SEX WORK BILL SWEEPS THE CAPITOL

By Sofia Roehrig

Tribute to sex workers in Amsterdam, Netherlands

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The heated debate over the morality and legality of the sex trade has
centered itself in Washington, D.C. in response to a recent proposal for a bill to decriminalize
sex work and related interactions.

The bill has gained publicity as being a step in the right direction after years of brutal restrictions
and impedements on the liberties of those involved in the sex trade.

The founders of the bill, David Grosso and Robert White Jr, attempted to model the policy after
the German example, where both sex work and sex sale were made unpunishable crimes.

The bill aims to foster a protective environment for consenting adults involved in the sex trade to
come forward when they face violence or assault.
D.C. sex workers have had a difficult time reporting their violent encounters due to sex work
being heavily criminalized, and the looming threat of arrest or pressed charges was enough to
keep them silenced.

The bill, which was first proposed and rejected in 2017, has been altered and reintroduced this
past June as a part of recent human rights-minded initiatives.

D.C. has a long history of having a bustling underground commercial sex economy, with the aid
of local red light district having historically offered sex workers a slew of green-handed
costumers and locations to easily run their services.

But D.C. government efforts starting in the 1990’s have placed a freeze on sex work-related
establishments, and greatly spiked the penalization of prostitution.

The Metropolitan Police Department effort, starting in 2006, to create “prostitution free zones”
allowed for the arrest of individuals whom police “reasonably believed” were involved in sex
work.

The law granted legal basis for an average of nearly 50 sex work related stings charged weekly
in the DC area alone.

Those charged with sex work crimes could be subject to punishments ranging from a fee of $500
to 12 months in prison according to D.C. prostitution and solicitation laws.

In addition to being harshly criminalized, the Urban Justice Center (UJC) observes that sex
workers are “vulnerable to extreme rates of physical, sexual and emotional violence,” and a 2016
study from the UJC accounts that as many as 80% of sex workers report being threatened by
police officers because of their profession and over 27% report direct harrassment from police
and other authoritative figures.

Councilmember from Ward 1, Brianne Nadeau, has publically supported government

intervention in the protection of sex workers against aggressive persecution.

“Those who engage in sex work are our constituents,” Nadeau says. “Let’s make sure that people
engaging in sex work are being fully supported.”

Due to the lack of legality of the sex trade, sex workers have a difficult time obtaining permanent
or stable housing due to their inability to prove legal documentation of their profession.
This often results in a large population of the sex working community being firmly cemented to
the instability of living in motels and illegitamate residences.

Natasha Riddle from Greater Greater Washington (GGW) claims that while the bill will not
directly create housing opportunities for sex workers, “it will make it easier for sex workers to
find and keep a home.”

The bill stabilizes the housing crisis for those involved in the sex trade by removing criminal
charges on the basis of prostitution, which often are the reasons why sex workers are denied
housing.

Miya Walker from the Black Youth Project 100 notes that black queer youth suffer
disproportionately from poverty and often resort to the sex trade, and that this bill will greatly
help the community.

Although the recent bill certainly reduces the stress related to potential arrest, many argue that
the new bill will actually be damaging to the D.C. sex workers themselves.

Tina Frundt from Courtney’s House, a local organization dedicated to help those trapped in the
sex trafficking industry, anticipates a dramatic increase in sex trafficking if the D.C. Council
approves the depenalization bill.

The new policy fully depenalizes both the sale and act of sex work, meaning that it merely makes
the business conditions of prostititution better.

Many argue that the bill offers minimal benefits for the prostitutes themselves, and mostly
advantages the men who exploit the profits of sex work, and without any way to regulate the sale
of sex, pimps and buyers can openly (and legally) boost the sex industry without attention to the
needs of the sex workers.

The bill fuels the demand for sex workers and increases the number of costumers descending
upon the District in search of paid sex.

Jimmy Carter from the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to fight disease and
promote democracy, argues that “normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by
assuming that they are entitled to access women’s bodies for sexual gratification.”
The opposers of the bill propose a partial decriminilization structure, rather than the full
decriminalization that the bill presents, so that buyers and sellers of sex work services can still be
held legally accountable for their actions.

The recent bill regarding the depenalization of sex work has opened a Pandora's Box of
controversy over how, and if, this bill is actually helpful to the sex working community.

The years of legal repression on the sex trade highlight a theme of restriction of individual
freedom, and regardless of whether the bill gets passed, the discourse raised around prostitution
(both in terms of morality and legality) in response to the new potential policy is step in the right
direction, and will hopefully continue the much needed conversation on the topic.

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 Works Cited
Basch, Michelle. “DC Bill Aims to Decriminalize Prostitution Involving Consenting Adults.”
WTOP, ​3 June 2019, ​https://wtop.com

D’Amo, Kate. “These Charts Show Why We Need to Start Caring About Violence Against
Sex Workers.” ​Urban Justice Center, 1​ 7 December 2015,
https://www.urbanjustice.org/node/997

Riddle, Natasha. “Sex Workers Struggle to Find Housing in DC.” ​Greater Greater
Washington​, 17 July 2019, ​https://ggwash.org/view

Carter, Jimmy. “To Curb Prostitution, Punish Those Who Buy Sex Rather Than Those Who
Sell It.” ​The Carter Center, ​The Washington Post, 31 May 2016,
https://www.cartercenter.org/news

Frundt, Tina. “Courtney’s House Annual Report.” ​Courtney’s House,

2014, ​http://www.courtneyshouse.org/the-facts.html

Kurzius, Rachel. “As Prostitution-Related Charges Double In D.C., Lawmakers Are

Reintroducing A Sex Work Decriminalization Bill.” ​The DCist,​ 3 June 2019
https://dcist.com

“D.C. Council Considering Disastrous New Sex Trade Policy; Hearing on October 17.” ​The
Daily Citizen, ​1 October 2019, ​https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com