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

Graham Ellison; Barbara G Brents; Erin Early; Jane Scoular; Teela Sanders

doi:10.1177/09646639261441598

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

Graham Ellison
, Barbara G Brents
, Erin Early
, Jane Scoular
, Teela Sanders

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

This article analyses the criminalisation of sex work as an ecological system of governance, sustained not only through statutory law but also through institutional mandates, funding logics, and cultural ideologies. Drawing on interviews with NGO practitioners in the United Kingdom and United States, and using ecological systems theory, we show how criminalisation operates through networked institutional relations. NGOs, as meso-level actors, mediate between sex-working clients and carceral systems, navigating data-sharing mandates, safeguarding protocols, and exclusionary eligibility rules. We introduce the concept of ‘cascading vulnerability’ to capture how these interactions can compound risk across ecological levels. Addressing structural exclusion requires engaging the broader architecture of governance, not statutory law alone.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-20
Number of pages	20
Journal	Social and Legal Studies
Early online date	21 Apr 2026
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639261441598
Publication status	Published online - 21 Apr 2026

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Data Availability Statement

Owing to the sensitive nature of the data and the inability to full anonymise, the project PI requested a waiver from the ESRC

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following ﬁnancial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/V002465/1).

Funders	Funder number
Economic and Social Research Council	ES/V002465/1

Keywords

Sex work
criminalisation
ecological systems theory
governance
policing
sex work

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ellison-et-al-2026-living-the-law-an-ecological-analysis-of-ngo-responses-to-sex-work-governanceFinal published version, 460 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "This article analyses the criminalisation of sex work as an ecological system of governance, sustained not only through statutory law but also through institutional mandates, funding logics, and cultural ideologies. Drawing on interviews with NGO practitioners in the United Kingdom and United States, and using ecological systems theory, we show how criminalisation operates through networked institutional relations. NGOs, as meso-level actors, mediate between sex-working clients and carceral systems, navigating data-sharing mandates, safeguarding protocols, and exclusionary eligibility rules. We introduce the concept of {\textquoteleft}cascading vulnerability{\textquoteright} to capture how these interactions can compound risk across ecological levels. Addressing structural exclusion requires engaging the broader architecture of governance, not statutory law alone.",

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

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

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