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STOCKHOLM (AP) - Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says he wants to increase the sentences in Sweden's pioneering law on prostitution that criminalizes the buyer and protects the prostitute.
In his Christmas speech Monday, Reinfeldt said he wants to make prison the minimum sentence for buying sex from minors and sharpen the sentences for those knowingly buying sex from trafficking victims. Under the current law, sex buyers can be fined or sentenced to prison for up to one year, but Reinfeldt said no one has been sentenced to prison in the 4,782 reported cases so far.
Sweden introduced the law in 1999, inspiring Norway and Iceland to follow suit. Earlier this month the lower house of parliament in France passed a bill proposing a similar law there.
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