Policing of sex work in Toronto has plummeted despite tougher laws: study
A new study from the University of Toronto Mississauga reveals that sex work arrests in Toronto have dropped by 99.6 per cent since the early 1990s, even as Canadian laws have grown more restrictive.
Drawing on police data and census information, the researchers found that remaining arrests are disproportionately concentrated in the city’s most socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
They say the findings add a new dimension to ongoing policy debates, pointing to a gap between Canada’s increasingly strict sex work laws and their selective enforcement.
“The change from the 1990s is shocking,” said Chris M. Smith, an associate professor in UTM’s department of sociology and lead author of the article in the Journal of Contemporary Justice.
Analyzing nearly three decades of police records, Smith and her team found that sex work-related arrests peaked at nearly 2,800 in 1992 and fell to just 11 by 2020.
The researchers used census information to map those arrests across 579 tracts, tracking how enforcement patterns varied across neighbourhoods over time.
“The numbers don’t show us where all the sex work happened, but rather when and where police directed their attention,” said Smith, adding that police data didn’t specify whether arrests involved workers or clients.
Across the study period, arrests were more likely in areas with markers of socioeconomic disadvantage, including higher poverty, unemployment and lower education levels.
“They were likely concentrated on street-based sex workers in Toronto’s poorer neighbourhoods, not the indoor sex industry with wealthier clients and workers,” Smith said, noting that Toronto Police Services didn’t contribute to the analysis.
The study situated these findings within Canada’s shifting legal landscape. Selling sex has never technically been illegal, but there have long been laws targeting the trade.
In 1985, the Criminal Code was updated to formally outlaw several activities related to sex work, including “communication for the purposes of prostitution,” which accounted for the vast majority of arrests.
Sex workers’ rights organizations launched a constitutional challenge of these provisions in 2007 in what became known as the Bedford case. The Supreme Court ruled in their favour in 2013, striking down key sections of the code.
“We found the lowest count of sex work arrests ever — just six — in the year following the decision,” said Smith.
That same year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government passed Bill C-36, criminalizing the purchase of sex but not its sale and banning the advertisement of sexual services.
Under this new legal regime, arrests stayed low in Toronto — and the pattern of disproportionate policing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods persisted, the study showed.
Smith said the research raises questions about why these rarely enforced laws remain in place while sex workers lack sufficient protections.
“There’s a mismatch between these stricter laws and the arrest numbers,” said Smith. “Still, for sex workers the risk of arrest with this law on the books is very high and significantly affects their work and their safety.”
In recent years, sex workers’ rights groups have advocated for decriminalization, which they argue would promote harm reduction by improving working conditions and legal protections.
“Decriminalizing sex work would benefit marginalized workers and clients in poorer neighbourhoods who are especially affected by existing laws,” said Smith. “It could make Canada a model of harm reduction.”
Smith conducted the study with Sharon Oselin of the University of California, Riverside, and Northwestern University’s Taylor Domingos, a U of T graduate. The research is part of a broader project comparing sex work, drug dealing and gambling in Toronto and Chicago for an upcoming book.
