The concept of the ‘procurer’ comes from section 212 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which prohibits directing, enticing, assisting or profiting off the prostitution of another person. A contentious debate surrounds Canada’s prostitution laws, with a constitutional challenge currently before the Supreme Court. Within this climate of debate, the concept of the ‘procurer’ has moved out of the strictly legal sphere and into a broader discourse, with a range of parties laying their claims to truth on the “realities” of the industry generally and on the procurer specifically. Using a methodology of Foucauldian discourse analysis, this thesis examines Ontario Provincial Court case summaries to consider the contribution of the Canadian judiciary to discourse on the procurer. Findings suggest that the judiciary replicates many of the existing stereotypes of prostitution and its participants, such as the procurer as pimp, while (re)producing a small counter discourse of the procurer as business manager.

The concept of the ‘procurer’ comes from section 212 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which prohibits directing, enticing, assisting or profiting off the prostitution of another person. A contentious debate surrounds Canada’s prostitution laws, with a constitutional challenge currently before the Supreme Court. Within this climate of debate, the concept of the ‘procurer’ has moved out of the strictly legal sphere and into a broader discourse, with a range of parties laying their claims to truth on the “realities” of the industry generally and on the procurer specifically. Using a methodology of Foucauldian discourse analysis, this thesis examines Ontario Provincial Court case summaries to consider the contribution of the Canadian judiciary to discourse on the procurer. Findings suggest that the judiciary replicates many of the existing stereotypes of prostitution and its participants, such as the procurer as pimp, while (re)producing a small counter discourse of the procurer as business manager.

Bien que le rôle des femmes dans le recrutement de prostituées ne soit pas un phénomène nouveau, peu d’études se sont intéressées au sujet. L’intérêt de cette recherche repose d’ailleurs sur le manque de connaissances de cette problématique qui semble pourtant bien présente dans la société québécoise contemporaine. À l’aide d’entrevues auprès de 15 intervenants du milieu de la police, des organisations communautaires et des centres jeunesse, nous avons recensé de l’information sur 26 cas de femmes recruteuses. L’analyse de différents critères nous a permis de les classer en trois catégories, soit les partenaires, les entremetteuses et les tenancières. Contrairement aux entremetteuses et aux tenancières, les partenaires entretiennent une relation avec un homme complice. Les partenaires, tout comme les tenancières, ont toutes un passé dans la prostitution, alors que certaines entremetteuses n’ont jamais participé à l’industrie du sexe auparavant. La partenaire joue un rôle dans la gestion et le contrôle des victimes, ce qui n’est généralement pas le cas chez l’entremetteuse. La tenancière détient plusieurs responsabilités concernant la gestion d’au moins un établissement érotique. La majorité des partenaires utilise aussi la violence et les menaces pour contrôler leurs victimes, alors que les tenancières semblent user de techniques plus subtiles pour arriver à leurs fins. Bien que plusieurs motivations puissent pousser les recruteuses à chercher de nouvelles recrues, l’obtention de bénéfices monétaires ou matériels est la seule exprimée pour les trois profils. À quelques exceptions près, chacun des trois profils s’exécute selon un processus de recrutement préétabli. Pour la partenaire, il s’agit de cibler une fille vulnérable, de lui offrir un environnement sécuritaire où demeurer, puis de faire miroiter les éléments positifs à être en relation avec elle. L’étape cruciale est le moment où elle demande une contribution monétaire à la victime, puis l’initie à la prostitution. Le processus de recrutement des entremetteuses est semblable à celui des partenaires à l’exception de l’étape cruciale qui sera de mettre la recrue en contact avec un proxénète masculin ou des membres de gang. Le rôle de l’entremetteuse se termine généralement à ce stade. Pour sa part, la tenancière trouve généralement ses recrues au moyen d’annonces dans les journaux ou sur le Web et par ses contacts avec le crime organisé. / Although the role of women in the recruitment of prostitutes is not a new phenomenon, few studies have focused on it. The interest in this research relies on the lack of knowledge of this problem, although seemingly present in contemporary Quebec society. Using interviews with 15 stakeholders from police services, community organizations or youth centres, we recorded information on 26 cases of women who recruit for prostitution. The analysis of different criteria allowed us to classify them into three categories: partners, go-betweens and madams. Unlike go-betweens and madams, partners are in a relationship with a male accomplice. Like madams, all partners have a past in prostitution, while some go-betweens have never participated in the sex industry before. The partners play a role in the management and control of the victims, which is generally not the case with the go-betweens. The madams have several responsibilities for the management of at least one erotic establishment. Most partners also use violence and threats to control their victims, while the madams use more subtle techniques. Although there are several incentives that motivate recruiters to find new recruits, monetary benefits or material gains are the only expressed for the three profiles. With few exceptions, each profile runs in a predetermined recruiting process. For the partner, it is targeting a vulnerable girl, to offer her a safe environment to stay and then, glamorize the positive aspects to initiate a relationship with her. The crucial step is when the partner asks for a monetary contribution from the victim and then introduced her into prostitution. The recruitment process of the go-betweens is similar to that of the partners, except for the crucial step that will put the recruit in contact with a male pimp or gang members. The role of the go-betweens usually ends at this point. For her part, the madams will usually find her recruits in ads in the newspaper or on the Web and through her contacts with organized crime.

Amorphous materials are used as soft magnetic materials and also as surface coatings to improve the surface properties. Furthermore, the nanocrystalline materials derived from their amorphous precursors show superior soft magnetic properties than amorphous counter parts for transformer core applications. In the present work, laser based processing of amorphous materials will be presented. Conventionally, the nanocrystalline materials are synthesized by furnace heat treatment of amorphous precursors. Fe-based amorphous/nanocrystalline materials due to their low cost and superior magnetic properties are the most widely used soft magnetic materials. However, achieving nanocrystalline microstructure in Fe-Si-B ternary system becomes very difficult owing its rapid growth rate at higher temperatures and sluggish diffusion at low temperature annealing. Hence, nanocrystallization in this system is achieved by using alloying additions (Cu and Nb) in the ternary Fe-Si-B system. Thus, increasing the cost and also resulting in reduction of saturation magnetization. laser processing technique is used to achieve extremely fine nanocrystalline microstructure in Fe-Si-B amorphous precursor. Microstructure-magnetic Property-laser processing co-relationship has been established for Fe-Si-B ternary system using analytical techniques. Laser processing improved the magnetic properties with significant increase in saturation magnetization and near zero coercivity values. Amorphous materials exhibit excellent corrosion resistance by virtue of their atomic structure. Fe-based amorphous materials are economical and due to their ease of processing are of potential interest to synthesize as coatings materials for wear and corrosion resistance applications. Fe-Cr-Mo-Y-C-B amorphous system was used to develop thick coatings on 4130 Steel substrate and the corrosion resistance of the amorphous coatings was improved. It is also shown that the mode of corrosion depends on the laser processing conditions. The microstructure evolution and the corrosion mechanisms operating are evaluated using post processing and post corrosion analysis.

La prostitution est une activité exercée par de nombreuses personnes prostituées afin de pouvoir subvenir à leurs besoins, comme c'est le cas pour toutes les personnes exerçant une activité professionnelle. Cette activité qui est imposable comme les autres activités professionnelles, n'est pas reconnue comme une profession. Malgré la reconnaissance de l'existence d'une prostitution volontaire, le législateur français ne permet pas aux personnes prostituées de conclure un contrat de travail ou d'entreprise relatif à la prostitution. Cependant, ces contrats leurs permettraient de bénéficier des régimes de protection sociale de la population active, donc d'améliorer leurs conditions de vie, car la santé des personnes prostituées est mise en péril par la nature de leur activité. L'étude des éléments constitutifs du contrat de prostitution, permet de constater que si l'évolution des mentalités s'accompagnait d'une réforme des textes relataifs aux actes liés à la prostitution, la conclusion de ces contrats serait envisageable. / Prostitution is an activity exercised by many people, in order to meet their needs, as it is for any person exercising any professional activity. Although this activity is taxable, as for any other work, it is not recognized as a profession. Despite the recognition of volunteer prostitution, French law does not allow prostitutes to conclude a work or buisness contract relative to prostitution. However, this type of contract waould allow them to enjoy the benefits of general social protection programs, and therefore to improve their life conditions, as the health of prostitutes is somehow endangered by the inner nature of this activity. The study of the components of the prostitution contract shows that, if the change the attidudes was accompagnied by a reform of laws relating to acts associated with prostitution, then the conclusion of these contracts would be possible.

The ability to bid for public contracts over the national borders is an inherent part of European Single market. In recent years, there have been efforts to further increase the rates of cross-border tendering by mitigating the administrative obstacles in the process - primarily the implementation of electronic procurement. In this thesis we found out that the effect of this measure is rather limited - evidence suggests that it led to increase in total number of bids, but the rate of cross- border awards remained stable, as well as a cross-border bidding. Furthermore, the fixed effects of European Union member states are analyzed to examine any evidences of domestic protection. The results suggest that the countries who joined the European Union in the last accession waves show the lowest rates of cross-border awards. However, no examples of direct domestic protection have been discovered.

This thesis explores how the Swedish legal system, specifically the police and district courts, understand and construct cases of human trafficking for sexual purposes and procuring with under-age victims. It draws on police investigative interviews and court decisions in 22 pronounced district court sentences, involving 36 female youths. Theoretically the thesis primarily builds on social constructionism and the sociology of childhood. Methodologically it builds on coding of forensic interviews, narrative analysis and discourse analysis. Study I explores the informativeness of 24 of the 36 adolescents when interviewed by the police. It shows that the adolescents were informative yet evasive, specifically when asked open questions. Experiences of violence and force as well as interviews conducted soon after the police intervention further contributed to evasiveness. Also evasiveness seemed intimately connected to circumstances in each unique case. Study II scrutinises the image of the ideal trafficking victim by asking how the issue of responsibility is handled when police interviews turn to prostitution. It also analyses which interactive and narrative conditions, related to agency and stake, apply for talk in this specific institutional setting. The findings suggest that in order to sort out the ‘real’ victims, the interrogator needs to pull apart the two categories ‘victim’ and ‘prostitute’ even if there may be problems with this clear-cut distinction since the categories tend to blend together. Further, in this institutional setting to talk about sex can be problematic as it may undermine the victim narrative instead creating a subject with interests. Study III explores how Swedish district courts assess the credibility of alleged victims of human trafficking for sexual purposes and the reliability of their testimonies. The findings indicate that the judges base their assessments on the Swedish Supreme Courts’ criteria of how to understand reliability and credibility but they seemed also to be influenced by extra-legal factors relating to victims’ behaviour. Further, the findings imply that the judges used the Supreme Court’s criteria to argue both for and against credibility. By so doing, their arguments supported the decision reached irrespective of how the adolescents reported or what impression they made. In brief this thesis can be said to point to a legal dilemma when law on paper is applied in practice as each unique adolescent must be recognized by the authorities as fitting the administrative category ‘victim’. When put into practice, categories are rarely neat and clear hence such categorizing becomes a phenomenon negotiated in interaction. Also, this legal context sets up limits and possibilities for the adolescents’ agency and this too can be said to have a bearing on if she is, or is not, constructed as a victim. In short, this thesis shows certain conditions of victimhood. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Submitted.</p><p>Forskningsfinansiär: Brottsoffermyndigheten genom Brottsofferfonden.</p> / Människohandel/koppleri med barn och unga för sexuella ändamål Vad går att lära av rättsväsendet och brottsoffrens erfarenheter?

La présente thèse vise à analyser et à explorer la gestion du proxénétisme par les forces de l’ordre suivant les trajectoires criminelles et policières de personnes éventuellement enquêtées pour du proxénétisme, les logiques de décisions policières et l’efficacité des interventions policières dont ces proxénètes font l’objet. Elle étudie les interventions policières dont les proxénètes font l’objet par l’analyse quantitative de données policières d’une grande ville canadienne entre 2001 et 2014 (n=589) en trois analyses. D’abord, l’approche typologique privilégiée consiste à partitionner les trajectoires des proxénètes enquêtés en différentes classes. Elle rend compte de la diversité des proxénètes contemporains, diversité perceptible dans les caractéristiques mises en lumière par la construction de trois groupes de trajectoires : les gestionnaires discrets, les polymorphes peu violents et les suractifs querelleurs. Nos résultats indiquent qu’une minorité de proxénètes se démarquent par leur polymorphisme criminel. Ensuite, l’étude des logiques de décisions policières comprend l’examen de trois principaux registres : le premier s’opère dans une logique policière de résolution d’un crime où le policier priorise les crimes graves et ceux qui s’inscrivent dans une série, le deuxième découle d’un profilage basé sur l’apparence ethnique cumulée du sexe et de l’âge et le troisième registre reprend un discours moralisateur en matière de prostitution. Les séries chronologiques indiquent qu’au fil des années le proxénétisme principalement coercitif gagne en importance par rapport au proxénétisme non coercitif. Les analyses de survie montrent que la fréquence de la criminalité n’influence pas les risques de surveillance proactive, mais que le score moyen de gravité influence les probabilités d’être visé par un contrôle d’identité pour un mois donné. Ce résultat est logique : la gravité d’un crime joue plus sur la surveillance que sa fréquence. Ces résultats cumulés à l’effet important de trois caractéristiques sociodémographiques nous conduisent à rejeter l’hypothèse selon laquelle les policiers sévissent uniformément sans tenir compte du fait que les proxénètes sont criminalisés à des degrés très divers. Or, même si les décisions policières ciblant les proxénètes obéissent à une logique pragmatique qui les conduit à contrôler plus souvent les suspects ayant des antécédents les plus graves, il n’en reste pas moins que, à criminalité comparable, la distribution des interventions policières s’apparente à des pratiques qui ne sont pas limitées à des considérations pragmatiques. Enfin, en ce qui a trait à l’efficacité des interventions policières à dissuader la récidive des proxénètes enquêtés, d’autres analyses de survie indiquent qu’une criminalité fréquente précipite la récidive, peu importe le type de proxénétisme. De plus, la surveillance policière n'a pas d’effet sur les probabilités de récidive. Les proxénètes enquêtés semblent insensibles à ces mesures, donc si l’arrestation est dissuasive, elle ne l’est pas suffisamment pour montrer un effet sur la trajectoire. De plus, l’influence de la gravité moyenne sur les risques de récidive porte à croire à la présence d’un délai de l’effet de dissuasion où les proxénètes en viennent à commettre plusieurs délits, donc leur trajectoire accumule les interventions policières, par exemple pour des crimes contre la personne ou encore pour des bris de conditions. Sans prostitution, il n’y a pas de proxénétisme. C’est pourquoi afin de comprendre la place du proxénétisme dans l'industrie de la prostitution, il est essentiel de tenir compte des deux principales approches d’études de la prostitution : d'une part la perspective réglementariste, qui cadre la prostitution comme un travail non reconnu, d'autre part la position abolitionniste, qui suggère que la prostitution est une forme de violence faite aux femmes dans le cadre d'une situation à laquelle elles n'ont jamais consenti. Bien que les deux postures puissent être défendues, la présente thèse offre un point de vue nuancé où des questions relatives à la criminalité des proxénètes et à l’influence du discours dominant sur les pratiques policières et à leur efficacité sont soulevées. La thèse conclut par une discussion sur l’allocation de ressources policières spécialisées dans la lutte au proxénétisme, à la traite de personne et à l’exploitation sexuelle et sur leur apport pour réunir des conditions de prostitution plus sécuritaires. / The present thesis aims to analyze and explore the management of procuring by the police according to the criminal and police trajectories of people eventually investigated for procuring crimes, the logics of police decisions and the effectiveness of police interventions aiming these people. The thesis analyzes police interventions of which pimps are the object during their trajectory by the quantitative analysis of police data reconstituting the criminal and police trajectories of people eventually targeted in a pimping investigation of a large Canadian city between 2001 and 2014 (n=589). First, the preferred typological approach consists in dividing trajectories into different classes. It accounts for the diversity of contemporary pimps, a perceptible diversity in the characteristics brought to light by the construction of three groups of trajectories: discrete managers, low-violent polymorphs and quarrelsome overactives. Our results indicate that a minority of pimps stand out for their criminal polymorphism. Second, the study of the logics of police decisions includes the examination of three main registers: the first takes place in a police logic of resolution of a crime where the police officer prioritizes the serious crimes and those which are part of a series, the second arises from profiling based on the cumulative of ethnic appearance, sex and age and the third register takes up a moralizing discourse on prostitution. Time series indicate that, over the years, coercive pimping has gained in importance in investigations over non-coercive pimping. However, survival analyzes show the frequency of crime does not influence the risks of proactive surveillance, but that the average severity score does influence the odds of being targeted for an identity check in a given month. This result is logical: the seriousness of a crime affects surveillance more than its frequency. These results, combined with the important effect of the three socio-demographic characteristics leads us to reject the hypothesis according to which the police force uniformly target their suspects without considering the fact that alleged pimps are criminalized to varying degrees. However, even if police decisions targeting pimps obey a pragmatic logic which leads them to more often check suspects with the most serious criminal records, the fact remains that, for comparable criminality, the distribution of police interventions regarding street checks are not limited to pragmatic considerations. Third, with regard to the effectiveness of police interventions in deterring the recidivism of alleged pimps, survival analyzes indicate that frequent crime precipitates recidivism, regardless of the type of pimping. In addition, police surveillance has no effect on the likelihood of recidivism. The pimps investigated seem unresponsive to these measures, so while the arrest might be a deterrent, it is not enough to show an effect on the trajectory. In addition, the influence of average severity on the risk of recidivism suggests the presence of a delay in the deterrent effect where pimps come to commit several offenses, so their trajectory accumulates police interventions, for example for violent crimes or for breach of conditions. Without prostitution, there is no third parties or pimps. This is why in order to understand the place of pimps and third parties in the sex industry, it is essential to address the two main approaches and their vision of prostitution: one perspective frames prostitution as a unrecognized work, and the other one suggests that prostitution is a form of violence against women in a situation to which they have never consented. Although both positions can be defended, this thesis offers a nuanced point of view where questions relating to the criminality of pimps and the influence of the dominant discourse on police practices and their effectiveness are raised. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the allocation of police resources specializing in the fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation and their contribution to bringing together safer prostitution conditions.