Living the law: An ecological analysis of NGO responses to sex work governance

Introduction: NGOs at the fault line of criminalisation

In both the United Kingdom and United States, sex work is criminalised to varying degrees – fully in most U.S. jurisdictions and partially in England, Scotland, and Wales, where selling sex is legal but related activities (e.g. brothel-keeping, soliciting) are not, and in Northern Ireland, which adopted the Nordic Model by criminalising clients in 2015 (Ellison, 2017). Here, we use the term ‘criminalisation’ to refer to regulatory systems that criminalise some or all aspects of sex work. NGOs and other intermediaries play a critical but under-theorised role in the governance of sex work. Often positioned between punitive legal regimes and vulnerable communities, these diverse organisations provide essential services, advocate for change, and mediate access to housing, healthcare, and justice. A substantial body of literature has examined the role of NGOs in reinforcing carceral approaches to sex work, particularly through anti-trafficking interventions that conflate protection with surveillance and control (Agustín, 2007; Bernstein, 2010, 2018; Chuang, 2014; Mai, 2009; Musto, 2016). In contrast, the organisations in our study engaged with sex workers through multiple frameworks rather than exclusively through an ‘anti-trafficking’ frame: some had a sex worker affirming focus, while others had more episodic engagement through adjacent issues such as intimate partner violence, substance use, health, housing insecurity, or criminal justice contact. Across this spectrum, NGOs were tasked with providing support while operating within structurally incoherent and often contradictory governance environments.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that NGOs do not merely observe the effects of law; they live them. Criminalisation is experienced not only through statute, but through welfare eligibility criteria, safeguarding duties, data-sharing agreements, policing vagaries, funding mandates, and entrenched occupational stigma. In the discussion that follows we approach criminalisation as a socio-legal condition produced through dispersed institutional practices, rather than as a property of statute alone. Drawing on Ecological Systems Theory (EST) (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006; Neal and Neal, 2013) we trace how criminalisation manifests across various points in the ecological system.

EST: Networked systems and the provision of care

EST, originally rooted in developmental psychology (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) has since been adapted across fields and disciplines including health, education, law, and organisational sociology (Doughty and Moore, 2021; Frohlich et al., 2018; Snyder and Duchschere, 2022; Tong and An, 2024). Graphically, EST is often depicted as a series of concentric circles, resembling a Russian matryoshka doll, in which each ecological system is nested within progressively broader contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In the discussion that follows, these systems are specified in organisational terms: the microsystem refers to frontline service encounters, the mesosystem to inter-organisational coordination, the exosystem to institutional and regulatory environments that shape practice indirectly, the macrosystem to dominant cultural and policy scripts, and the chronosystem to historically sedimented governance logics.

A major reconceptualisation of EST was proposed by Neal and Neal (2013), who replaced the idea of spatial nesting with a social network model. In their view, ecological systems should be understood as ‘networked, where systems at different levels relate to one another in an overlapping but non-nested way’ (p. 723). This reframing allows for a more dynamic reading of how institutional settings intersect, foregrounding social interaction as the connective tissue across ecological levels. Settings are the ‘building block’ of EST (Neal and Neal, p. 727). In the original model, they were physical spaces; in the networked version, they are defined by interaction itself (Neal and Neal, 2013: 727). This reformulation shifts emphasis from spatial proximity to relational patterning, allowing settings to traverse ecological levels. Micro-, meso-, and exosystemic processes can thus be understood as dynamic, intersecting networks rather than discrete physical containers. Applied to sex work governance, this model reveals how sex workers’ lives are shaped not by law or policy in isolation but through interlocking systems of interaction that entangle care, surveillance, and exclusion. NGOs operate across multiple ecological levels, with each level reflecting configurations of social interaction.

Methodology and ethics

This article draws on data collected between 2023 and 2024 as part of a broader cross-national project examining how legal frameworks shape the experiences of sex working populations (Sanders et al., 2025; Scoular et al., 2023). The project combined surveys and interviews with sex workers, police, prosecutors, and support practitioners in the United Kingdom and United States. The discussion here is based specifically on interviews with NGOs and non-profit organisations in both jurisdictions. Eligible organisations were limited to those with direct experience of sex work, either through service provision or through statutory partnership, which significantly reduced the potential pool. In total, 14 practitioners were interviewed across participating NGOs in the United Kingdom and six practitioners from non-profit organisations in the United States. In most cases a single practitioner represented each organisation, although some organisations were represented by more than one participant. Specific organisational counts are not reported in order to protect anonymity within a relatively small field.

U.K. respondents were drawn from organisations operating across multiple regions of the United Kingdom. U.S. respondents were based in a local jurisdiction where sex work was criminalised apart from that which occurred in licenced brothels. Most of their clients – though not all – were involved in criminalised sectors, and none of the interviewees worked exclusively within legalised zones. Both the U.K. and U.S. samples reflect the variety of roles performed by NGOs within this specialised sector. This is not a direct comparative study, though some examples from the United States are included to illustrate how similar pressures emerge in differently structured systems. The project received ethical approval from the relevant institutional review boards and university ethics committees. Interviews were conducted in person or via secure video, in accordance with university protocols. Each lasted 60 to 90 min and was recorded with consent. Some NGOs have quite fractured relationships with statutory authorities and for this reason all respondents are anonymised and identifying details such as city, region or job role are omitted. Quotations are drawn directly from transcripts and lightly edited for clarity. Participating organisations are identified using generic descriptors such as ‘U.K. NGO’ or ‘U.S.-based practitioner’.

Analysis proceeded in two stages. Interview transcripts were first coded inductively to identify recurring themes in practitioners’ accounts of service provision, institutional constraints, and interactions with other agencies. These themes were then organised through the analytic lens of EST, allowing patterns in the data to be examined across micro, meso, exo, macro and chronosystemic levels.

Microsystem: The politics of frontline encounters

In EST, the microsystem refers to the immediate settings where individuals engage in direct, face-to-face interactions, which for sex workers may include outreach meetings with NGO practitioners, healthcare providers and law enforcement. These interactions are critical, constituting the first point through which broader systems of governance are experienced.

Mesosystem: Intersecting systems, surveillance and the carceral creep of care

In Neal and Neal's (2013) networked model of EST, the mesosystem comprises overlapping settings, such as outreach teams, multi-agency meetings, or support services where interactions occur between microsystem-level actors (e.g. clients, case workers) and exosystemic institutions (e.g. funders, police, statutory agencies).

The exosystem: Institutional design, conditional care and carceral governance

Following Neal and Neal's (2013: 728) networked reformulation, the exosystem comprises institutional settings that do not involve the sex worker directly but whose actors – police, funders, regulators – structure the conditions under which services are delivered. Exosystemic governance often tethers outreach and support services to criminal justice logics, particularly where cuts to welfare and health have pushed NGOs towards carceral state funding streams. These are frequently tied to anti-trafficking initiatives, embedding carceral priorities into service provision. These position clients within a reductive binary: as either criminals needing correction or victims needing rescue. Many practitioners in our study were committed to anti-violence principles; however, some organisations often functioned within or adjacent to carceral structures (Bernstein, 2010, 2018; Rice, 2013). One U.S. domestic violence NGO embedded staff directly within law enforcement:

We also have an advocate. It's our employee, but they’re stationed in the X Police Department … We also have an advocate that's stationed in the City Attorney's Office … they are in contact with a lot of victims that are involved with the legal system and then provide for referrals and information. (011US02)

In these contexts, NGO support – whether in court advocacy or child custody matters – often hinges on a client's conformity to dominant norms of domesticity, sobriety, and rehabilitation. One NGO representative described needing to vouch for clients’ moral reform to secure assistance, inadvertently reinforcing carceral narratives of redemption and risk (Hanks, 2022; Serisier, 2018; Shih, 2023). What begins as advocacy becomes a form of institutional gatekeeping where access to help depends less on rights than on perceived compliance.

Housing policy illustrates how this gatekeeping plays out. In the United States, one NGO described statutory exclusions:

So, there are laws, like we have a law in [state] that actually will stop you potentially from getting housing if you’ve been arrested for prostitution, so it's like what is your other choice at this point? (001US01)

Nevertheless, some NGOs developed internal strategies to either resist or work around exosystemic constraints. One U.K. organisation, for instance, ran a parallel unfunded outreach stream to preserve confidentiality and reduce bureaucratic exposure: ‘…with the unfunded work we don’t have a specific intake … it has been really handy for privacy and confidentiality, keeping that off the books’ (003UK01). While still subject to the organisation's data protection protocols, this structure allowed greater flexibility and client trust. Such adaptations reflect how NGOs navigate institutional demands while carving out pockets of discretion and care beyond formal surveillance.

Even modest objections can be easily overridden by institutional decisions. Some U.K. organisations reported being invited to provide input on official sex work interventions after fundamental decisions about approach and framing had already been finalised. In many ways this is standard government operating procedure and what appears as collaborative development often masks institutional closure, where statutory agencies seek legitimacy through consultation while maintaining predetermined outcomes (Burton, 2009). The resulting materials frequently reflected enforcement-oriented rather than support-focused approaches, suggesting that consultation was simply to validate existing institutional priorities rather than incorporate community expertise.

Macrosystemic scripts and institutional legibility

Neal and Neal (2013: 729) define the macrosystem as ‘the set of social patterns that govern the formation and dissolution of social interactions between individuals, and thus the relationship among ecological systems’. Macrosystem influences permeate governance systems at every level. They reshape police priorities (exosystem), narrow NGO–police cooperation (mesosystem) and determine what forms of victimhood become legible (microsystem). A majority of our NGO respondents indicated that in their opinion the single biggest macrosystem narrative that they had to navigate was that of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. NGOs often adopt trafficking narratives tactically to access funding, referrals, or institutional legitimacy. One U.K. NGO noted how anti-trafficking imperatives severely constrained their outreach efforts:

We all know what's important within the [police] organisation and that's trafficking, that's the only thing that's important and nothing else is of any importance, on a serious level … The trafficking work they do has the potential to undermine and conflict with the safety of sex workers. (004UK03)

Chronosystemic haunting and the historical residues of governance

The chronosystem draws attention to how past governance regimes continue to structure present institutional practice through inherited categories, routines, and moral assumptions (Neal and Neal, 2013: 729). To theorise this persistence, we draw on Stoler's (2013) work on historical sediment to foreground distinct mechanisms through which the past remains active in the present.

The origins of this historical sedimentation lie in nineteenth and early twentieth-century moral panics in the United States and United Kingdom, where campaigns against ‘white slavery’ and prostitution fused evangelical anxieties about national identity, female virtue, and racial order with the expanding reach of the modern state (Donovan, 2006; Freedman, 2003; O’Connell Davidson, 2015; Zimmerman, 2013). These campaigns positioned women's bodies as instruments of citizenship and moral regulation, enshrined in laws such as the Mann Act (1910) in the United States and the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885) in the United Kingdom. The figure of the ‘white’ girl under sexual threat from foreign men mobilised nativist fears, drawing on Victorian tropes of virtue, contamination, and decline. These narratives closely tracked periods of intensified immigration (Jackson et al., 2017; Luker, 1998), embedding racialised and moralised logics of exclusion into state power. Anti-prostitution laws crystallised a binary between the innocent (typically white) victim and the racialised, oversexualised, immigrant ‘fallen woman’, legitimising invasive intervention under the guise of rescue or punishment (Bernstein, 2018; Zimmerman, 2013).

These earlier moral tropes have been rebranded into contemporary anti-trafficking initiatives, which reproduce the victim/criminal narratives, often for symbolic rather than protective ends. As one U.K. respondent reflected upon reviewing EU-funded anti-trafficking projects, the entire apparatus seemed performative rather than protective:

We got to evaluate 200 anti-trafficking projects, and I have to say, I’ve never seen so much money spent and so little impact. We couldn’t find victims. It's like pissing in the wind. It's millions … Nothing. No outcomes. Terrible. So, it's a nightmare. (001UKSB)

A less explicitly acknowledged process is the persistence of institutional memory within local policing and welfare systems. In the United Kingdom, with its 45 separate territorial forces, and in the United States with its multi-tiered system, responses to sex work remain uneven, shaped by entrenched organisational cultures. While some police forces adopt trauma-informed rhetoric, many retain operational scripts drawn from older models of vice control. As Freedman (1987) notes, these do not simply disappear but resurface in new policy frameworks and frontline judgements about who is credible, deserving, or safe. Earlier we saw this in the police claim that sex workers could not be raped. Another U.K. NGO commented on the role of sedimented cultural scripts in police training:

I think we need to change the underlying attitude and stigma that's so ingrained in the police, from years and years and years. We [support organisation] should be there at the start, when they first become police officers, in the training, providing the information that they need. [Historically] the underlying rule was, sex workers shouldn’t be doing it, they are illegal, give them ASBOs. So that was that underlying tone. (005UK04)

These three processes – moral inheritance, policy rebranding, and institutional memory – constitute the chronosystemic haunting of contemporary sex work governance. Chronosystemic haunting registers institutional change but it also exposes how policy reform is filtered through inherited anxieties and moral imaginaries. Stoler's (2013) historical debris foregrounds how repressed figures return, not as memory, but as structuring presence. In the governance of sex work, these are not abstract histories but sedimented institutional figures: the white slave, the pimp, the criminal migrant, the broken woman. They are animated by new vocabularies but perform familiar institutional work – shaping safeguarding protocols, determining who is seen as exploitable, and narrowing the field of recognition.

These figures do not simply circulate rhetorically; they become embedded in professional judgement, risk assessments, and frontline discretion. What appears novel is often a re-staging of older typologies, rendered intelligible through contemporary scripts of ‘harm’. NGOs operate on fragile terrain, navigating legal ambiguity and institutional architectures saturated with historical and moral logics. Support efforts must confront the genealogies of suspicion and control embedded within the systems they engage. Exclusion may appear rooted in present-day policy, but it is culturally sedimented and ideologically recycled. As Neal and Neal (2013) remind us, systems do not operate in isolation or in the present alone; the chronosystem is not a backdrop but an active force structuring care, control, and conditionality over time.

Conclusion

This article used Neal and Neal's (2013) ecological systems framework to analyse how NGOs engaged with sex workers navigate competing pressures within a complex and shifting institutional environment. Rather than focusing solely on discrete organisational practices, the analysis foregrounded how support and outreach work is shaped by tensions between care and control, recognition and exclusion, across interlocking systems.

Ecological systems theory is particularly well-suited to mapping the terrain of institutional dynamics because it illuminates how vulnerabilities are not confined to isolated institutional failures but emerge through the interaction of multiple, networked systems. It allows us to trace how chronosystemic imaginaries, macrosystemic discourses, exosystemic rules, mesosystemic partnerships, and microsystemic interactions combine to constrain both service providers and the sex workers who request their support. To capture the cumulative effects of these tensions, we introduced the concept of cascading vulnerability. This term helped explain how seeking support in one area can quickly trigger institutional spill-over across other domains, compounding risk rather than mitigating it.

The analysis identified three key challenges shaping the work of NGOs. First, the dominance of anti-trafficking discourse narrows the range of legitimate victimhood and restricts the terms of NGO–state cooperation. Second, cultural stigma filters who is seen as credible or deserving of support, especially where sex work intersects with queerness, migration, or drug use. Third, structural exclusions across housing, welfare, and legal aid systems force NGOs into tactical responses – managing disclosure, shielding clients, and engaging in ‘clever lawyering’ – to navigate bureaucracies not designed with sex-working populations in mind.

The policy implications of our discussion are stark. In the absence of structural attention to the ecological conditions that produce cascading vulnerability, NGOs remain tasked with compensating for systemic failure elsewhere in the governance ecology. Policies designed to expand access, and support must therefore contend with the institutionalised disbelief, exclusion, and risk logics that shape statutory provision. Rather than assuming that improved coordination can resolve these tensions, the analysis exposes how moral hierarchies and institutional architectures continue to displace responsibility onto NGOs while keeping sex-working populations at the periphery of care.

Although the analysis focuses on sex work governance, the ecological framework developed here has wider relevance. Cascading vulnerability may arise wherever marginalised populations navigate fragmented welfare, legal and regulatory systems in which engagement with one institution produces exposure within others. Similar dynamics may be visible in areas such as migration control, homelessness governance, or child protection systems. Ecological analysis therefore provides a way of tracing how institutional tensions redistribute risk across organisational actors and vulnerable populations.