HAS SWEDEN actually decreased prostitution by punishing johns?

Reports published by the National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) in 2000, 2004 and 2007 failed to bring up any concrete evidence that the law was working as hoped. In fact, the 2007 report [PDF] claimed that street-based sex work, which had decreased at first, was going back up, and that sex workers and their clients were now communicating with each other by phone, or online.

And the figures on demand for sex work were countered by the NBHW. They said that it was “difficult to discern any clear trend”. It would also be worth asking whether the study took the new situation into account when they did the second part of their survey: after all, they were asking individuals to admit that they were breaking the law.

I wonder if what makes all of this so difficult to measure is that contemporary dating is too much like prostitution.