Because there is nothing new about women selling their bodies for sex, is not justification enough for the tolerance of prostitutes on our streets today. The images of the five unfortunate Suffolk women displayed on our TV screens nightly reminds us of the ultimate dangers of life as a ‘working girl’. The great majority of these women had been taking the well-known risks of prostitution to fund further risk-taking behaviour with drugs, invariably using heroin or crack (or both).

This appalling case in Suffolk has stimulated a further debate about the most effective way to handle one of the oldest professions known to the human race. What should society’s attitude be to women (and men) selling their bodies for sex? And where do you draw the line as to what “selling your body” constitutes? Are lap dancers acceptable? What about lingerie models? Indeed, what about any photographic model? My own reaction to the appalling events in Ipswich is to wish that working girls did not exist. The list of things I wished did not exist, however, is not a short one. What about paedophiles, heroin, racism? And not wanting something to exist certainly does not help those trapped in the position that these five women found themselves.

I do not have a daughter so I have no way of knowing how the fathers of the five women in Ipswich feel about each daughter’s apparent daily existence. What I do know is that I hope that no daughter of mine is ever a working girl. I hope that no daughter of mine ever feels the need to raise money in that fashion to feed an opiate drug habit. But what if she was a working girl. How would I want my daughter treated by society in those circumstances? For how she was treated would, on the evidence of the last few weeks in Suffolk, influence her personal health and ultimate security.

A few thousand years ago the picture above adorned the interior of a Roman brothel. How further forward has our policy on prostitution moved in the last two millennia? By calling for the re-introduction of brothels are some commentators going back in time or are they being realistic about human behaviour? Are those who call for more “traditional” policies denying the truth about people’s sexual behaviour? It would on the face of it appear to be an argument of pragmatism versus idealism. Arguments about social policy often are like this.

I am not sure where I stand on this issue. Instinctively, I tend towards pragmatism when it comes to social policy, however, if I do not want any future daughter of mine to be a working girl, then why should I tolerate someone else’s child being one? As it stands today, though, I would rather live in a society that protects its citizens, whatever their chosen form of employment, than condemn them to darkened streets so that they may be more easily preyed upon by murderers and rapists. Just because we cannot see something occurring does not mean that it does not happen. Allowing the present situation to continue makes us all complicit in the murders of working girls today, in the past and in the future.