Sex Workers/Sex Offenders

• Date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085114541141
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

Feminist Criminology

2015, Vol. 10(3) 211 –234

© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085114541141

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Article

Sex Workers/Sex

Offenders: Exclusionary

Criminal Justice

Practices in New Orleans

Susan Dewey1 and Tonia P. St. Germain1

Abstract

Until 2012, the New Orleans criminal justice system forced persons convicted of

certain prostitution offenses to register as sex offenders under an antiquated (1805)

statute that criminalizes oral or anal sex in exchange for compensation. This article

explores attitudes and beliefs that enabled Louisiana’s misuse of the sex offender

registry against primarily indigent African American street-based sex worker

women and transgender individuals. Findings presented here derive from a feminist

interdisciplinary (cultural anthropology and law) methodological strategy that included

qualitative ethnography, quantitative examination of Louisiana’s 64 parish-specific sex

offender registries, and legal/policy analysis.

Keywords

sex work, prostitution, sex offender registration, intersections of race/class/gender,

legal issues, political/state crime

The lingering injustice, resulting from over 20 years of discriminatory enforcement of

this law at police and prosecutors’ whims, will now finally come to an end. The State of

Louisiana will now finally bring its conduct into compliance with the Constitution and

the court’s prior rulings. This is an unqualified victory for Black women, poor women,

and LGBTQ people who fought back against injustice and won.

—Andrea Ritchie, cocounsel in Doe v. Jindal and Doe v. Caldwell

(Louisiana Justice Institute, 2013).

1University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA

Corresponding Author:

Susan Dewey, Gender & Women’s Studies, 102 Ross Hall, 1000 E. University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY

82070.

Email: sdewey3@uwyo.edu

541141FCXXXX10.1177/1557085114541141Feminist CriminologyDewey and St. Germain

research-article2014

212 Feminist Criminology 10(3)

This article draws on findings from a mixed methods study to analyze the means by

which the New Orleans criminal justice system employed Louisiana’s arcane “Crime

Against Nature by Solicitation” (CANS) statute1 to convict sex workers and conse-

quently force them to register as sex offenders. It examines how CANS’ application

disproportionately affected African American women and transgender individuals,

leading the Louisiana Supreme Court, in 2012, to deem the law unconstitutional and,

in 2013, to mandate the removal of convicted sex workers’ names from the sex offender

registry (Doe et al. v. Jindal et al., 2012; Doe et al. v. Caldwell et al., 2013). Following

an exploration of the complexities involved in public policy and legal debates sur-

rounding U.S. criminal justice responses to street-based sex work, this article employs

qualitative interview findings to elucidate four discriminatory forces African American

women and transgender individuals face in New Orleans. The impact of these forces

worsen dramatically as a result of sex offender registration following a CANS convic-

tion: gender-based violence, and exclusion from employment, housing, and family and

community. Subsequent analysis draws upon quantitative data gleaned from

Louisiana’s sex offender registry, which comprises 64 parish-specific2 jurisdictions, to

establish the overrepresentation of African American women and transgender indi-

viduals. Findings presented indicate that these four types of sociolegal exclusion func-

tion to deepen, formalize, and legitimize discrimination against African American

women and transgender individuals.

The Law Is Only as Good as the People Who Enforce It:

CANS and Criminal Justice Responses to Street-Based

Sex Work

They [the criminal justice system] call it “crimes against nature” but it doesn’t mean you

had sex with a child, it could be oral sex in a car with a man. It’s unfair to the woman

that’s trying to start over. It’s gonna force her back into circumstances that she don’t

wanna get back into. You can’t find nowhere to stay, your people not takin’ you in, you

just got out of jail, you have no job, what else can you do? So you go back to the familiar,

and that’s it. It’s hard. (Latasha, personal communication, August 2012)

Latasha, a mother of three who was struggling with crack addiction and homelessness

at the time of her CANS conviction, became a felon and a sex offender prior to the

legislative change. As a 45-year-old former New Orleans street-based sex worker,3

Latasha is just one of 230 women who, prior to the 2013 Louisiana Supreme Court

decision, registered as a sex offender following a prosecutor’s decision to charge, and

a court’s decision to convict, her with CANS, a felony offense, rather than the misde-

meanor charge of prostitution. This was true of a full 80% of women listed on the sex

offender registry of Orleans Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish. Some of the

tasks women like Latasha were required to undertake following a CANS conviction

included providing law enforcement officials with their full contact information,

which was made public on the sex offender registry, carrying state-issued identifica-

tion that reads “sex offender,” paying hefty registration and other fines, and restricting