Category: Drugs & Crime

In Sweden, punishing clients seen as key to beating prostitution – Irish Examiner

STOCKHOLM — According to Stockholm Police Detective Inspector Per Englund, Sweden’s novel counter-prostitution regime has “reduced street work dramatically.” Walking that city’s former red-light district – close to Högtorget metro station – Englund’s analysis seemed spot-on. Maybe it was the chilling, incessant winter rain, but only a handful of night-owls, seemingly hurrying to find shelter from the Swedish winter, were seen scurrying along the gothic-dank dusk streets,  In 1999, Sweden passed legislation that criminalises the buying of sex, while decriminalising the sale. In other words, the (mostly) men who pay for sex are the culprits – not the (mostly) women selling. After a slow start, better enforcement by police now means that, ‘we have only 100-200 women on the streets in the capital’, as Englund told this newspaper.

Northern Ireland: two arrested for McCartney murder – ISN

DERRY — Police arrested two men on Wednesday in connection with the January murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast. A 49-year-old man was detained in Belfast. The other, aged 36, was arrested in Birmingham. Meanwhile, follow-up searches have been taking place in the Markets area of Belfast, close to where the killing took place. McCartney was murdered on 31 January outside a pub near the Catholic-nationalist Short Strand enclave in East Belfast.