Criminalization Of Sex Work Research Articles

Condoms as evidence of prostitution in the United States and the criminalization of sex work

The vulnerability of sex workers and transgender women to HIV infection is a result of many factors including stigma, social and physical isolation, economic deprivation, and legal and policy environments that criminalize their behaviour. Recent systematic reviews have found high HIV prevalence among both populations, including an 11.8% pooled HIV prevalence among female sex workers in 50 countries and a 19.1% HIV prevalence among male-tofemale transgender women in 15 countries worldwide. Studies in the United States have also documented high HIV prevalence among people who report transactional sex and transgender populations. (Published: 24 May 2013) Citation: Wurth MH et al. Journal of the International AIDS Society 2013, 16:18626 http://www.jiasociety.org/index.php/jias/article/view/18626 | http://dx.doi.org/10.7448/IAS.16.1.18626

Priority interventions to reduce HIV transmission in sex work settings in sub‐Saharan Africa and delivery of these services

IntroductionVirtually no African country provides HIV prevention services in sex work settings with an adequate scale and intensity. Uncertainty remains about the optimal set of interventions and mode of delivery.MethodsWe systematically reviewed studies reporting interventions for reducing HIV transmission among female sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa between January 2000 and July 2011. Medline (PubMed) and non-indexed journals were searched for studies with quantitative study outcomes.ResultsWe located 26 studies, including seven randomized trials. Evidence supports implementation of the following interventions to reduce unprotected sex among female sex workers: peer-mediated condom promotion, risk-reduction counselling and skills-building for safer sex. One study found that interventions to counter hazardous alcohol-use lowered unprotected sex. Data also show effectiveness of screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and syndromic STI treatment, but experience with periodic presumptive treatment is limited. HIV testing and counselling is essential for facilitating sex workers’ access to care and antiretroviral treatment (ART), but testing models for sex workers and indeed for ART access are little studied, as are structural interventions, which create conditions conducive for risk reduction. With the exception of Senegal, persistent criminalization of sex work across Africa reduces sex workers’ control over working conditions and impedes their access to health services. It also obstructs health-service provision and legal protection.ConclusionsThere is sufficient evidence of effectiveness of targeted interventions with female sex workers in Africa to inform delivery of services for this population. With improved planning and political will, services – including peer interventions, condom promotion and STI screening – would act at multiple levels to reduce HIV exposure and transmission efficiency among sex workers. Initiatives are required to enhance access to HIV testing and ART for sex workers, using current CD4 thresholds, or possibly earlier for prevention. Services implemented at sufficient scale and intensity also serve as a platform for subsequent community mobilization and sex worker empowerment, and alleviate a major source of incident infection sustaining even generalized HIV epidemics. Ultimately, structural and legal changes that align public health and human rights are needed to ensure that sex workers on the continent are adequately protected from HIV.

HIV prevention among female sex workers in Africa

Sex work occurs to meet the demand for sexual services and is a universal phenomenon. In Africa sex work takes many forms and is an important source of income for many women. Yet sex worker reproductive health needs remain largely unmet. The criminalisation of sex work; community and service provider stigma; violence; substance use and limited access to health services and prevention commodities contribute to the high HIV burden evident among female sex workers in Africa. Following UNAIDS' three pillar approach to HIV prevention and sex work we present an overview of current opportunities, barriers and suggestions to improve HIV prevention policy and programming for sex work in Africa. Universal access to a comprehensive package of HIV services is the first pillar. Reproductive health commodities; voluntary and anonymous HIV counselling and testing; treatment of sexually transmitted infections, HIV and opportunistic infections; harm reduction for substance use and psychosocial support services make up the recommended package of services. The second pillar is a sex worker-supportive environment. The inclusion of sex worker programmes within national HIV strategic planning; sex worker-led community mobilisation and the establishment of sex work community networks (comprised of sex workers, health service providers, law enforcers and other stakeholders) enable effective programme implementation and are recommended. The reduction of sex worker vulnerability and addressing structural issues form the final pillar. The decriminalisation of sex work; development of supportive policy; gender equality and economic development are key factors that need to be addressed to increase sex worker resilience. Evidence supports the public health benefit of human rights based approaches to HIV prevention; moralistic and restrictive policy and laws towards sex work are harmful and should be removed. The establishment of these pillars will increase sex worker safety and enhance the inclusiveness of the HIV response.

Confronting Sexual Assault: Transformative Justice on the Ground in Philadelphia

Confronting Sexual Assault: Transformative Justice on the Ground in Philadelphia

Legal Service Needs and Utilization of Women Who Trade Sex

Women who trade sex for money or drugs experience extensive victimization and criminalization and could benefit from legal services. In this study, 91 women currently trading sex disclosed experiences of community, intimate partner, societal, and police abuse, and a history of arrests and incarcerations. The majority of respondents indicated a need for services to help with abuse, violence, and/or legal problems, yet they reported a low perceived need and even lower use of legal services. The women revealed a higher tendency of disclosing their legal and abuse history to spiritual, mental health, and addiction service providers, than to legal service providers. The most frequently reported barrier to their legal service utilization was mistrust of the police and legal system, in part due to prior negative experiences and their own criminal status. Other barriers included fearing and protecting their perpetrators, wanting privacy, and using substances. The implications of the criminalization of sex work are discussed with regard to its impact on female sex traders’ vulnerability to abuse and their use of legal services.

HIV criminalisation and sex work in Australia

In 2008, Scarlet Alliance, the Australian Sex Workers Association, carried out a needs assessment among sex workers living with HIV in Australia. The research showed that HIV positive sex workers experience discrimination from within the community, are criminalised for sex work and subject to disclosure laws in some states and territories, and face stigma perpetrated by the media. Supported by legislation, they have an almost insurmountable lack of access to policy development due to disclosure and confidentiality issues, and have expressed ongoing frustration at the lack of leadership on the intersecting issues of HIV and sex work. A high profile prosecution of a sex worker living with HIV coincided with the duration of the needs assessment project. The research gave a voice to sex workers living with HIV and highlighted the levels of institutionalised marginalisation and stigmatisation they experience. Criminalisation of sex work, of people living with HIV, and of sex workers living with HIV is at the core of this discrimination and must be challenged. Scarlet Alliance advocates for the decriminalisation of sex work across all jurisdictions in Australia. This will deliver rights to sex workers living with HIV and create a more equitable and productive environment for HIV prevention and public health generally.

From Client to Pimp

The present study explores intimate partner violence (IPV) among female sex workers from the red-light area based in Mumbai, India. Using a grounded theory approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with ten sex workers to explore their experiences of IPV in the context of commercial sex work. Narratives were analyzed and themes constructed. A prevalent theme was the complex development of the male role among sex workers, starting as male clients, becoming intimate partners, and ending as their coercive pimps. In addition, themes were compared to the model of coercion in IPV. The model was generally supported, as sex workers reported exploitation from male partners, followed by coercion and ending with intense IPV victimization. This study draws attention to the drawbacks of criminalization of sex work.

As bad as it gets: Well-being deprivation of sexually exploited trafficked women

Trafficking in women has been estimated to generate $12 billion a year, enough to be ranked just after trafficking in weapons and drugs. This paper analyzes working and living conditions of individuals that have reported to the Anti-Trafficking Unit of the International Organization for Migration for assistance and have been identified as ‘victims of trafficking’ for the purpose of ‘sexual exploitation’. We use the theoretical framework of the capability approach to conceptualize well-being deprivation and we estimate a MIMIC model. The utilized indicators measure abuse, freedom of movement, and access to medical care. We conclude that working in secluded spaces worsen well-being conditions of the victims. A better access to medical care and to contraception for all sex workers would improve well-being also for trafficked women. Moreover, criminalization of sex work may move all sex workers in more secluded places, which will also have a negative impact on the well-being of sexually exploited trafficked individuals.

Sex work, reform initiatives and HIV/AIDS in inner-city Johannesburg

The on-going criminalisation of sex work in South Africa, concurrent sexual partnerships, socio-economic vulnerability, migrant status and gender-based violence intensify sex workers' risk of contracting HIV. These factors combine to restrict the skills, ability and resources of sex workers to negotiate safer sex and to access HIV prevention, treatment and healthcare services. The paper situates the living and working conditions of sex workers in Hillbrow, an inner-city area of Johannesburg, within the South African legal context, especially in regard to current law reform initiatives regarding sex work, as well as the increasing anxiety about the influx of (sex) tourists during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In addition, the paper describes an intervention by the Reproductive Health & HIV Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, an innovator in providing mobile healthcare services and education to hotel-based sex workers in Hillbrow. The paper contends that a legal-rights-approach to HIV risk and vulnerability, together with powerful public health considerations, render decriminalisation an imperative response to sex workers' material conditions.

The Institutionalizing Effect of Criminalization: A Case Study of American Prostitution

Prostitution in the United States in the early 19th century was an almost entirely individual, ad hoc, unorganized activity. In the 1910s, the Progressive Movement arrived, bringing with it enforcement of harsh criminal penalties of prostitution for the first time. Within a couple of decades, a rigorously structured, commercialized prostitution industry emerged. Prostitution transformed from a practice into an institution.This Article lays out a new theory among the unintended consequences of criminalization. Criminalization has the potential to push previously unstructured, independent, ad hoc behaviors to become structured and organized. The Article examines this relationship in the context of American prostitution from the 1850s to 1930s, using contemporaneous sources to tease out the organization of American prostitution before and after the criminalization wave of the Progressive Era. The Article then examines the economic principles that underlie this relationship, including how criminalization creates economies of scale in bargaining for government corruption. In conclusion, the Article argues that policymakers can recognize and respond to this problem in shaping criminal sanctions. Certain criminal regimes, such as partial criminalization that focuses penalties on the purchasers, rather than the sellers of sex work, may alleviate this institutionalizing effect of criminalization and avoid the harms associated with more complex and persistent institutional criminal structures. The Article thus gives theoretical support for current experiments in New York and Sweden in partial criminalization of sex work.

Becoming an Ex–Sex Worker

This article has four core aims. First, to identify the processes of change women undertake to leave sex work through a typology of transitions. The typology suggests four dominant ways out of sex work as reactionary, gradual planning, natural progression, and “yo-yoing.” Second, the article argues against the low self-control theory by asserting that sex workers engage in specific deviant “careers” rather than stable deviant roles and, therefore, exit to “complete conformist” once sex work is ceased. Third, it rejects Mansson and Hedin’s claim that the “emotional commitment” of individual women is the key factor to leaving but instead argues that structural, political, cultural, and legal factors as well as cognitive transformations and agency are key determinants in trapping women in the industry. Fourth, the article challenges the U.K. policy context that reinforces “exiting” through compulsory rehabilitation and the criminalization of sex work.

The Constitutional Court upholds the criminalisation of sex work

RONALD LOUW examines the minority judgment in the State v Jordan case

Specialist Qualifications

<h3>Objectives</h3> To explore how criminalisation and policing of sex buyers (clients) rather than sex workers shapes sex workers’ working conditions and sexual transactions including risk of violence and HIV/sexually transmitted infections (STIs). <h3>Design</h3> Qualitative and ethnographic study triangulated with sex work-related violence prevalence data and publicly available police statistics. <h3>Setting</h3> Vancouver, Canada, provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact of policies that criminalise clients as the local police department adopted a sex work enforcement policy in January 2013 that prioritises sex workers’ safety over arrest, while continuing to target clients. <h3>Participants</h3> 26 cisgender and 5 transgender women who were street-based sex workers (n=31) participated in semistructured interviews about their working conditions. All had exchanged sex for money in the previous 30 days in Vancouver. <h3>Outcome measures</h3> Thematic analysis of interview transcripts and ethnographic field notes focused on how police enforcement of clients shaped sex workers’ working conditions and sexual transactions, including risk of violence and HIV/STIs, over an 11-month period postpolicy implementation (January–November 2013). <h3>Results</h3> Sex workers’ narratives and ethnographic observations indicated that while police sustained a high level of visibility, they eased charging or arresting sex workers and showed increased concern for their safety. However, participants’ accounts and police statistics indicated continued police enforcement of clients. This profoundly impacted the safety strategies sex workers employed. Sex workers continued to mistrust police, had to rush screening clients and were displaced to outlying areas with increased risks of violence, including being forced to engage in unprotected sex. <h3>Conclusions</h3> These findings suggest that criminalisation and policing strategies that target clients reproduce the harms created by the criminalisation of sex work, in particular, vulnerability to violence and HIV/STIs. The current findings support decriminalisation of sex work to ensure work conditions that support the health and safety of sex workers in Canada and globally.