IT didn't take Jayne long to discover John was involved in drugs, but it didn't put her off. She had been abused by her step-father from the age of five, so when she met John when she was 15 he appeared to be her best hope for a better life.

They got on well at first. Arguments were mainly about his drug use, about how his behaviour changed when he was on crack. It was during one of those arguments that she threw his gear at him and the drugs went all over the floor. He was furious. He hit her, and then he demanded that she went on the streets to pay for the gear she had wasted. She thought he was joking. He wasn't.

He drove her to Middlesbrough, put her on a street corner, handed her a condom and told her to get on with it. "After that night, he would take me to the red light area most evenings," she says. "He would stand near enough to watch me and after I had earned my money from doing a punter he would take this off me and give me another condom.

"After a while he'd just drop me off and tell me to earn the money for his drugs."

Jayne worked the streets for 18 months before John disappeared, owing money to a drug dealer. Alone, she made contact with her mother, but was too ashamed to admit what she had done.

It is the plight of Jayne and thousands of women like her that the Government wants to address with a new strategy for prostitution. Proposals revealed yesterday include making it legal for the first time for women to work in small brothels, of two women plus a receptionist or maid. Prostitutes should also find it easier to get help over drugs or housing.

But this apparent liberalisation comes alongside a sterner approach. A crackdown on street prostitution means more kerb-crawlers could lose their driving licence, and those who exploit prostitutes, including people traffickers, can expect tougher action.

It's a strategy which finds favour with Wendy Shepherd, manager of the Secos - Sexually Exploited Children on the Streets - project in Middlesbrough, run by Barnardo's and which has gained a national reputation for its work with prostitutes. She believes the legalised brothels will provide a safer environment for women to sell sex, and she also welcomed the Government's decision to drop the idea of setting up tolerance zones, where prostitutes are allowed to operate unmolested by police.

"Street prostitution is very dangerous and very much linked to criminality," she says. "Some people want to purchase sex and we're not going to eradicate it overnight, so we need to do something to protect young people and vulnerable adults who are involved in prostitution.

"Our support workers are on the streets every day and we see the appalling conditions that people are in, and we would never wish to say we would tolerate that by setting up zones."

In the last eight years, two prostitutes working in Middlesbrough have gone missing, and a third has been murdered, on top of the assaults which often go unreported. Donna Keogh, 17, disappeared in April 1998 and 19-year-old Rachel Wilson was last seen in May 2002. The body of 21-year-old Vicky Glass was found on the North York Moors in November 2000, two months after she disappeared.

The crackdown on kerb-crawlers is an extension of a scheme which has been running in Middlesbrough, with the result that the town now accounts for a quarter of all kerb-crawling convictions nationally. This approach has been tried in Sweden and the evidence is it could actually make life more dangerous for some women, according to Sarah Walker, of the English Collective of Prostitutes.

"Women don't have the time to check out the clients properly, because the clients are in a rush and don't want to get recognised by the police," she says. "And women say they have been hunted down by the police and they're the ones who end up paying the highest price."

The ECP also disputes the Government's assertion that women involved in prostitution are victims and clients are abusers. "It is against everything we have fought for and is taking away our autonomy. They're saying women don't know the difference between consenting sex and rape and abuse," Ms Walker says.

She says yesterday's proposals pay lip-service to the idea of helping women, but instead will undermine sex workers. The ECP is calling for prostitution to be decriminalised instead of demonised, and cites Middlesbrough as a town where prostitutes have been made scapegoats.

"They get the blame for every little thing that goes wrong. There are many problems in Middlesbrough, but attacking prostitutes and kerb-crawlers doesn't deal with the poverty and lack of resources. But then the Government likes a witch-hunt," she says.

At Secos, Wendy Shepherd is philosophical about the prospects for ending prostitution altogether. The Home Office estimates there are about 80,000 women working as prostitutes in Britain, and last year a survey revealed that one in ten men have paid for sex, compared with one in 20 in 1990.

Instead, she would like to see resources put into supporting women involved in prostitution, helping them with drugs, housing or health problems, and providing help if they want to leave the profession. And, alongside the punitive measures, she sees the signs of a new approach in yesterday's proposals.

"For the first time it looks at what we can do for women and men who want to exit, rather than remaining in the profession," she says. "In an ideal world it wouldn't happen at all but there are millions of pounds spent on the sex industry. We have to eradicate the most dangerous side of it and this is the first step on the way to doing that."