Prostitutes banned from London Olympics

PanARMENIAN.Net - A report into sex workers in London has found more than ten times the number of brothel raids in five Olympic boroughs compared with other areas of London, dailymail.co.uk reports.

Newham Police have closed 80 brothels in the last 18 months, according to a paper written by Andrew Boff, a member of the London Assembly spokesman for the Conservative group on the Olympics.

Brothels are being shut down and prostitutes cleaned off from the streets ahead of the Olympic Games in an effort to make London more presentable.

A total of 80 brothels have been closed in Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Greenwich and Waltham Forest in the past year, compared with just 29 across the remaining boroughs.

In Tower Hamlets, charity workers say the number of arrests in 2012 has already exceeded the total for the whole of last year.

They also identified an increasing tendency for sex workers to be given extra bail conditions, including curfews and orders to move out of particular areas.

They claim the conditions, which include banning prostitutes from the street overnight, are actually exacerbating the problem in the long term, with prostitutes made increasingly vulnerable.

Sex work is legal but brothel activity is illegal in the UK.