Women in prostitution are punished over five times more often than men who purchase prostitution services, shows the analysis conducted by the Autonomous Women's Centre (AWC) on all convictions of Misdemeanor Courts in Serbia for the offence of prostitution that occurred during 2016, first year of new legislation implementation.

Although throughout history the prohibitionist model of prostitution has been present, not before the beginning of 2016. was the misdemeanor applied for the first time to those who purchased women in prostitution. This model remains blind to unequal power relations between men and women and is accompanied by moralistic judgments against women in prostitution whereas buyers mostly do not undergo such public shaming, nor often - the research shows - the application of legal sanctions.

Besides the discrimination present in the acts of the Courts, women in prostitution are often arrested and convicted even when no act of prostitution occurred, and, in some cases, when they are arrested with buyers, those men later appear in court as witnesses against the women, facing no convictions.

Based on research results, the AWC sent recommendations to responsible institutions, demanding change of the Law and decriminalization of engaging in prostitution.

Main findings with recommendations are available in English here (thanks to Ana Zorbić and MIljana Ivanović, the translators) and the whole research is available in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian at this link.