Decriminalization Of Sex Work Research Articles

Organizing for the Decriminalization of Sex Work in South Africa

Abstract Sex worker organizations in South Africa have engaged in significant advocacy to eliminate the current laws that criminalize the sale of sexual services there. Advocates argue that criminalization stigmatizes sex workers by labeling their conduct as unlawful, pushing them further to the margins of society, and making it difficult for sex workers to access health and welfare services. They claim that removing the threat of imminent arrest and caging would improve the material conditions under which sex workers live. But South Africa is a nation that struggles with income inequality, and many people live in poverty. There is xenophobia. There is social inequality. There is sexism. Decriminalization of sex work would not eliminate all these systemic problems. However, it might be a necessary first step for sex workers to live in a material world where they feel safer and in better control of their lives: a world where they are free to imagine a better future for themselves without the threat of state confinement for their labor choices.

50 shades of lockdown: sex workers' hidden world during COVID pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on psychological health and socioeconomic structures. The consequences of COVID-19 on the physical, psychological, and social spheres have been extensively studied, except for aspects concerning sexuality and sex workers, in terms of physical, social and economic impact, but also as a possible cause for viral transmission. With the intention of counteracting the lack of research, from September 2020 to August 2022, we distributed an anonymous questionnaire to Sex Workers' associations aimed at investigating the impact of the pandemics on sex workers. In the period examined we received and reviewed 147 questionnaires from women, men, and transsexuals. The prevention of the viral transmission during a pandemic is of utmost importance but should not be exclusively promoted at the expense of other important prevention initiatives. Safeguarding psycho-physical health of the general population, including effective health educational communications emphasizing the importance of sexual activity in mental and physical health should be part of ongoing health objectives. These approaches need to include sex workers of all genders-particularly racialized and marginalized sex workers-in public health planning and messaging alongside structural interventions. Full decriminalization of sex work and access to workplace protections are key to protecting both sex workers' and clients' health. Sex workers of all genders have often been among the first hit by epidemics and the last to be protected-it is long past time to change that.

From the margins of law to the margins of the city; a legal-geographical analysis of sex work regulationism in Greece

PurposeThis paper aims to shed light on the spatial constraints of sex work in Greece. The objective is twofold: to illustrate the intertemporal stance of the Greek state to push sex work at the edge of both the city and the law produces sex workers as always already marginal subjects and to identify how a spatial-based understanding of sex work could help in acknowledging sex workers’ full community citizenship.Design/methodology/approachThis article examines the legal geographies of sex work in modern and contemporary Greece. The author is a doctoral student in critical jurisprudence with a professional background in urban planning law, who also works voluntarily with Athens-based sex worker’s organizations. Law’s materialization within space (Bennet and Layard, 2015, p. 406), namely, the implication of law in the discursive and material production of place, is examined through archival research with primary and secondary sources, including legislations and LGBT publications such as Amfi and Kráximo from the 1980s and 1990s found in the Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI) in Athens. Additionally, as the author is currently conducting fieldwork with people who are working or have worked in the past in sex in Greece as a part of her PhD dissertation, the paper contains data provided by ten interlocutors to highlight their own personal experience. The researcher has used the critical oral history method, as it is committed to recording first-hand knowledge of experiences of marginalized community members who are often unheard or untold, with the additional goals of contextualizing these stories to reveal power differences and inequities (Lemley, 2017, Rickard, 2003).FindingsThe paper provides insight into how regulationism establishes the brothel – a metonymy of prostitution – as a heterotopia within the urban space. Contemporary approaches, such as LULUs and broken window policies, are used to indicate the historically marginal placement of sex work.Research limitations/implicationsThe interviews presented here were conducted in the summer of 2022, in the context of the author’s PhD research. Despite her six years of activist-level involvement with sex workers’ rights organizations, due to ethical constraints, only the findings of interviews conducted up to the writing of this paper are presented here, while details of private discussions with members of these organizations are omitted.Originality/valueThe paper examines a significant and timely matter of place making and spatial justice. Unlike earlier research on prostitution in Greece that focused on the brothel either as a heterotopia or as an undesirable land use, the novelty of this paper is that it highlights the intersections between policing, planning, public hygiene, anti-immigration policies around the regulation of the sex market. By critically discussing the implications of the de facto illegality of sex work in Greece, the study highlights the importance of including the voices of sex workers in decision-making and contributes to the debate around the decriminalization of sex work in Greece.

Experiences of interpersonal violence among a diverse sample of male sex workers

A notable portion of men who have sex with men engage in exchange sex—i.e. the trading of sex for money, drugs, shelter or other material goods. Despite the risks for physical and sexual violence, threatening behaviour and robbery that male sex workers confront, very little is known about their experiences of such actions by clients. To gain more insight into male sex workers’ experiences of interpersonal violence, we analysed qualitative interview data from 180 men who have sex with men from 8 US cities who engaged in sex work with clients they had met primarily through dating/hookup websites and apps. Participants discussed their experiences of a range of untoward behaviours by clients including physical violence, sexual violence, threats and robbery. Healthcare and social services providers can play a significant role in violence prevention among male sex workers. The decriminalisation of sex work could also potentially reduce the risks many sex workers face by facilitating their reporting of harms suffered.

‘Change creates change’ – older female sex workers’ experiences through the early COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 and associated policy responses created unique social, economic and health risks for sex workers. Through semi-structured interviews we explored pre- and early COVID-19 experiences and work practices of ten cisgender female sex workers 50 years of age and older in Queensland, Australia, analysing the findings using a risk environment framework. Throughout early 2020, participants navigated a complex risk environment, managing economic needs, health and safety, occupational stigma and policing. Australia’s policy responses altered the risks and opportunities available to participants. Half the participants continued sex work and half stopped sex work with some accessing economic support and withdrawing superannuation savings. Those who continued sex work drew on life and work experience to reassess changing health, stigma, and policing risks, and adapted their work strategies by increasing client screening and modifying services. Participants relied on information from peer networks and organisations to guide work practices but remained wary of contact tracing, police and the media. Decriminalisation of sex work and the strengthening of sex worker organisation and government partnerships are important in embedding equity in responses to ongoing and new public health threats.

Silences and Vulnerabilities

In 1999, Sweden introduced legislation that prohibits and criminalises the purchase of sex – while continuing to decriminalise the selling of sex. Referred to as the ‘Swedish model’, or the ‘Nordic model’ after neighbouring countries followed suit, this legal framework is built on an understanding of ‘prostitution’ as exploitation and a form of violence against women. Examined through this lens, the selling of sex can never be regarded as work. Through its feminist foreign policy platform (in place between 2014 and 2022), Sweden declared that it would engage in ‘persistent and robust commitment and agency’ to encourage other countries to adopt similar legal frameworks. Yet, evidence of the presumed success of the Swedish model is scant at best, with recent research raising concerns over how the Sex Purchase Act in conjunction with immigration law and third-party regulation has contributed to increasedvulnerability of migrant sex workers – who make up the majority of people selling sex in the Nordic region (Vuolajärvi, 2019).In South Africa, both the selling and buying of sex is criminalised, in spite of the country being party to several international treaties that recognise the right to free choice of work. As decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa is currently high on the public agenda,and the ‘Swedish model’ is one of the alternatives discussed, critically examining the possible consequences of adopting this model is crucial. In this paper, we draw on research and activist interventions in Sweden and South Africa to examine the possible implications of the adoption of the ‘Swedish model’ in South Africa – a country with markedly different historical and demographic trajectories, migratory patterns, and a much less extensive and supported social welfare system. We caution that such a move may not achieve the aim of reducing sex workers’ vulnerability and exposure to violence. Furthermore, framing the selling of sex as violence rather than work may risk silencing causes for social justice by stripping sex workers of their agency and autonomy, while simultaneously casting them as victims.

An Evaluation of Indoor Sex Workers' Sexual Health Access in Metro Vancouver: Applying an Occupational Health & Safety Lens in the Context of Criminalization.

The criminalization of sex work has been consistently shown to undermine workers' Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), including sexual health. Drawing on the 'Guide to OHS in the New Zealand Sex Industry' (the Guide), we assessed barriers to sexual health best practices among indoor sex workers in Metro Vancouver, Canada, in the context of ongoing criminalization. Part of a longstanding community-based study, this analysis drew on 47 qualitative interviews (2017-2018) with indoor sex workers and third parties. Participants' narratives were analyzed drawing on a social determinants of health framework and on the Guide with specific focus on sexual health. Our findings suggest that sex workers and third parties utilize many sexual health strategies, including use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and peer-driven sexual health education. However, participant narratives demonstrate how structural factors such as criminalization, immigration, and stigma limit the accessibility of additional OHS best practices outlined in the Guide and beyond, including access to non-stigmatizing sexual health assessments, and distribution of diverse PPE by third parties. Our current study supports the need for full decriminalization of sex work, including im/migrant sex work, to allow for the uptake of OHS guidelines that support the wellbeing and autonomy of all sex workers.

An Epidemic of Virtue: A Review of Social Work's Complicity in “Prostitution” Interventions

This article engages with the field of social work's role in humanitarian and criminal legal responses to sex work in the United States over the last century. Our historical review reveals that, through interdisciplinary collaboration in the criminalization and rehabilitation of sex workers, social workers have contributed to the transformation of “prostitution” from an issue of sex workers’ rights to a psychological, criminal legal, and medical phenomenon. This has exacerbated the harm and stigma experienced by sex workers. In exploring social work interventions on sex work from the Progressive Era through the rise of neoliberalism, this article places its modern iteration, prostitution diversion programming, within the context of social work's carceral history with sex workers. We choose these periods not for their chronicity, but rather for the salient themes in these historical interventions that characterize modern diversion programming: power and control, punitive service provision, patriarchal rescue, and carceral feminism. To align with social work's mandate for social justice and client self-determination, this article offers policy and practice implications grounded in the decriminalization of sex work and divestment from the police and courts. Alternative service approaches spearheaded by sex workers are explored and placed within the context of labor, racial, gender, and immigration justice.

How client criminalisation under end-demand sex work laws shapes the occupational health and safety of sex workers in Metro Vancouver, Canada: a qualitative study

ObjectivesIn 2014, Canada implemented end-demand sex work legislation that criminalises clients and third parties (eg, managers, security personnel, etc) involved in sex work. The focus of this analysis is to...

Role of community-based organizations in countering carceral logics: Comparing two caring profession organizations in Chicago

ABSTRACT The work of community-based organizations (CBOs), organizations that represent a particular community, can be an impetus for social change and advocacy. By drawing on the institutional entrepreneurship perspective, this study seeks to understand how CBOs attempt to challenge dominant carceral logics (referred to as a punishment-oriented mind-set) in operation across two fields: (1) the public-school system and (2) human service providers that work with sex workers. Utilizing a comparative case study design in the city of Chicago, this study discusses how CBOs leverage their legitimacy and relationships to identify contradictions within the carceral logics in city-wide fields and promote alternative solutions, namely restorative justice in public schools and decriminalization of sex work. CBO strategies and goals differed based on their field position and existing support, so we discuss how CBOs can advance alternate logics and promote change depending on their contexts.

“I did whatever they wanted me to do”: a qualitative secondary analysis using reproductive justice to explore sexual violence among justice-involved Latina mothers

BackgroundOne in three women experience sexual violence during their lifetime; however, little is known about this phenomenon with respect to justice-involved Latina mothers. Using the reproductive justice framework as a theoretical lens, we examined sexual violence in Latina mothers who had experienced incarceration and were thus involved in the justice system.MethodsThis was a secondary analysis of a qualitative data set. The reproductive justice framework provided a theoretical lens for examining the women’s rights to bodily autonomy, to have or not have children, and to live in safe, sustainable environments given the intersection of incarceration and sexual violence.ResultsWomen (N = 12) recounted their experiences of sexual violence after having been incarcerated. Incarceration and resulting sexual violence led to discrimination, limited bodily autonomy, sexual exploitation, substance use, depression, anxiety, re-traumatization, recidivism, underreporting of violence, underutilization of healthcare resources, strained relationships, family separation, and unsafe environments.ConclusionsMore research is needed to understand the social, economic, and political contexts that perpetuate sexual violence among justice-involved women. Universal healthcare, participatory research, changing cultural mindsets, decriminalization of sex work, and more comprehensive tracking and prosecution of sexual predators may be key to ending sexual violence in justice-involved mothers.

Decriminalizing Sex Work: How The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act Harms Consensual Sex Workers and Creates Further Stigmatization in Society

This paper will explore the current legislation in place in Canada regarding sex work, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), and how it harms and stigmatizes those engaging in consensual sex work. The PCEPA was established as a response to the decision made in Bedford v. Canada in that the previous provisions governing sex work were unconstitutional. The intention of this Act is to criminalize the payment of sexual services, the procurement of sexual services and third party advertising of sexual services. Its main goal was to reduce the human trafficking that often occurs within the sex work environment. While human trafficking is undeniably an issue in today’s society, the PCEPA fails to acknowledge other perspectives of individuals that it is impacting including those choosing to engage in sex work. Throughout this paper, topics such as the harms the PCEPA has had on sex work, the stigmatization and discourses that exist around sex work, and what decriminalization of sex work would look like will be explored and deconstructed. This paper will argue that a move towards decriminalization of sex work will be beneficial for those engaging in sex work and reduce the harms and stigmatization that many sex workers face and that finding a balance between combating human trafficking and protecting consensual sex workers is essential.

The Limits of Vulnerability: Arguments Against the Inclusion of Sex Workers Within Hate Crime Policy in England and Wales

On 23rd September 2020, the Law Commission launched their Hate Crime consultation paper, which suggested including ‘sex worker’ as a protected characteristic when considering hate motivated violence. The inclusion of sex workers in policing hate crime policy had already been implemented in Merseyside in 2002, and Yorkshire in 2017 (Sanders and Campbell, 2020). From a policing perspective, this approach has its advantages: it encourages a more coordinated approach to crimes against sex workers, as well as having an educative and awareness raising function around the discrimination they face (Sanders and Campbell, 2020; Chakoraborti and Garland, 2012). However, those who advocate for this approach caution that whilst it is an important first step to address crimes against sex workers, it can only go so far in a legal framework where sex work is still criminalised (Campbell, 2019; Campbell, 2014; Platt et al., 2018). This article challenges the idea that increased hate crime legislation will reduce violence against sex workers, suggesting that it may in fact put sex workers in even greater harm by increasing their interaction with the police. We emphasise that there is limited evidence that higher sentences deter hate crime offenders, and it is almost impossible to assess whether this type of legislation even provides the educative function it claims to. This paper argues that full decriminalisation of sex work is the most effective first step to responding to violence against sex workers, rather than increased legislation and tougher sentencing (CPS, 2019). In doing so, we add to the growing body of literature evidencing how full decriminalisation increases safety of sex workers. We also aim to contribute to a broader understanding that harsher sentencing and increased carceral responses do not best protect vulnerable communities of any sort.

“Sex work is essential(ly) work” – Feminist sex worker rights advocacy in South Africa

abstract This Open Forum records a conversation between three activists who have worked within the field of sex worker rights in South Africa for close to two decades. Drawing on our experiences of organising, movement-building, documenting, theorising and creating art and activism on the impact of apartheid-era criminal law on sex worker lives, we explore questions relating to feminism, gender, power and feminist ways of organising on the decriminalisation of sex work.

On Emancipatory Potentials of a Virus: Some Thoughts

On Emancipatory Potentials of a Virus: Some Thoughts

Sex Work, Hate Crime and the Criminal law

It has been well established at a global level that sex workers are often victims of direct violence in the course of their work, targeted by their ‘perceived vulnerability’ as a marginalised group. In one police force in England (Merseyside) since 2006 they have addressed this victimisation through adopting a ‘hate crime’ approach to policing crimes against sex workers. The aims of this paper are first, to review the implementation of the hate crime model applied to crimes against sex workers; second, to explore how police forces are adopting the policy across the UK, and the operational barriers to doing so; and third to explore the legal, theoretical and critical issues raised by treating crimes against sex workers as a type of hate crime through policing models. The conclusion weighs up some of the challenges to expanding the current law to include sex workers as a target group for increased protection, assessing that a fully funded policing approach may well be sufficient alongside law reform around decriminalisation of sex work. This article will draw on data from police forces in England. We acknowledge that much more work is needed to establish the sex work community's views on the value, if any, of the hate crime approach.

Internet solicitation linked to enhanced occupational health and safety outcomes among sex workers in Metro Vancouver, Canada 2010–2019

ObjectivesExamine the independent association between online solicitation and sex workers’ (SWs’) occupational health and safety (OHS), particularly violence and work stress.MethodsData were drawn from a cohort of women SWs (N=942,...

Protection or police harassment? Impacts of punitive policing, discrimination, and racial profiling under end-demand laws among im/migrant sex workers in Metro Vancouver

In 2014, Canada implemented end-demand sex work legislation which leaves the sale of sex under some circumstances legal. However, immigration policies based on discourses positioning sex work as exploitation and migration as trafficking continue to criminalize many im/migrant sex workers. Despite community reports of punitive policing, limited research has explored how police interactions with im/migrant sex workers have impacted labour conditions since this legislative shift. As part of a longstanding community-based Vancouver study, we drew on the conceptual framework of slow violence to analyze 20 in-depth interviews with sex workers born outside Canada. Despite rhetoric positioning im/migrant sex workers as victims deserving protection, participants described experiences of punitive, racialized, and stigmatizing police treatment. Fear of being ‘outed’ as a sex worker and living with precarious immigration status undermined participants' ability to seek police protections; yet when they did seek assistance after experiencing violence/theft, police were unsupportive or discriminatory. Our findings suggest that policies depicting im/migrant sex workers as victims act not to protect them, but to justify targeted repressive, racist policing that severely undermines women's occupational safety. Our results illustrate the harms of policies conflating sex work with trafficking; demonstrate the inherent opposition between legislative aims to protect those who sell sexual services and to abolish the sex industry; and interrogate who the state affirms as a deserving victim. The full decriminalization of sex work, removal of prohibitions on sex work among im/migrants, and community-led alternatives to the criminal justice system are urgently needed to uphold im/migrant sex workers' labour rights.

Decriminalizing Domestic Violence and Fighting Prostitution Abolition: Lessons Learned From Canada’s Anti-Carceral Feminist Struggles

This article offers a cautionary tale for efforts to decriminalize domestic violence through a retrospective analysis of Canadian feminist legal activism to decriminalize sex work. Both domestic violence and sex work are contested terrains of activism, litigation, and scholarship and have come up against the disparate views of criminalization as necessary to protect women from violence, versus criminalization as compounding women’s potential risks for violence. Through the example of Canadian feminist jurisprudence in R v Bedford, wherein the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the endangerment of women as resulting from the criminalization of sex work, I explore the liminal space following this decision, and how regressive legislation was introduced to re-entrench carceralism in the breach of a seeming feminist victory. My focus is on how carceral feminism continues to occupy the liminal space as a force of colonial violence, further endangering Indigenous women. I draw linkages between several violent murders of street-involved Indigenous women and the severing of allyship among feminists, sex workers, and Indigenous women over the potential decriminalization of sex work. Finally, I suggest that opposition to the decriminalization of sex work is successfully argued by an emerging force of carceral feminism: neo-abolitionist feminists who have appropriated a politics of abolition and, yet, may have deepened carceralism in the lives of Indigenous women.

Harm Reduction and Decriminalization of Sex Work: Introduction to the Special Section

Introduction:This special section of Sexuality Research and Social Policy, edited by Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Max Morris and Teela Sanders, has its origins in a colloquium sponsored by the University of Cambridge Socio-Legal Group in 2020. The goal was to promote the exchange of ideas between a variety of disciplinary research fields and applied perspectives on harm reduction and the decriminalization of sex work. The colloquium took place during the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020. Methods:We explore the impact of Covid-19 on understandings of sex work, outline the basic underpinning legal philosophical question, explore the intersectional politics of decriminalization, summarize contemporary international health and human rights campaigns, explore contemporary public opinion trends on the issue, and illustrate the universal principles. Finally, we summarize the special section papers (N=12).Results:The Covid pandemic provided a lens through which to analyse the changes that have occurred in sex work and sex work research in the past decade and it also exacerbated intersecting inequalities, accelerated many social shifts already in motion whilst changing the course of others. In combination the papers in this special issue examine sex work policy and research across 12 countries in four continents to provide and important space for international and cross-cultural comparison.Conclusions:We present the timely contributions of diverse authors and comment on the significance of their research projects which support a decriminalization policy agenda for the benefit of academics, policymakers and practitioners to improve public health strategies and international responses.Policy Implications:The research here amplifies the focus on harm reduction and strengthens the case for public policy that decriminalizes commercial sex between consenting adults as the best strategy to reduce harm.