Decriminalizing sex work and eliminating the threat of prosecution makes it easier for sex workers and victims of trafficking to seek help and report crimes committed against them, advocates say. Most district prosecutors who have stopped prosecuting prostitution do not say they will stop prosecuting sex workers` clients or those who promote them. Last month, Baltimore Attorney General Marilyn Mosby said the city would no longer prosecute prostitution and other low-level crimes to “no longer maintain the status quo to primarily criminalize people of color for addiction.” In January, U.S. Attorney Eli Savit of Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor, Michigan, said his office would stop laying charges against adults who participate in consensual sex work, both for sex workers and their clients. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner asked his assistant prosecutors to deny allegations of prostitution if a person had fewer than two previous convictions, he told NPR in 2019. That same year, newly elected San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said his office would stop prosecuting sexual solicitation charges. Manhattan will no longer pursue prostitution and unauthorized massages, U.S. Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced Wednesday. The prosecutor`s office closed 914 previous cases under its new policy, as well as 5,080 cases of loitering for prostitution. “This move to end prosecutions of people who simply try to work to survive in a depressed economy and immediately reject the nearly 6,000 arrest warrants for loitering, prostitution and unauthorized massage is one of the most important steps taken nationwide to end the criminalization of sex work,” Gentili said. The national debate about whether sex work should be illegal is not new.
Opponents argue that sex work is an exploitative industry and a victim profession, while many advocates and academics believe that decriminalization would protect sex workers and benefit public health. Last March, the New York State legislature repealed the law that criminalized loitering for the purpose of prostitution. This measure was known as the “walk trans” law because, as critics have said, it was used to target trans people and people of color. More than 150 people were arrested under the law in 2018, according to Gothamist. Most were women; 42% were Latino and 49% black. Manhattan will no longer prosecute people for “prostitution” and “unauthorized massage,” prosecutors announced Wednesday, a stunning change that brings the largest city in the United States closer to fully decriminalizing sex work. According to the New York State Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, there were about 1,000 confirmed victims of sex trafficking in New York between 2007 and 2019, a number that Meyers says is likely an undercount of actual victims. If the Stop Violence Act is passed, this number could increase. A 2013 study of 150 countries showed that, on average, countries where prostitution is legal reported higher inflows of human trafficking across sectors.
With regard to sex work alone, trafficking in human beings in Germany gradually decreased until 2001 and then increased again after decriminalisation in 2002. In a statement, Vance, who recently announced he would not seek re-election, said his office made the decision not to prosecute prostitution cases following discussions with sex worker rights groups. “Over the past decade, we have learned from those with lived experience and from our own experience on the ground: pursuing prostitution does not make us safer and too often achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” he said, adding that by dismissing cases and erasing previous convictions, We are making a “paradigm shift in our approach” to sex work. “Over the past decade, we have learned from those with lived experience and from our own experience on the ground: pursuing prostitution does not make us safer and too often achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” Vance said. By quashing arrest warrants, dismissing cases and quashing convictions for those charges, we are completing a paradigm shift in our approach. Sex work is still not completely legal in the district. Instead, the office will focus its efforts on tracking those who buy sexual services, rather than those who sell them. Proponents of sex work have long argued that this type of sex work law enforcement model threatens workers` rights and safety because it always encourages law enforcement to interfere in their affairs. A judge in New York`s borough of Queens dismissed hundreds of prostitution-related crimes in March at the request of Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who said she had never prosecuted anyone under the previous law, which was used to “arrest people because of their gender or appearance.” On Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., announced that his office would no longer pursue unlicensed prostitution and massage arrests, and that it would drop 914 cases from the 1970s. The office has also released more than 5,000 people loitering for prostitution cases stemming from the highly controversial “walk during trans people” law, which was repealed last February. “Pursuing prostitution does not make us safer and too often achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” Vance said in a statement.