Met Police Crackdown Drives Sex Workers Into Dangerous Isolation
For seven years, Maria has worked the streets of Enfield as a sex worker, having escaped Romania to build a better life for her family back home. The 27-year-old represents countless women who turn to this work out of sheer necessity. "Many women like me do this work because we have no other way to survive," Maria explains. "Some of us have children. Many have left violent relationships. We are all just trying to live."
Operation Pisces: Intended Crime Reduction Creates Unintended Consequences
Previously working in well-lit, populated areas, Maria now operates alone in desolate streets, parks, and dark corners—a direct response to increased police presence. This shift stems from Operation Pisces, a Metropolitan Police initiative launched with Enfield Council in June 2024 to tackle organized crime and antisocial behavior.
"Things got so much worse for us," Maria reveals. "Police were—and still are—everywhere. They tell us to move constantly. They shout and threaten arrest, forcing us into quiet places that are very dangerous."
Operation Pisces formed part of the Home Office's three-stage Clear, Hold, Build policy, described by Chief Inspector Rob Gibbs as "an academic, evidence-based approach that seeks to address serious and organized crime." CI Gibbs acknowledges Enfield's challenges with "drugs and gangs and violence," noting "the volume of women who have been exploited there is large."
Collateral Damage: Safety Compromised and Trust Broken
Despite official conclusions in December 2025, Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes describes Operation Pisces as effectively "a police crackdown against street sex workers in Enfield's long-established red-light area." She reports receiving distressed calls from sex workers starting in January 2025, with policing involving "heavy patrols and the issuing of ASBOs, loitering notices, and cautions."
The Metropolitan Police insists no ASBOs, Criminal Behaviour Orders, or loitering notices were issued to sex workers in the area. Nevertheless, the operation's impact has been "devastating," according to Adams. "Women say they feel hunted, persecuted and fearful," she states. "Many are survivors of rape and domestic abuse; being shouted at and threatened by police is very distressing and retraumatizing."
Dr. Binta Sultan, Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Inclusion Health at UCL, conducted outreach work with Enfield sex workers and observed a dramatic shift. Before Operation Pisces, police "worked well" with sex workers, taking "a collaborative approach with outreach services" and building trust. "They treated women who were sex-working as victims of crime," Dr. Sultan notes.
Increased Vulnerabilities and Systemic Failures
Operation Pisces changed this dynamic completely. "Women started telling us about their interactions with police—that they were being quite aggressive and rude," Dr. Sultan reports. Outreach services saw decreased usage because "police were located in those areas," making women afraid of identification, arrest, interrogation, or losing their children to social services.
Sarah, a 39-year-old mother of two, turned to street work after losing her retail job. "I didn't choose this job because it was easy," she explains. "I chose this job to make sure my kids are okay." Previously comfortable with local police who knew her, Sarah now finds "police are everywhere," forcing her to "rush things with men and move quickly," which "increases the risk of violence."
For migrant women like Maria, vulnerabilities multiply. "Now we are also afraid of the police," she says. "We aren't dangerous people. We are just women trying to survive and support our families. We need safety, not punishment."
Conflicting Perspectives and Statistical Discrepancies
When Dr. Sultan raised concerns with police, she was told "that's not what we do." Authorities claimed they were "focused on exiting sex work as their approach" and "taking a trauma-informed approach." CI Gibbs reports that during 18 months of Clear, Hold, Build operations, police made 1,027 arrests, with only 21 involving sex workers—all for "minor or low-level criminal offences," not loitering.
While CI Gibbs acknowledges Operation Pisces made sex workers "less visible than they were" as an "unintended consequence," he cites "falling crime and antisocial behaviour" in the area. Niki Adams counters this success narrative: "It has been horrifying to hear the police boast about how they have cleaned up an area when it is women's safety, health and wellbeing which has suffered."
Legal Complexities and Calls for Reform
Prostitution itself isn't illegal in the UK, but related activities like kerb crawling, brothel operation, pimping, and street soliciting are criminalized. The English Collective of Prostitutes campaigns to scrap loitering and soliciting laws and prostitute's cautions, advocating for decriminalization that would allow women to "work together with others inside in much safer conditions."
Adams points to the 2006 Ipswich murders, where five sex workers were killed, as demonstrating effective support models. "Agencies came together to provide emergency support," she explains, including dedicated phone lines, cash payments, debt clearance assistance, housing, and dental treatment. "There is no reason that this kind of support can't be available in Enfield."
CI Gibbs notes some progress, with 20 women approaching his teams for help in the past six months. "They feel trapped," he says. "We're trying not to criminalize—there's not a lot of point in criminalizing a person who is just trying to survive. It doesn't break the cycle."
Dr. Sultan expresses serious concerns about Operation Pisces being "used as an example of good practice of policing sex work" and potentially rolled out elsewhere. "Given the devastation it has caused," she warns, this model could further endanger vulnerable women across London and the country.
