Approaches to the regulation and governance of prostitution in contemporary Italy

This article offers a critical analysis of the prostitution policy reforms pursued in Italy in the 2000s by center-right governments led by Silvio Berlusconi. It investigates the construction of prostitution underlying the punitive laws proposed and the discourses invoked to sustain them. It shows that governmental policy approaches pursued during this period were based on a narrow understanding on this complex phenomenon, dominated by a discourse of danger which centered on the need to protect the country's imperiled public safety. The article also discusses the outcomes of these proposed changes. It shows that while the bills proposed by center-right governments in the 2000s failed to be passed into prostitution law, their key principles have been incorporated and implemented at the local level as part of new public safety measures.