Letter to the Editor of National Review Online
On August 12, 2009 I submitted this to the editors of National Review Online. I got the standard automated response and will certanly post here to let you know if the letter is published there. Meanwhile, here is what I sent them.
RE: "Not a victimless crime" by D. Hughes and R. P. George
"Not a victimless crime," (Hughes & George, Aug. 10, 2009) is misleading from the start in that what it describes (prostitution in Rhode Island) is not a crime in the first place. In addition, the article contains several logical flaws and much misinformation. It gives the impression that decriminalization of prostitution is associated with more violence against prostitutes and that criminalization of prostitution is associated with more effective policing of human trafficking and better protection of public health. None of this is accurate.
First, violence against prostitutes is associated with misogyny and the stigmatization of sexually active women, not with the legal status of prostitution. People suspected of being prostitutes are assaulted and killed in places where prostitution is criminal and in places where it is not. While there is violence against women, and against sex workers everywhere there is stigma against sexually active women interestingly, in places like New Zealand where prostitution was decriminalized in 2003, there has not been an increase in violence against workers.
Second, trafficking is a matter of global inequality, poverty, migration patterns and labor abuse. It is not addressed by criminalizing labor, but rather by increasing economic opportunity, creating sensible immigration policies, and enforcing labor laws. Can you imagine anyone saying "We can't effectively fight trafficking because there aren't strong enough laws against picking strawberries"? Or "we need to criminalize domestic labor because we can't fight trafficking if housekeeping is legal"? People are coerced and deceived into migrating for many kinds of work yet sex work is the only kind we try to criminalize as a way to "rescue" victims.
Third, public health is best protected when people involved in risky behavior are not driven underground, but rather can be educated about risks, given the resources needed to protect themselves, and then supported in their efforts to educate others. Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, recently included decriminalization of adult consensual sexual behavior including sex work as an important strategy for reducing HIV infections around in the Asia Pacific region (Hope to Reality: Transforming the Asia-Pacific AIDS Response, August 10, 2009 LINK). Indeed sex workers have lead HIV prevention efforts around the world.
People who are exploited, coerced or otherwise put at risk of harm in the course of earning a living need better enforcement of labor laws and worker safety standards. Enforcement resources ought to be spent fighting real injustices, not criminalizing work.
It must be because in this society we place such a low value on sex that we see smart people and responsible news sources falling apart when it comes to issues like prostitution. Sexual services are as essential as many other personal services we contract out. They deserve the same quality of attention. In fact I'd have expected a conservative news source like National Review to err on the side of deregulation and individual liberty. It is hard to imagine National Review publishing a piece as poor in reasoning and documentation as "Not a victimless crime" on any other topic.
Hughes and George appear dismissive of civil liberties, and rely on anecdote, rhetoric, ideology and fear mongering rather than on accurate data derived from ethical research. Legislators of Rhode Island would do well to look to research and to worldwide standards. The UN Development Programme (2007), the UN High Commission for Human Rights (2006) and UNAIDS (2009, as mentioned above) each have published guidelines urging lawmakers and others to avoid confusing trafficking with sex work, and to work toward decriminalizing sex work so that crimes of exploitation and coercion along with urgent public health issues like HIV/AIDS can better be addressed.
If we care about women, Hughes and George claim to care, we should be working to strengthen labor laws and direct law enforcement to treat crimes against workers seriously regardless of the type of work they do. To criminalize sex work in the name of women's safety is as ridiculous as criminalizing the tomato harvest in the name of immigrant rights.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Anne Wood, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY
and online at Sex In The Public Square - http://sexinthepublicsquare.
She also makes the assertion
She also makes the assertion that, "...without a predicate prostitution crime, state police lack the grounds to intervene and interview likely victims." That is absolute bullshit. They don't need any such thing. If they suspect trafficking, they can intervene and interview based on that alone. Trafficking is a crime in and of itself, regardless of what activity the victims are involved in. So she's making it seem as though if they don't have prostitution as a crime, people will get away with trafficking.
Gosh, I hate it when people make up shit like that.
crime investigation questions
You're right about that, and I would love to talk to someone in law enforcement about the complexity of investigating crimes because it seemed odd to me that to say "we can't investigate that activity that's a crime because there was no crime that came before it." It seems like if trafficking or coerced labor is criminal then complaints about those things could be investigated on their own. How often does investigation of one crime require another crime to be suspected first?
I know that sometimes drug arrests arise from other suspicious behavior (loitering, or traffic violations) but that isn't to say that if a drug crime is suspected it can only be investigated if loitering or a traffic violation occurs first. Certainly when one crime occurs it is easier to then search and investigate for many other related or unrelated illegal activities. But that can't mean that one can't investigate a criminal complaint unless some separate crime has been committed.
Are there any criminologists, lawyers or law enforcement officers who can weigh in on this?
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Law Enforcement in The Netherlands
I've seen similar arguments made regarding legal prostitution in Amsterdam and other cities. The anti-prostitution lobby claims a significant percentage of immigrant Dutch sex workers are forcibly trafficked. I haven't seen independent confirmation of this, but I don't dismiss the contention that at least some Dutch prostitutes are there against their will.
What I often see argued, however, is that Dutch police can't do anything about this because prostitution is legal. Which strikes me as complete nonsense, because forced labor and rape are very much illegal, as is criminal conspiracy if the above violations are carried out by an organized group. And if The Netherlands has specific laws against trafficking in persons, which I believe they do, those laws are certainly enforceable as well.
If the Dutch police aren't enforcing such laws and claiming the legal status of prostitution as an excuse, then they're not doing their job. If the Dutch police themselves are claiming this as an argument for criminalizing prostitution, then basically what they're saying is that if they can't have their easy hooker busts, they're just not going to enforce the law period when it comes to the sex industry. Obviously, this attitude that if you don't give law enforcement broad arrest powers, they're going to take their marbles and walk away is not an acceptable way to conduct law enforcement in a democratic society.
Perhaps RI needs to learn from LI?
If Donna Hughes were right that law enforcement officers in RI truly felt hampered by not having a "predicate prostitution crime" to use in investigating trafficking perhaps they need to visit Long Island and see how it's done there.
I haven't read everything there is to read about this case, but apparently three people in Suffolk County have been charged with "slavery, trafficking in sexual workers, and harboring undocumented immigrants." The articles in Newsday, so far as I've found, do not mention any prostitution investigation despite prostitution being a crime in NY. They mention "clip joints" where women coax men into buying them drinks and then the women's drinks are watered down creating greater profits for the clubs. They mention sexual slavery, rape, and assault. They equate the situation legally to that of two Indonesian women who were enslaved for domestic service on LI and offered expedited citizenship as victims of slavery. (Their enslavers were convicted in late 2007 and sentenced in 2008).
Newsday coverage of the current LI case:
There is much that is potentially problematic in this case and it's coverage, but one thing I am encouraged by is that the case is not being framed as a prostitution problem. It is being framed as a case of violence and exploitation akin to other kinds of labor abuse or violent crime. The parallel with the domestic slavery case is an example. Those women were starved, beaten and tortured, but not in relation to sex work. If the allegations in this case are true then terrible crimes have been committed and those crimes are not related to the consensual selling of sexual services. There is nothing consensual about being deceived, beaten, raped or forced to work against your will or without proper compensation.
Of course I am uncomfortable with the way that immigration crimes are being lumped in with violent crimes, and I fear that these stories will add to the anti-immigrant sentiment that is already causing trouble on Long Island. And of course I am always hesitant when words like "sex slave" are used in mass media. I am curious about what the details in this case will turn out to be. But in the meantime it is encouraging to see people like Crystal DeBoise from Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project being named as a source rather than Donna Hughes's or Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Melanie Shapiro
I noticed this part in the National Review article:
"There are now 40 known establishments offering prostitution, 12 of which have opened since January 2009, according to researcher Melanie Shapiro."
Hughes doesn't mention that "researcher Melanie Shapiro" is a URI undergraduate who carried out the above research under Hughes mentorship. Some disclosure in that regard was definitely called for.
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