Proposition K: Changing the Landscape for Sex Workers

By Sienna Baskin and Melissa Ditmore, RH Reality Check. Posted October 29, 2008.

Next week, San Francisco voters will vote on Proposition K, which would prohibit the use of public funds to enforce laws criminalizing prostitution, and mandate that police investigate crimes against sex workers. The passage of Proposition K would change the landscape for sex workers in San Francisco in critical ways.

First, by removing police officers' power to arrest sex workers, it would reduce sex workers' vulnerability to all of the abuses of that power sex workers currently experience: police profiling and harassment, sexual harassment and assault, rape, and extortion of sexual favors under threat of arrest by police officers, and entrapment.

Second, as a public statement that sex workers deserve the same protection from violence as any other person, it would reduce sex workers' vulnerability to violence at the hands of community members, employers, clients, partners and family members. If this proposition is passed and enforced, not only would sex workers' vulnerability to police violence be decreased, but people who do sex work or trade sex for survival needs would also be less likely to have to take greater risks to avoid police attention, and would no longer be forced to run the risk of arrest when trying to report a violent crime committed against them.

The assumption that criminalizing prostitution reduces its prevalence, or even more absurdly, helps those engaged in the sex trade, is fundamentally flawed. Prostitution arrests help no one, especially not the people arrested. Not only is arrest itself traumatic and often violent, it drives sex workers into a broken criminal justice system and comes with a host of collateral consequences. Sex workers who have been arrested may face the loss of their mainstream jobs, adverse impacts on their immigration status, eviction from their homes, or even problems retaining custody of their children. All of these factors may force them to return to the trade, if only to be able to pay fines and legal costs, or because their criminal record precludes them from securing other employment. Most people, when asked why they engage in sex work, cite money as the reason.

Criminalization and arrests do nothing to address the lack of living wage alternatives to prostitution, which should be the real goal of anyone seeking to reduce its prevalence. In fact, criminalization is expensive, both for those arrested and for the city. One thing about Proposition K is that it gets right to the heart of the matter -- the pocketbook -- by prohibiting use of public funds to enforce laws against prostitution, it diverts money away from criminalizing and arresting sex workers and makes it available for more effective efforts to keep everyone safe and secure. These are compelling reasons, but the most compelling reason to stop arresting sex workers is to decrease their vulnerability to violence.

"Revolving Door," a report from the Sex Workers Project (SWP), found that 27% of New York City street-based sex workers interviewed had been subjected to police brutality. In "Behind Closed Doors," the second report released by the SWP, 14% reported violence at the hands of the police. Sex workers described being thrown on the ground and stepped on, having food thrown at them, and being kicked hard enough to require a hospital visit. One sex worker interviewed for a 2005 update to Revolving Door described a police officer who routinely threatened sex workers with violence, telling them: "You are not going to jail tonight, you are going to the hospital."

These patterns are not isolated to New York: A 2007 D.C. study by community organization Different Avenues found that one in five actual or perceived sex workers surveyed who had been approached by police indicated that officers asked them for sex. Most indicated that this had been a negative or humiliating experience. A 2002 Chicago study found that 30% of exotic dancers and 24% of street-based sex workers interviewed who had been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Approximately 20% of other acts of sexual violence reported by study participants were committed by the police. It is clear that giving police the power to arrest sex workers increases, not decreases, their risk of sexual violence.

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