Category: Policy Updates

Partial victory in NYC as police chief limits use of condoms as evidence

May 13th, 2014 · · Campaigns, Policy Updates No comments

Sex workers and allies in New York advocating for human rights had a significant victory today as the Police Commissioner announced a partial elimination of the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution or related activities. Read the statement from the Access to Condoms Coalition here:

The policy announced by Commissioner Bratton today barring confiscation of condoms as arrest evidence in prostitution, prostitution in a school zone, and loitering for the purposes of prostitution cases represents a welcome and important step in the direction of protecting the public health and reproductive rights of New Yorkers. Unfortunately, it does not go far enough, and creates a loophole big enough to drive a truck through:  police can still continue to use the possession of condoms to justify an arrest, confiscate condoms from sex workers and survivors as “investigatory evidence” where promoting or trafficking is suspected, and confiscate condoms as evidence in promoting and trafficking cases.

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UN Human Rights Committee Questions U.S.’s Criminalization of Sex Workers as Method to Fight Trafficking

March 28th, 2014 · · Campaigns, Policy Updates, Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Yesterday the United Nations Human Rights Committee released its report on U.S. compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Advocates for sex worker rights from BPPP and SWOP-Phoenix were present during the Committee’s review of the U.S. government, and filed a shadow report with the Committee on rights abuses against people involved in commercial sex. The Committee is comprised of eighteen independent human rights experts who monitor states’ compliance with the ICCPR.  The United States ratified the ICCPR in 1992.

The “Concluding Observations” from the Committee included important points on racial profiling, police abuse, and immigrants’ rights. The Committee also called on the U.S. to re-align its anti-human trafficking efforts with human rights norms, which reject criminalizing people who are trafficked. Importantly, the Committee’s report placed the problem of forced labor within a larger framework of economics and immigration policies, and noted its concern “about the insufficient identification and investigation of cases of trafficking for labor purposes.”

Earlier in March, in Geneva, Human Rights Committee members questioned the U.S. Justice Department’s position that criminalizing sex workers (by calling for jail time for sex workers) is a sound way to combat human trafficking, noting the harm criminalization causes. During the hearing, Roy L. Austin, Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division made clear that criminalization of sex workers is part of the administration’s approach to trafficking. Addressing advocates’ questions on the issue, Mr. Austin stated, “This issue is incredibly challenging, because to get those who exploit women, the only tool is to get those women to testify [by arresting them]. [We] sees those women as victims.”

Human Rights Committee Chair Sir Nigel Rodley specifically asked how the government could expect people victimized and targeted by police and prosecutors to help provide evidence on traffickers. “[Mr. Austin] talked about the policy being victim-centered and in relation to sex trade workers, clearly the victims are the sex trade workers. If as I understood the policy is to prosecute them for doing something illegal, and I hope I’ve understood wrongly, then isn’t that going to make it particularly difficult to get the necessary evidence in order to reach effective prosecutions of traffickers, not to mention the double victimization?” he asked.

Advocates from SWOP-Phoenix and BPPP educated Committee members prior to the hearing about ways that U.S. policing practices and anti-trafficking initiatives violate the civil and human rights of arrestees. Specifically, advocates described how Project ROSE, a Phoenix-based ostensible anti-trafficking initiative actually results in mass arrest and imprisonment of people police suspect to be doing sex work, and violates the due process rights of arrestees in the process.

Advocates noted how criminalization harms sex workers, people profiled as sex workers, and people who are trafficked. They also spoke about how there is forced labor in an array of industries, including farm work, domestic work and factory work, but there is no other arena aside from sex work where the approach is to criminalize people who may be trafficked in order to prosecute human traffickers.

During a civil society briefing with the U.S. government delegation attending the review in Geneva, advocates pointed out to the Justice Department official that places like Phoenix, AZ impose mandatory minimum sentences for criminal convictions for sex work, meaning arrestees are imprisoned in Arizona’s notorious detention facilities. In 2009, Arizona’s Department of Corrections killed Marcia Powell, who was sentenced to a 27-month prison term for sex work, by confining her in a metal cage in the desert with no water. As in some other states, escalating penalties in Arizona for additional sex work convictions eventually lead to an automatic felony, depriving arrestees of voting rights and other civil and human rights.

In a statement before the Human Rights Committee, SWOP-Phoenix member Jaclyn  Moskal Dairman asked that the Committee, “call on the US to ensure that sex workers and people profiled as such are afforded their constitutional rights when arrested under ostensible ‘anti-trafficking’ initiatives, and call on the government to monitor anti-trafficking funds to ensure they are not being used to violate civil rights.”

UN Update: SWOP-Phoenix member testifies before UN Human Rights Committee

March 13th, 2014 · · Campaigns, Policy Updates No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , ,

As part of their work to raise the issue of abusive and discriminatory policing practices in the U.S., advocates BPPP and SWOP-PHX sought to speak before the UN Human Rights Committee during the Committee’s review of U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Here is video of SWOP-PHX member giving her testimony–the text is below.

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I’m Jaclyn Moskal Dairman with (SWOP)–the Sex Worker Outreach Project in Phoenix Arizona. I am here to speak about criminalization of sex workers, including under ostensible anti trafficking initiatives that primarily target people in poverty and disproportionately affect people of color. These are the people SWOP reaches out to. As a single mother, college student, and someone who grew up in poverty and homelessness I know what criminalization does to people in poverty. Criminalization is disastrous, particularly in states like Arizona, which has mandatory minimums and felony sentences for sex work. In 2009, a woman with a psychiatric disability sentenced to 27 months for prostitution, was killed by Arizona Department of Corrections when they left her in a cage in the desert with no water.

Recently, Monica Jones, a human rights defender with SWOP, was profiled and wrongfully arrested by Phoenix police because she is a transgender woman of color. She was arrested as part of an initiative called “Project ROSE,” and charged under a vague, overbroad anti-prostitution statute. While dubbed an “anti-trafficking initiative” Project ROSE actually targets people police believe are sex workers. To be clear: Project ROSE violates arrestee’s due process rights. Arrestees are denied council, even when they request a lawyer, and are made to cooperate in a police interview to potentially receive diversion, with no lawyer present. The interview is used to file charges against them if they don’t meet the diversion requirements, which most don’t, because they are too difficult for people in poverty to meet.

Monica Jones goes to trial this Friday. Since pleading not guilty, police have stopped her without cause, harassed and verbally abused her four times. If found guilty, as a trans woman, she will be housed in the men’s jail where she will face violence. Please call on the US to ensure that sex workers and people profiled as such are afforded their constitutional rights when arrested under ostensible “anti-trafficking” initiatives, and call on the government to monitor anti-trafficking funds to ensure they are not being used to violate civil rights. Thank you.

As Monica Jones prepares to go to trial, her story is being told not only at the UN but by media throughout the U.S.:

Trying to “Rescue” Sex Workers By Arresting Them is a Bad Idea

Fighting Back: Monica Jones Battles Phoenix’s Project ROSE

Sex Work Wars: Project ROSE, Monica Jones and the Fight for Human Rights

Huge victory for human rights–Canada high court strikes down prostitution laws

December 20th, 2013 · · Policy Updates, Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , , ,

This morning sex workers, people in the sex trade, and allies around the world were moved to cheers and tears by the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court in the Bedford case. In a unanimous ruling, the high court struck the entirety of Canada’s prostitution laws from the books, finding that the

“provisions, primarily concerned with preventing public nuisance as well as the exploitation of prostitutes, do not pass Charter muster: they infringe the s. 7 rights of prostitutes by depriving them of security of the person in a manner that is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

The sex workers who brought the case were visibly overjoyed and emotional on television after the decision was released.

The justices gave the Canadian government a year to react to the judgment–and already anti-sex worker rights groups have discussed introducing the so-called Nordic system of criminalizing clients. But human rights groups in Canada have already rejected that approach, and the Bedford plaintiffs and their lawyers strongly cautioned the government against such laws as well.

While it takes time for laws, and society, to change, meaning many folks involved in commercial sex will not immediately benefit from the Court’s ruling, the decision is nonetheless momentous. It has the potential to affect the fight for recognition of sex workers’ rights well beyond the borders of Canada. We send a salute to the tireless advocates and activists who fought this battle and won.