Street-walking ban kicks off France's new 'war on crime'

Street-walking by prostitutes will be banned under sweeping plans to crack down on crime approved by the French government yesterday.

"Passive" soliciting on the streets of France, including the wearing of provocative clothes, would become an offence for the first time under the proposals presented by the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. There would also be penalties for the customers of prostitutes.

The anti-crime package, condemned in advance as "oppressive" by many on the French left, also tightens the law against gypsies and other travellers, squatters and beggars and penalises uncivil behaviour by youth gangs in high-rise estates.

Mr Sarkozy's original plans to give draconian new powers of arrest and interrogation to the French police and gendarmerie have been dropped after an outcry by civil rights groups. New police powers will mostly consist of an expansion of genetic profiling and an increase in the number of dossiers on suspected or possible offenders.

The proposals, which will have no difficulty passing both houses of the French parliament, are Mr Sarkozy's first large downpayment on the war on crime promised by President Jacques Chirac during the presidential elections in April and May. Critics pointed out that Mr Sarkozy's plans were mostly targeted at the least fortunate in society, including prostitutes and beggars.

They said that Mr Chirac's centre-right had swept the elections earlier this year by raising the spectre of a sharp increase in violence in France but there was little in the package to tackle violent crime.

Socialist politicians said that it was a charter of "repression" intended to delight the middle classes by sweeping prostitution and other symptoms of poverty off the streets of France.

Mr Sarkozy, 47, the former mayor of Neuilly, one of the wealthiest Paris suburbs, has jumped to the top of the French political poll ratings by adopting a high and energetic profile since his appointment as interior minister in May. He sees himself as a future prime minister, at least, and probably a candidate for President.

He reacted angrily to his critics yesterday, dismissing them as "arrogant hypocrites".

He said the new measures were intended precisely to relieve the daily suffering of the least well off people in France, whose plight had been ignored by the last Socialist-led government.

It was ordinary working people – the "forgotten France" – which suffered the consequences of prostitutes invading their streets and gypsies setting up illegal camps as "bases for crime," he said. "In recent years, not only have we done nothing to reduce insecurity but a certain intelligentsia has denied that there was any true basis for people's fears," Mr Sarkozy told the newspaper Le Monde.

"All the rights-of-man specialists under the sun go past the Porte de Saint-Ouen [one of the centres for street prostitution in Paris] and say, 'Oh my God, poor things', then scurry off to dinner in town."

The measures against prostitutes in Mr Sarkozy's package are amongst the most controversial.

Prostitution would remain technically legal in France but it would be illegal for men or women to "incite others to (remunerated) sexual relations, by any means, including attitude or manner of dress".

Previously, "passive" soliciting was allowed but active soliciting and pimping was banned. In future, in effect, prostitutes and their clients will be breaking the law if they make contact on the street in any way.

Prostitutes' support groups complain that, since brothels are also illegal, the new law will simply push the problem deeper underground and make prostitutes even more vulnerable to crime gangs and corrupt police officers.