law Consolidation Scotland Act , as follows: [ 15 ]. Section 13 makes provision about male prostitution. Third-party activities, such as pimping, procuring, and living off the avails, are illegal under section 7 Procuring and section 11 of the Act.
