The broadsheets are seeking to intellectualise the Ipswich serial killer story.  Three commentators tackle prostitution head on in the opinion sections today.

Alice Miles in The Times and Deborah Orr in The Independent have similar views.  Rather than telling women to stay off the streets, Deborah Orr says:

"It might have been kinder for the authorities to have told the women at risk that they could go to their doctor and get prescriptions for their heroin, which might also be a way of keeping them off the streets more permanently. One study found that 98 per cent of sex workers on the street had a drug problem.

Alice Miles agrees:

"How much evidence does the Government need before it concludes that heroin should be prescribed on the NHS for addicts to short circuit the personal and public chaos an addicted life generates?"

Even Simon Heffer in The Telegraph agrees that drugs lie at the heart of the problem (though he pleads for an authoritarian approach to drive drug users and pushers into prisons.)

Surely though the commentators are getting ahead of themselves.  By being clever and focusing so much on drugs, the commentators have dismissed the massive market demand for sex.

As long as that demand exists there will be a supply - from willing or unwilling women.

Successful intervention in the drugs market, were it possible, would no doubt change the profile of the people on the streets.  But another reason the go out on the streets would soon arise as long as there is money to be made in selling sex. All other arguments merely over-intellectualises human behaviour.