Back in February, advocates for sex worker rights in New York announced their intention to fully decriminalize prostitution in the state. But no one really suspected then that within two weeks , Democratic candidates for president would be pledging support for competing legislative visions of what they called at times, incorrectly sex work decriminalization.
Quite suddenly, the enlightened thing to doβor at least to say you were doingβwas to support these measures, a development that came as a shock even to many sex workers who had long campaigned for decriminalization. On Monday, that same group of advocates, Decrim NY, will see a bill they have helped draft introduced in the state legislature that promises to give practical shape to the goals sex workers have pursued for several decades.
The bill is groundbreaking for the United States: If passed, it would make New York the first state to fully decriminalize sex work. The New Republic has had a first look at the bill. Their aim is grounded not just in criminal justice reform, but in more fundamental appeals to economic justice. Compelling prostitution and promotion of prostitution involving cases of force, intimidation, or minors would remain a crime.
All those protections [for minors] are still on the books. The New York bill is the most comprehensive sex work decriminalization measure in the country, though it is not alone. In Washington, D. These bills are now landing in the early phase of the campaignβthe first in which multiple major candidates are, when asked, offering their proposals on changing laws against sex work.
In a Data for Progress and Decrim NY poll released in May, Democratic voters said they support fully decriminalizing sex work by a 3-to-1 margin. And potentially, it can lead to them losing housing, and landlords retaliating against them. In the context of global criminal justice reform, to roll back these discriminatory laws in order to protect the rights of sex workers is not a new approach. New Zealand decriminalized sex work in , and has since become the model for full decriminalization, now backed by many human rights groups and NGOs such as Amnesty International and the World Health Organization.
