On March 16th, the Mayor’s office released this plan for a police reform bill: https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/192-21/advocates-praise-new-effort-decriminalize-sex-workers-combat-human-trafficking

SWOP Brooklyn believes the sex work reform proposal under New York City Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative draft is inadequate and, as it’s currently written, would be damaging to sex workers if implemented.

The draft makes no mention of how clients will be treated under these proposed reforms. Will proposed “pre-arrest” programs put clients at risk of arrest? Enforcement against clients and third parties but not people who sell sex has been tried in US cities like Seattle. Workers reported huge decreases in their ability to work safely. Fear of arrest on a client’s part makes it harder for us to conduct screenings, and a dwindling clientele makes it harder for workers to turn down potentially dangerous clients. If clients are still arrested under this proposal, it is extremely likely that Black people and people of color will be targeted disproportionately by the NYPD.

This program promises to “explore pre-arrest program models to offer community-centered services to sex workers without conducting arrest as a condition of receipt.” What are these pre-arrest programs? Why are they still being framed in terms of arrest, which implies that people who sell sex will continue to be surveilled and harassed until arrest occurs? Who would these programs be conducted by? Are they the same diversion programs we currently have but simply prior to an arrest instead of after an arrest, or are they an alternative to arrest? We have no guarantee that these programs won’t simply become line items used to inflate the NYPD budget and continue the policing and surveillance of our communities. In the absence of full decriminalization, any proposal that expands police interactions with sex workers or the surveillance of sex workers will disproportionately target and criminalize people of color, undocumented, and transgender/gender non-conforming sex workers. The program promises that the NYPD will collaborate “with other agencies.” What are these agencies, and how will the identities of workers be protected if the NYPD is collecting and sharing information? Again, this seems to be yet another expansion to the surveillance of sex workers under the guise of “reforming” the NYPD. Sex workers and people who trade sex are consistently harmed during interactions with the police and we need full decriminalization of sex work now.

This proposal tasks the NYPD with reviewing policies and procedures for “identifying and investigating human trafficking to develop alternative methods that focus on arresting traffickers…and to address the racialized enforcement of sex work.” Why should the NYPD be trusted to address racial disparities in policing of sex work when the NYPD has been unable to do this in any other aspect of policing? Policies/procedures are not the entire problem, it’s the way the police choose to enforce them that is overwhelmingly racialized. There are no policies that explicitly say to arrest more Black/brown people than anyone else, so “reviewing policies” isn’t going to fix anything.

Sex workers are already providing each other “community-centered services.” This proposal co-opts the mutual aid work done in sex working communities in order to expand policing and push forward an administrative alternative to full decriminalization. Even partial decriminalization will have negative consequences for sex workers and clients most at risk of facing jail time or police brutality. Partial decriminalization or partial enforcement makes it harder for sex workers to work safely and have thriving communities.

Suggested reforms:

The immediate end to enforcement of all laws related to prostitution (consensual adult sex work), including the abolition of the Vice squad.
Legislation that fully decriminalizes consensual adult sex work, including people who sell sex or are perceived to sell sex, people who buy sex, and third parties (Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act introduced by Senator Salazar and Assemblyman Gottfried)
Defunding the police and using the money to fund non-carceral, non-coercive services for people in the sex trades and people at risk of trafficking such as housing, healthcare, education, and job training. Research has clearly shown that access to resources reduces vulnerability to trafficking and other forms of violence whereas prosecution that happens after the fact does no such thing.

We also ask that any sex workers or allies submit comments on this proposed plan prior to April 1st informing the city that you do not support it, and directing them to our statement. Comments can be submitted here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/policereform/index.page

Authored by: SWOP Brooklyn

We at SWOP Brooklyn release this statement today as a group of sex workers of many backgrounds; we are migrant workers, we are trans workers, disabled workers, BIPOC workers, we are single parents, we are multi-generational sex workers. Some of us are survivors of coercion, or sex trafficking. We are of many faiths, classes, and political identities. However, we stand as a united front as SWOP Brooklyn in organizing for the well being of our community, and we make this statement today to urge opposition to the end-demand bill presented by Senator Liz Krueger, which can be found here, and urge support for the full decriminalization of sex work as presented by Representative Julia Salazar.

Over many decades, Sex Worker led organizations have conducted studies and created resources to show how the Nordic or Swedish model - now dubbed the Equality model in the U.S. - has brought only more violence and less stability into the lives of sex workers. From Ireland to Sweden, New York to Seattle, we have only seen models like this used as an excuse to raid and arrest lower class men of color and migrant men, while bringing further risk to our work and taking away our agency and systems of safety and self-governance.

Under systems like the Equality Model, we see a desire to end the demand for sex work, yet no systems are in place to replace the income we need to live. Those of us who chose this work as the best and most sustainable option to support ourselves and our families’ livelihoods are not considered, and we are told that we cannot possibly know our own path to self determination. The most marginalized of us are left behind and considered even more disposable by the state.

Liz in her own words writes,

This bill was created by listening and believing [in] survivors, that is what the amazing part of this is. In other spaces, a lot of times survivors of the sex trade, survivors of human trafficking, survivors of prostitution, they are not listened to… we need a rite of change in the criminal justice system and how to achieve that in a policy way is by listening to survivors.

However, it is obvious that she has not spoken to the majority of sex workers ourselves - or considered the many years of data that have been collected against end-demand models. Once again sex workers and survivors of sex trafficking are posed as opposites, as if our needs are diametrically opposed. Conflating trafficking and consensual sex work is harmful and we cannot solve a problem if we aren’t able to first accurately name what the problem is. We are the people this bill would affect and we have our own voices, we do not need people to speak for us - doing so silences the voices of real survivors and workers. Full decriminalization is the only way to support the lives of sex workers as well as help those in coercive or trafficking situations.

These models lead to scarcity and isolation in our community, which means we have less access to safety and agency. They result in deportations, evictions, children being placed into traumatic foster care systems, and invasive surveillance into our lives to prevent our ability to earn our livelihood. It means further criminalizing men of color in poor or migrant majority neighborhoods. It means increased violence, rape, robbery, coercion, and murder of sex workers. Anyone who supports this bill cannot ignore the evidence of this, presented time and time again over many years in many parts of the world - and must feel that we deserve these violences inflicted against us. It is obvious that Senator Krueger does not actually care for the livelihood or well being of those who either participate in or are coerced into the sex trades, but instead is answering to a lobby of paternalistic celebrity figures who have no experience in the sex trades and a small handful of survivors who agree with them, who are carefully selected for their viewpoints. Many of us who have survived trafficking ourselves are denied entry into their membership or speaking roles, because we dissent with their views that all sex work is sex trafficking - something which erases the impact of that distinction and ultimately does harm to both sex workers and survivors.

To repeat the words of our colleagues in Decrim NY “The new proposed legislation referred to as the ‘Equality Model’ conflates sex work with sex trafficking, using the logic of broken windows policing to address trafficking by targeting sex workers. We reject the tokenization of a few survivors and the amplifying of white celebrities’ opinions to silence the voices of many people with lived experience, and we urge legislators to support policy solutions that create real safety for people who trade sex by choice, circumstance, or coercion.” Full decriminalization of sex work does not decriminalize trafficking, as many Equality Model supporters seem to believe. In fact, it makes trafficking easier to fight since victims of trafficking will no longer be penalized for reporting their trafficker, as is the case under our current system of full criminalization.

On the opposite side of this bill stands a chance for New York to support its working class people in the criminalized sex trades with full decriminalization of sex work. In places that have embraced full decriminalization, we have seen lower rates of violence against sex workers, lower rates of coercion, and further access to self determination for sex working people. This has been evidenced in reports and studies by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations, as well as sex worker lead organizations. Recently, Seattle adopted this model after years of end-demand legislation, which resulted in years of lives lost, violence upheld, wasted resources spent on raids against poor and working class clients of color and arrest of sex workers themselves under charges of sex trafficking, and access to a living income was shattered for many. We as New Yorker’s have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of those successes, rather than witnessing more devastation to sex working communities after an already devastating year. Full decriminalization provides us with safety, community, and agency over our livelihoods, and the ability to continue and bolster our own efforts of community care, mutual aid, and safety networks without fear of being criminalized as traffickers for that work.

In Solidarity,

SWOP Brooklyn

DecrimNY