2008 Woodie Awards
Sex workers need safety, not prosecutors
Juhu Thukral
Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Opinion
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We do not yet know what the New York governor did or did not do in his personal life, but we do know something about his policies in this area, because we helped write them.
As lawyers and advocates who seek to protect the rights of sex workers, we and our partners worked with Spitzer's office on the anti-trafficking law that the state of New York passed in 2007, one of the toughest such laws in the country.
Prostitution, and promoting and patronizing prostitution, are already criminalized in New York state. This law clarified the types of coercive conduct that constitute human trafficking and set higher penalties. It also created a crime of human trafficking for all other sectors where trafficking occurs, like domestic work and agricultural work.
Before the law was passed, we argued over what we saw as the legislation's--and the governor's office's--excessive focus on attacking prostitution rather than trafficking, which is coercion or trickery into forced labor of any kind including farm, domestic or factory work, as well as sex work.
Different Solutions
Prostitution is the provision of sexual services for money and, whatever your feelings about that, it is different from trafficking. Trafficking and prostitution are both complex issues, but they require different solutions.
Human trafficking is appropriately punished through the criminal justice system, although law enforcement should not be the sole focus for a solution. However, sex workers need to have their human rights protected. They need services and realistic economic opportunities if they are trying to leave sex work. Arresting people does not help them. It makes it more difficult to find other work and puts them at risk for removal from the country if they are immigrants, or even eviction from their homes.
Ironically, Spitzer was very focused on beefing up penalties against the clients of sex workers, on grounds this would be a deterrent to prostitution. We lost this fight, and the penalty was raised from a B misdemeanor to an A misdemeanor.
We and other advocates for sex workers opposed this approach because our daily experience shows that no deterrent has yet stopped sexual desire, and also because criminalization just drives everyone involved in the sex trade, including our clients who need services and safety, further underground.
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