Thread by @krisrosentel

Excited to share my new first-author paper, "Police Enforcement of Sex Work Criminalization Laws in an 'End Demand' City: The Persistence of Quality-of-Life Policing and Seller Arrests" in Archives of Sexual Behavior. #socaf #decrim @SFSWR1 @DecrimSex

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In the 00's, @chicagosmayor's Office set out to change the way sex work was policed, issuing guidance to @Chicago_Police to focus on arresting buyers (i.e End Demand) rather than sex workers. This can be understood as a watered-down version of the "Nordic Model."

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To understand how arrest practices did/didn't change, we looked at annualized arrest statistics and conducted mixed-methods analysis of 575 arrest reports from 2015 to 2017. Arrests overall dropped BUT over 80% of those arrested were still sex workers.

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We wanted to understand what was driving the disconnect between city guidance and actual arrests so we looked at the arrest incident narratives. Specifically, we examined the policing strategies and types of evidence cited for probable cause and to justify arrest.

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Overall, we identified three institutional factors that were contributing to the continued disproportionate arrest of sex workers.

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First, police discretion was used in ways inconsistent with the city's stated priorities. Officers often chose to approach and arrest sex workers before they made contact with buyers and frequently conducted sting operations posed as buyers in order to target sex workers.

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In a few cases, police approached both a sex worker and buyer but then only apprehended the sex worker. In one case, a woman told the police she was being held against her will in the buyer's car. She was arrested and he was described as a "witness" to the crime.

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Second, police often described street-based sex work as an urban nuisance, including references to disrupting traffic and disturbing neighbors. This suggests that police action continues to be motivated by a quality-of-life policing or "broken windows" strategy.

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Street-based sex workers are more vulnerable to this strategy than buyers because they are more visible and easier for police to identify. Police described targeting individuals because they were "known" sex workers, transgender, or wearing "sexually-provocative" clothing.

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Third, efforts to be responsive to certain community constituencies may have driven punitive action toward sex workers. The reports often referenced patterns of complaints about sex workers from neighborhood residents, business owners, and local politicians.

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Our study contributes to a growing body of research showing how "End Demand" criminalization of sex work continues to harm sex workers. In Chicago, the police and city gov continue to primarily surveil and punish sex workers, while adopting a more compassionate rhetoric.

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Addressing violence and exploitation in the sex industry is an important goal but criminalization of sex work is not the answer. This exacerbates the problem by driving the industry further underground and undermining trust in the legal system.

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#Decrim not only removes the harms of criminalization but also frees us up to use labor and social safety net interventions to improve working conditions, combat violence, and promote the rights of sex workers.

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