Until 2003, prostitution was prohibited under The Act on Criminal Offences against Public Order and Peace. With amendments to this act, prostitution was decriminalised and is no longer considered a criminal offence. However, this act has retained a provision that imposes sentencing up to 60 days imprisonment for anyone who cooperates in, allows, or supports prostitution. A legally liable person is punishable with a fine of up to SIT 600,000, in addition to a fine of up to SIT 60,000 for the person held responsible (Article 10). In 2006, the government introduced a Proposal for Protection of Public Order and Peace Act, which was intended to replace the Act on Criminal Offences against Public Order and Peace. Despite the abolition of the criminal offence of prostitution, this proposal once again defined the offer or imposition of sexual services in public places as a punishable misdemeanour, with fines ranging from SIT 50,000 to SIT 100,000 (Article 11), which in fact meant that prostitution would again become a criminal act. However, before this act was adopted, this stated provision was erased from the proposal (in July 2006).

The Penal Code imposes punishment in the case of abuse of prostitution. It declares that persons who are in any way involved in the process of another person’s becoming a prostitute against her will, or by fraud, are punishable with three months to five years’ imprisonment (Article 185). If the person being forced into prostitution is a minor, the punishment is greater (Article 185). In the section concerning crimes against civilians, a decree states that anyone who violates international legislation in a time of war by cooperating in forced prostitution is punishable by ten to thirty years of imprisonment (Article 374).

When it was decriminalised in 2003, the public debate and, consequently, media reports concerning prostitution approached this matter in a bipolar manner. On the one hand, prostitution was reduced to an economic activity that should be treated as any other money-earning business, whereas, on the other hand, it was magnified as being controversial behaviour that is a threat to “public morality.” Consequently, the women involved in prostitution were portrayed either as professionals, mobile phone businesswomen who know exactly what they want, or, in contrast, as women from abroad that are naïve girls from the problematic countries of south-eastern Europe. The media was rife with the opinions of delegates, the supporters, the opponents of decriminalisation, and other commentary, which, more or less, reflected the “bipolarity” of parliamentary debate. In the rare examples of media reporting that included the prostitutes’ opinions, their opinions were cited only to support either an individual’s position for or against the argument. Apart from appearing in a few media reports, the public debate did not include the standpoints of female or male prostitutes, which were totally neglected.