I SEE them every day and I don't see them at all.

They are just around the corner but they exist in a parallel universe. For decades Edinburgh's saunas have blended into city's life, douce businesses from the street, dens of sin within.

There are three saunas within a 10-minute walk of my flat and a further four 10 minutes beyond; yet they barely register on my consciousness. I have never heard them mentioned by a neighbour. I have never read a complaint voiced against them.

But they are to be banished, wiped clean from the city streets. Six have already lost their licences. For the saunas are of course brothels and the council has plans to make Edinburgh a brothel-free city.

It will be a first.

In fairness shutting the saunas doesn't seem to be the council's idea. Police Scotland is the driving force. Our new united police force raided six of the 13 saunas in June and arrested seven people for brothel keeping and living off immoral earnings.

Councillors, like the saunas themselves, were caught off-guard. For decades there had been a nod-and-a-wink understanding between sauna owners and the council. The former applied for entertainment licences to run their establishments and the council's regulatory committee, like the three wise monkeys, granted them.

You might thing this charade would have caused a citizens' revolt considering Edinburgh's reputation for being prim about sex (it's what the coal comes in, isn't it?). But it didn't and for a good reason.

Turning a blind eye to saunas started when the spread of HIV through the drug-injecting community was the big worry. One way to slow the progress of a feared Aids epidemic was to move prostitution indoors. Street sex workers were more likely to be drug addicts and to be infected with HIV.

Around about the time of this pragmatic change of attitude by the authorities, I interviewed outreach workers from the Church of Scotland who were in contact with street prostitutes.

HIV and other infection wasn't the only danger the women faced. I remember being given a handbook which had been written for their protection. Reading it is an unwelcome education. It contains simple instructions: for example, "Never wear hoop earrings. They can be torn through your ear"; "Always retain a position nearest the door of the car"; "Wear clothes you can run in."

Other guidelines are more graphic, some would give you nightmares.

I'm not saying saunas are desirable, just that they are safer for prostitutes, and they keep punters off the streets. Seldom do we read about hard-pressed Edinburgh householders complaining about kerb crawlers or men accosting them because they happen to live in an area frequented by street prostitutes. We no longer read of children finding condoms and needles.

I visited one of the saunas back then, too. Though it seemed clean, it was unremittingly sleazy. Men sat around in towelling robes while they made up their minds which of the women on offer they wanted to buy for an hour. The rooms they took them to weren't much larger than cubicles with blue lighting that made tans look browner and teeth look shiny white.

But the women I spoke to said they felt safe, secure. They differed from street girls in two ways; they weren't hired for sauna work if they had an obvious drug habit and some had come from other careers.

One was an art student paying her way around the world. One had been in interior design. They were of the generation that indulged in casual recreational sex at weekends with men they'd just met. Sauna work was a small step into making a hobby a profession - at least that's what they told themselves and told me. It helped that they made a lot of money.

The men were required to wash or have a shower when they arrived. I felt I wanted one when I left.

It's easy to see why some people want brothels erased from the face of the earth, never mind the city. In an ideal world, I would too.

Back then my concern was that saunas would simply expand prostitution without affecting the street trade. But, I was wrong. In the years since, fewer prostitutes have been murdered in Edinburgh than in Glasgow, which didn't agree with its easterly neighbour's pragmatism.

Consequently, sex workers themselves are now sounding fearful about the move against saunas. They worry about pimps moving in, of the greater risk of violence, of prostitution going underground.

I agree with them. This seems to be a risk we needn't take. The police action against the saunas seems to be motivated by puritanism in the new force. Some people have detected a west of Scotland influence. Others have suggested it's just a noisy way of announcing its new brand.

So goodbye pragmatism.

The council is trying to pick up some of the pieces by offering support to the dozens of women who will no longer have a place of work. There's talk of counselling, instruction about benefits and if necessary guidance towards help with addiction.

As many as possible are to be encouraged and assisted into a better life.

It sounds a little bit too much like Victorian moralism to me.

Some women will be glad of the help but others might not be. What also of those who will become prostitutes in the future? Will they have to stand under a lamp-post or on the street corner because there is nowhere safer for them to go?

Don't get me wrong. I hate prostitution. I hate what it does to the women and to the men. But I accept that, like the poor, it will always be with us.

That being the case I was impressed by how mature and sensible Edinburgh was about saunas. They were far from perfect. More safeguards were needed. Police inspection could have been introduced and financial monitoring insisted upon. Social welfare initiatives could be built in for the women; for clients as well. But the saunas' quiet absorption of what had been a noisy social problem demonstrated they were serving a purpose.

That they shrunk from 26 at their peak to 13 suggests the market was finding its level.

It is, of course, a market in human flesh and as such it is degrading and unacceptable to many people. It must be met, they say, with zero tolerance.

But if zero tolerance leads to vulnerable women working in the danger and dirt of the streets while pragmatic liberalism means they work in warm, dry safe saunas I know which I support.

Police Scotland doesn't seem to agree. Maybe it would be good enough to tell us why. What, after all, is the greater offence - the police continuing to turn a blind eye to saunas or the prospect of sex workers being put at more risk? The new force, it seems, has given its answer. I hope some poor woman doesn't pay a price.