DECRIMINALIZE SELLING SEX

A key issue for CAASE

CAASE has long supported the decriminalization of people selling sex, referred to as partial decriminalization. This approach would lift all penalties for those who sell sex while continuing to hold buyers and pimps accountable for the harm they cause. This model is essential to addressing survivors’ trauma, reducing harm, pursuing racial and LGBTQ+ equity, decreasing demand and reducing sex trafficking while expanding opportunities for survivors and providing long-term solutions.

CAASE is recognized as a leader in Chicago and throughout Illinois for its work addressing the needs of those selling sex and experiencing trafficking. In the past, our advocacy included calls for an increased focus on sex buying and treating it as a more serious offense. Our position has evolved: The most appropriate response to the sex trade is to eliminate all laws that target sellers. This shift does not mean we are in favor of full decriminalization or legalization of the sex trade, which would expand the sex industry by removing all accountability for buying, pimping, and brothel owning. But, we know that our earlier stances in favor of increased enforcement and penalties are a distraction from what matters most: ending the criminalization of the people most harmed and impacted by the sex trade—those who are selling sex and being trafficked.

Addressing Survivors’ Trauma

Addressing survivors’ trauma is fundamental to effective, lasting sex trade reform. Trauma cannot be regulated away by fully decriminalizing or legalizing the sex trade. Instead, we must center survivors’ needs and experiences and, through decriminalizing those selling sex, enact legislation and policies that support survivors’ well-being.

• CAASE recognizes that some people freely choose to sell sex, and we respect those who want to engage in prostitution and be afforded the same dignity and rights that America (rhetorically) grants to all workers. We also recognize that sex trafficking is different from prostitution. However, research shows that the majority of people with experience in the sex trade started when they were minors, wanted a way out, and were harmed by it. Research centered on people with lived experiences confirms that few get enjoyment from performing sexual acts on men they have little agency to reject.¹
• Research also shows that prostitution involves such repetitive exposure to trauma that post-traumatic stress disorder is more common for people who’ve lived through it than those who have lived through military combat. Additionally, research suggests that substance abuse is a more common response to prostitution than a cause of it because people need to dissociate from reality in order to survive their days in the sex trade.²
• Partial decriminalization seeks to provide trauma-informed social services and resources to people who are prostituted—including people wishing to exit the sex trade—as well as comprehensive community education about the physical harm and psychological trauma survivors of the sex trade experience at the hands of buyers and pimps.³

Pursuing Racial and LGBTQ+ Equity

The systemic sexual exploitation perpetuated by prostitution is a major issue impacting members of Black and LGBTQ+ communities. If we want to see true racial and LGBTQ+ equity, we must enact partial decriminalization now.

• The people most commonly arrested for prostitution in Chicago are Black women, who frequently describe negative interactions with police, often enduring derogatory comments and attitudes, and sexual misconduct by officers.⁴
• Partial decriminalization addresses the over-policing and over-incarceration of people of color by shifting penalization away from sellers, who tend to be Black women, and implementing income-based fines to incentivize targeting buyers, who tend to be white men with higher disposable income.⁵
• Pimps and traffickers frequently target vulnerable people including those without strong support networks, facing financial strain, who have experienced violence in the past, and who are marginalized by society. As a result, LGBTQ+ youth are at particular risk for sex trafficking.⁶
• Youth at the intersections of marginalization and vulnerability, such as LGBTQ+ kids and/or girls of color,⁷ can be trafficked and trapped in the sex trade into adulthood. Studies suggest that child sexual exploitation increases in places where the sex trade is fully decriminalized or legalized.⁸
• The broken policies, weak economic support, and bad policing practices negatively impacting Black and LGBTQ+ communities are tightly interconnected with the harms of the sex trade. Selling sex is often one of a few bad options in a society that keeps Black and/or trans people out of the workforce, and discriminated against through laws and other practices.⁹
• Federal civil rights laws specify that workers are legally protected from pressure to perform sex acts as a condition of their employment. Yet, these protections would be eroded by a full decriminalization model. For most workers, these are acts traumatizing, discriminatory, and harmful. And for others, often more marginalized people, it would be understood as lawful “work.”
• Partial decriminalization aims to open pathways for all people in prostitution to exit the sex trade, but particularly those who are marginalized like Black and LGBTQ+ communities, rather than further disenfranchising them by criminalizing them for acts they’ve been coerced into committing.¹⁰

Decreasing Demand and Reducing Sex Trafficking

Partial decriminalization decreases the demand for prostituted people and reduces rates of sex trafficking by retaining accountability for buyers and pimps and reducing their willingness to engage in this system of exploitation.

• Though people end up in the sex trade for a variety of reasons, if there was no demand to purchase sex then prostitution would cease to exist.¹¹
• Decriminalizing or making it legal for men to buy sex won’t make prostitution appealing or less traumatic for the majority of people who are bravely enduring the sex trade because they lack better options. It won’t undo the poverty and violence most are navigating. It would, however, incentivize businesses to enter the market, thus increasing harm.¹²
• Demand is driven by a collection of connected misconceptions about prostitution and toxic masculinity: that prostituted women enjoy the act, that it is mostly a victimless crime, that men need sex and buyers are merely taking care of their needs, and that buyers are just “guys being guys.”¹³
• Between 2013 and 2017, of the over 6,000 arrests made for prostitution-related offenses, over 75 percent were people selling sex, while fewer than 20 percent were johns purchasing sex—and just one percent were pimps. This disparity must be addressed.¹⁴
• While we believe criminalizing the purchase of sex will drive down demand from buyers, we also understand that systemic over-policing and over-incarceration of people of color exist. To address this fact, we want to see income-based fines, rather than jail time, for people who buy sex.¹⁵
• Education initiatives can combat demand by increasing social accountability for the discriminatory practice of buying sex, promoting gender equality, strengthening empathy for survivors, and increasing understanding of the devastating effects of the sex trade on our most vulnerable populations and communities.¹⁶

Increasing Opportunity and Providing Long-term Solutions

To tackle the harms of the sex trade, we need to recognize and respond to the vulnerability and victimization of most people who sell sex. They are often doing so out of desperation—living on the margins and in poverty. Criminalizing them is cruel. Instead, we must offer support, including the removal of prostitution-related offenses from their records so they have more opportunities outside of the sex trade

• The majority of people who sell sex do so because they lack better options for survival. Yet they are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. They face repeated arrests and penalties while sex buyers and traffickers—who cause immense harm—face few consequences. Our laws and those who enforce them need to recognize this injustice.¹⁷

• Research shows that 41 percent of sex-trafficked youth were approached by a trafficker within their first day of homelessness.16 Foster and/or LGBTQ+ youth are particularly at risk for housing insecurity, which can increase their vulnerability to abuses of power in the sex trade. LGBTQ+ youth are 3-7x more likely to participate in “survival sex” for basic necessities.¹¹⁸
• While some people choose to engage in sex work, and a few come out of it unscathed, the evidence is clear: the sex trade isn’t safe. Research centered on people with lived experiences confirms that few get enjoyment from performing sexual acts on men they have little ability to reject. Research also shows that prostitution involves such repetitive exposure to trauma that post-traumatic stress disorder is more common for people who’ve lived through it than those who have survived military combat.¹⁹
• Survivor leaders speak to the multiple and repetitive harms of the sex trade, including physical and sexual assault, violence against children, and economic exploitation.²⁰
• We can and should stop arresting those who sell sex, but legalizing what buyers do just makes the industry bigger and more profitable without addressing the harms of prostitution.²¹
• Decriminalizing selling sex acknowledges that structural violence, including institutionalized racism and patriarchy, perpetuates the harm done to people in the sex trade—and that the most central of these structures is the criminal justice system’s insistence on the arrest and prosecution of people in prostitution. It also provides one of the most persistent barriers to economic independence after leaving the sex trade: a lack of gainful employment for survivors.²²

For more information contact Madeleine Behr, Policy Director at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, at 773.244.2230 ext. 212 or mbehr@caase.org.

Issues in Action

Our commitment to these issues is animated through our work, especially in advocacy for systemic solutions that prevent future sexual violence by breaking down the layers of oppression that increase the likelihood of victimization. The current policies we are working on can be found on our Legislative Priorities page. You can also learn about or Public Policy and Advocacy work through our blog posts on the topic.