How the War on Sex Work Crushes Underprivileged Women.

AuthorMcNeill, Maggie

THAT PROHIBITIONIST LAWS are always, always, enforced more heavily upon the poor, the disadvantaged, and minorities is not, I think, controversial. One would have to contort one's brain in a manner worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance to ignore the facts that cops more heavily patrol poor and minority neighborhoods and actively look for people to arrest; that judges and juries have less sympathy for those they perceive as "others"; and that, because poor people overwhelmingly lack the resources to mount an adequate criminal defense (or even bail), they are far more likely to plead guilty to whatever a prosecutor offers, just so they can get it over with and at least try to get back to their lives. Protectionist laws (including occupational licensing) similarly harm those who are not yet established in a field, since nonincumbents are less likely to be consulted about the content of those laws and far less likely to be able to afford compliance costs after the regulations take effect.

These are among the reasons sex workers almost universally prefer prostitution "decriminalization" to the regulatory systems characteristic of what is called "legalization." The former--unlike so-called drug decriminalization--takes sex work out of the hands of the police altogether, while the latter plants a thicket of special sex-work-specific rules, regulations, laws, licenses, permits, codes, and prohibitions that invariably creates a two-tiered system: one for those who have the money, knowhow, political or business connections, and other resources to comply and thus function "legally," and one for those who do not. In every country with a "legalized" system, we see the same pattern: Well-connected businesspeople who have never themselves done sex work buy up all the brothel licenses, while racial or gender minorities, migrants, and other disadvantaged groups are far more likely to be arrested for working illegally within that "legal" system--often for violating the same kinds of ridiculous and unnecessary rules that governments love foisting upon industries to which politicians or the cartels who own them have taken a dislike.

Even within the fully criminalized systems typical in the United States, there are glaring disparities of enforcement. Most of y'all reading this probably already know that while white and nonwhite Americans use recreational drugs at roughly equal rates, minorities are arrested more frequently, charged more heavily, and more...

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