Prostitution Laws: prostitution law by country (196 countries and territories)

How 196 countries and territories regulate prostitution, as a tabular dataset: the legal model of each country (decriminalisation, regulation, abolitionism, the Nordic model of criminalising the purchase, or prohibition), the legal status and type of penalty for selling and buying sexual services, brothels, third-party procuring and advertising, the key statutes with links to their official texts, regional differences, and every cited source with the date it was accessed.

Every statement is tied to a source: national legislation portals first, then court databases, government and parliamentary records, official statistics and intergovernmental bodies. Each answer carries the date it was last checked and a confidence level. The classification describes the law as written for adult, consensual situations. It is a description of the law, not legal advice.

The dataset is an export of the country data behind Prostitution Laws, an interactive world map with a profile page per country; the methodology explains the models, statuses and sourcing rules. The same files are freely available under CC BY 4.0 from the project's data page and from Zenodo; please cite the archived version, doi:10.5281/zenodo.23847615.

Files: countries.csv (one row per country), topics.csv (one row per country and question), subnational.csv (regional differences), sources.csv (every cited source). README.md is the data card with the field dictionary. Join the tables on iso2.