National Ugly Mugs

The National Ugly Mugs (NUM) Scheme is a pioneering and innovative project which provides greater access to justice and protection for sex workers who are often targeted by dangerous offenders but are frequently unwilling to report incidents to the police. These offenders are often mobile serial sexual predators with escalating behaviour who use sex workers as 'test' victims as they believe that they won't report to the police. They go on to commit further crimes against sex workers and others in the wider community. The gap in intelligence caused by the underreporting of these crimes has huge consequences for the safety of the wider public. NUM fills these gaps by sharing anonymous intelligence, when consent is given, with the Serious Crimes Analysis Section (SCAS) and with each police force in the UK. Only 25% of incidents reported to NUM are formally reported to the police which demonstrates that the scheme is providing crucial intelligence about serious offences to police forces throughout the UK. NUM also supports sex workers in making formal reports to the police and securing criminal convictions.