SWOP-PHX petitions the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The following petition is posted on the website of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. SWOP-PHX and Best Practices Policy Project are challenging the US' commitment to human rights in light of the harsh and broad anti-prostitution laws in Phoenix, as well as the "arrest-and-rescue" model of outreach and service like that employed by ASU School of Social Work's prostitution-diversion program,  Project ROSE.

Project ROSE, Social Work ethics, and FIRST, doing no harm.

(Note for subscribers: the post you received this weekend entitled "Stand with Monica Jones: Stop Project Rose!" has been removed and rewritten in 2 parts. This is part 1, which addresses Project Rose itself, which will be in action again this month. Later this week I'll put out part 2, in response to the pending March 14 trial of my friend and fellow activist, Monica Jones. My apologies for confusion or redundancy. - Peggy Plews)

                                                         Marcia Powell, PHX 2008
                                                           (Credit: Gary Millard)

The Sex Worker Outreach Project of Phoenix (SWOP-PHX) has been organizing international opposition to Project ROSE, a collaboration between the Phoenix Police and the ASU School of Social Work which rounds up hundreds of consenting sex workers -  mostly people of color, it turns out - for prosecution each year while purporting to be rescuing "victims" of sex-trafficking. Another Project ROSE operation  is supposed to go down this month, so it seems appropriate to re-visit the issue here now.


Several months ago I reached out to ASU SWK Professor Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, at the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research Project ROSE is her baby. She provided me with the documents below by way of arguing that Project ROSE has been given a bad rap. I didn’t think they did much to make her case, but I’m publishing them to give Project Rose a fair hearing in the court of public opinion - this is their counter-argument.

All that Professor Roe’s response really did was convince me that this program needs to be shut down. Look at all the agencies that have bought into it - I wouldn't trust any of these Project ROSE collaborators if I was a sex worker, homeless, or otherwise vulnerable to police violence. In fact, if you're a homeless or runaway youth and call Tumbleweed asking for help, they'll first have the cops check to see if you have any warrants before they send an outreach worker to meet you. If you do have a warrant, you can expect the police to come get you instead.

However noble Project Rose's intentions are - ostensibly to save victims of sex trafficking from being treated like criminals and rescue them from their circumstances - the effects on most people touched by the net cast to find said victims must incredibly damaging.

 The social work profession embraces the old physicians’ adage, “first do no harm”. Here they are simply ignoring the harm they do. The outcomes that ASU’s research seems to focus on doesn't detail what happens to the hundreds of people who end up being subjected to the violence of the criminal justice system through prosecution as a result of being targeted by them for "rescue", who may have never been arrested were it not for the Project ROSE stings.



 In fact, if these organizations involved in Project ROSE really thought critically about all these “victims” of sex trafficking who they want to protect from arrest (even those who assert that they consented to sex work), then they should be joining the fight to legalize sex work altogether instead of encouraging the cops to round people up for “rescue” twice a year like stray dogs.


It is not anyone's contention with SWOP-Phoenix that sex-trafficking isn't a very real problem - as is human slavery and exploitation in every other industry. But Project ROSE is not targeting johns seeking underage sex workers, nor do they appear to be busting human trafficking rings. They don’t even seem to be finding many "pimps". Rather, the Phoenix Police are sweeping city streets and Backpage.com ads for sex workers in the name of "rescuing" them, promising prosecution to those who either don't agree to or qualify for diversion, or don't complete Project ROSE's requirements succcessfully. That represents about 70% of all those arrested during these stings.


Thus, the ASU School of Social Work is responsible for assuring the criminal prosecution of hundreds of sex workers a year by encouraging police to profile and arrest them - or rather, abduct and transport them to the Bethany Bible Church basement where all these human service agencies lie in wait to "rescue" them. Eventually, some of these people may end up in prison, as the fourth violation of the city prostitution law is a felony and often means prison time. That's what happened to Marcia Powell - she got 27 months for being a repeat offender and died in a cage in the desert after being set up in a sting to offer a cop a $20 blow job. In reality, most sex workers are more troubled by violence from the state and police than by pimps, traffickers or johns.

Professor Roe-Sepowitz insists that "there's no other way" to locate, identify, and offer help to potential trafficking victims than to have all these people arrested and brought to them in handcuffs, where they then sort out the "victims" from the "real criminals". When I did outreach to people who were homeless, mentally ill,  and "resistant to services" many years ago in Michigan, we actually went out into the streets, shelters, and encampments looking for them ourselves - not with the cops, either.  We recognized that not only would they not be able to trust us if we brought the cops (or sent them to bring clients to us in handcuffs and tears), but that there was a far greater likelihood that our potential clients would be hurt by police intervention than that our staff would be hurt by any of them. That's not rocket science, either; I don't know why these agencies don't do the same in their outreach to the "victims" they wish to "rescue".


As a point of clarification, by the way, there's a stark difference of opinion, more than just a matter of semantics, between the folks at Project ROSE/PHX Police and the Sex Workers Outreach Project when discussing whether or not the "victims" taken to Bethany Bible Church in handcuffs to be confronted by a prosecutor with the threat of jail down the road if they don't go along with the show are actually under arrest or not. Project ROSE asserts the people who refuse or don't qualify for rescue are not really arrested the night they are picked up and offered the option of salvation over jail, since they aren't immediately transported to jail.


Just because the harm to their would-be clients' lives doesn't happen in their line of sight or the night of their "outreach", doesn't mean that such harm doesn't happen, or that Project ROSE collaborators aren't all responsible to some degree for the consequences of those arrests. Arrest, by the way,  is what the ACLU of Arizona calls it when you're placed in handcuffs by the police and taken against your will to a location of the cops' choosing to be threatened with further state violence if you appear to be anything but a victim of someone else's crime to them.  I agree with SWOP-PHX and the ACLU here - if that happened to me, I'd say I had either been abducted or arrested. In either case, its a violent thing to do to a person. It also brings into question the validity of the "victimization histories" the cops take from their prisoners that night, all of whom are no doubt trying to figure out how to get back out of trouble.


Furthermore, whether they are booked into jail that night or not, the effect is the same down the road - those picked up in Project ROSE stings who don't qualify for or succeed at the diversion program get served with a summons to answer the charges levied against them from that encounter with the cops, and if they are guilty of any prostitution-related offense in Phoenix, it means mandatory jail time - which is doing violence to every one of those people so affected, some of whom may well lose their "day jobs", housing, custody of children, and other critical things in their lives due to that jail stay - not to mention being forced through the trauma of incarceration itself.


And for those of you who think "big deal - a few days in jail never hurt anybody", read this and think again. Just two days in the door killed diabetic Deborah Braillard, so don't ever underestimate the harm the prison industrial complex can do to a person's life.


Finally, I don't know how many readers have a social work orientation - I, myself, spent many years studying professional social work, only to abandon it for more radical possibilities for changing the world. Nevertheless, the profession has some good ethical standards worth looking at here, in the context of this whole debate, since Project ROSE is proudly supported by the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. Among other concerns (like the respect for the autonomy of individuals and basic human rights), the subjects targeted by Project Rose are actually official social work research subjects being coerced into the program studying them, which violates fundamental social work ethics about “informed consent” - how was that ever approved as an academic research project, I wonder?


Here is the national SWK Code of Ethics. The Social Work Journal AFFILIA has a good overview of the numerous ethical concerns involved in Project Rose.  I encourage readers to contact the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Council on Social Work Education and the ASU School of Social Work Dean (Steve Anderson) with complaints about professional ethics violations, and help us put an end to Project ROSE.  Be sure to cc Michael Crow, the President of ASU, too, while you're at it. He needs to know what's going on.


Here are Professor Roe's documents, in defense of everything the Valley's non-profit industrial complex and the Phoenix Police are doing to help victims of sex-trafficking:

Beth Richie on anti-violence, feminism, and prison abolition.

Excellent essay by Dr. Beth Richie, lifted from the Feminist Wire. Pay special attention to this passage below, thinking in terms of Project Rose, the collaboration between the ASU School of Social Work and the Phoenix Police to round up large numbers of sex workers twice a year and force them into a social service program, prosecuting them if they refuse, dont qualify, or fail (which accounts for 70% of those picked up during the Project Rose sweeps). They're trying to save trafficking victims, supposedly, but they just seem to be busting consenting adults trying to hook up on Backpage. Since Phoenix has minimum mandatory jail sentences for prostitution - and the 4th offense can land you in prison - arresting one's potential clients seems like a pretty severe social work intervention, especially  for people they intend to "rescue". This is part of what's happened to those folks at Project Rose-affiliated agencies, all of which refuse to take responsibility for helping the state perpetrate violence on the people they are supposed to be serving:

"The anti-violence movement buys into the carceral state by advancing “anti-violence” campaigns that rely on arrest, prosecution, and punishment as ways to solve the problem of gender violence. The focus of the problem is individual incidents of abuse rather than public policies that result in state violence against women and queer communities, which are ignored by feminist groups who invest in or accept resources that are tied to the growing punishment industry...

In particular, an analysis of gender oppression that did not include state violence excluded a large part of the abuses that Black and other women of color experienced because of their position as racialized bodies in a heteropatrichal society." 

Dr. Richie mentions INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence below - they're a great resource for organizing against state, community, and interpersonal violence. This is one of their posters:

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 How Anti-violence Activism Taught Me to Become a Prison Abolitionist
Feminist WIre
Janaury 21, 2014
By Beth E. Richie


Sometimes we learn our most profound political lessons in the contours of our everyday activism.  This is certainly the case for me as I recount my journey as a Black feminist activist working to end gender violence for the past 20 years, during which the United States was engaged in building itself up as the world’s leading prison nation. My journey began in Harlem, the renowned community in New York City that was at the center of struggles for racial and economic justice.  The on-the-ground work at the time included organizing for material changes (safe and affordable housing, better schools, accessible health care, jobs that offered a future, political representation, neighborhood businesses that support the local economy, and the end to growing expansion of the prison industrial complex). The organizing work was sustained by rhetoric about the “liberation of our people” and the vision of what our community would look like if we could sustain grassroots activism in the service of broad-based social change.

As many Black and other feminists of color will remember, the promise of liberation within racial justice formations was critically hampered by the lack of an analysis of how gender oppression figured into the work.  Indeed, despite our demands that the analysis include: 1) how women experience injustice (like poverty or incarceration) in particular ways 2) that the particular oppression that women suffer (like sexual assault by individuals or state agencies) be included into the activist agenda and 3) that women’s leadership be recognized and supported as critical to political advancement, we were disappointed.

This disappointment was part of what propelled me to immerse myself in the anti-violence movement against rape, battering, sexual harassment, emotional abuse, and economic exploitation of women and the non-gender conforming. These activist organizations provided a temporary relief, and my commitment to feminist ideas was rejuvenated. But the respite provided by local and national anti-violence organizations was brief; very quickly I became aware of the political limitations that a gender-essentialized notion of violence held for a truly transformative agenda related to women of color. Indeed, substituting a gender analysis that did not include a very well articulated position regarding racial or class hierarchy was as much a roadblock as a racial justice project that does not include gender.  In particular, an analysis of gender oppression that did not include state violence excluded a large part of the abuses that Black and other women of color experienced because of their position as racialized bodies in a heteropatrichal society. A second major disappointment.

The ongoing work of trying to find the political crossroads that link racial and economic justice with an analysis of gender oppression became more difficult in the 1980s and 1990’s when the United States deepened its commitment to building itself up as a prison nation. The complications looked something like this.  First, both the public and private sector committed more and more resources to the prison industrial complex while at the same time elite leaders advanced an ideological campaign to frame public “risk” in racialized terms.  Second, neoliberal policy decisions lead to the divestment of economic resources from already disadvantaged communities who suffer deepening degrees of material and political liabilities that turned social problems into “crimes”. Third, political organizing strategies used by both anti-violence organizations and racial justice groups got coopted by a “not-for-profit/social service” mentality that served as a distraction from the root causes of structural inequality and the violence that results from it.  Groups organized to resist racialized oppression or class exploitation or gender violence or other monolithic formulations, treating them as separate issues. And they lost focus on how the state colludes to construct a hierarchy of oppression that cannot be agreed upon or changed.

On the ground today, it looks something like this. The anti-violence movement buys into the carceral state by advancing “anti-violence” campaigns that rely on arrest, prosecution, and punishment as ways to solve the problem of gender violence. The focus of the problem is individual incidents of abuse rather than public policies that result in state violence against women and queer communities, which are ignored by feminist groups who invest in or accept resources that are tied to the growing punishment industry. Those racial justice organizations that do resist state violence and the concomitant crises that result from mass incarceration see their work in mansculinist terms. Some even point to anti-violence activism as one of the culprits in the mass incarceration of poor men of color. Many fail to understand that the criminal legal system is not only racist, it relies on heteropatriarcal assumptions that narrate a kind of social order that is based on domination.

So how do anti-violence activism and prison abolition politics get politically reconciled when the movements have been so set apart from one another?  Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, Alicia Beira, Andrea Smith and other members of the INCITE national organizing committee articulate this more fully. We are learning collectively that the way out is not to simply keep pushing back against each of those policies, strategies, and movement organizations that have disappointed us, but rather to adopt a feminist political strategy that embraces the possibility of Prison Abolition. This is where we would bring together attention to state violence as an essential aspect of ending violence against women of color and non-gender conforming communities.  All people would be safer. It means investing in a new kind of community, especially within communities of color, where those who are most disadvantaged are in leadership of sustained, base-building activities for justice. Concerns about gender justice and sexuality liberation would necessarily be included. Strategies to address the harm caused by violence would be grounded in these stronger, more equitable communities. Safety would come from communities, and, therefore, prisons could eventually become obsolete. Here, in a feminist prison abolition project is where I find the best possibility of the kind of liberation that I have been working towards for so long.

 

Beth E. Richie is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and Professor of African American Studies and Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors.  Dr. Richie is the author ofArrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation(NYU Press, 2012), which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States,  and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American Communities. Her earlier book, Compelled to Crime: the Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, is taught in many college courses and cited in the popular press for its original arguments concerning race, gender, and crime.  Dr. Richie is a qualitative researcher who is also working on an ethnographic project documenting the conditions of confinement in women’s prisons.  Her work has been supported by grants from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The National Institute for Justice, and The National Institute of Corrections.  Among others, she has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, The Advocacy Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and The Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project. Dr. Richie is a board member of The Woods Fund of Chicago, The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African Community, The Center for Fathers’ Families and Public Policy, and a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence.  In 2013 she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the City University of New York Law School.

Project Rose: AZ waging war on sex-traffickers, or just a War on Sex?

 great video on Project ROSE, which Al Jazeera refused to air. Their version is a propaganda piece for the Phoenix Police.


Sex Work In Phoenix (October 2013)


The folks with Project Rose articulate well enough below themselves why this program is so damaging...its all about rounding up prostitutes, not fighting human traffickers. Note that only 30% of those scooped up in these stings even complete Project Rose services - the rest were promised prosecution and  jail time if they wouldn't or couldn't get with the program, which involves being interviewed by the cops about your "victimization" (sounds like extracting confessions from those "victims" who are hardly entering into that conversation willingly, yet get no Miranda Warning or access to a defense attorney beofre they have to decide what to do).

Apart from the obvious violation of ones' right not to incriminate onesself in that whole process, I'm concerned that the information the cops are gathering and analyzing loses credibility and validity because of the coercive methods employed in extracting it. It's also tainted by the expectation that the prisoner is actually a "victim" - that's clearly the only way to get out of jail free: they have every reason to give them what they want to hear, not necessarily the truth. Phoenix Vice is just banking on this project bringing in all sorts of extra goodies - this is the anti-trafficking decade, and the money is flowing for the cause. I think they just have to declare War on Sex again because the War on Drugs is wearing pretty thin.

Whether they were taken to jail the night they got picked up, or sent a summons if they failed to be good candidates for indoctination, as in the case of our friend Monica Jones, these "victims" not served successfully by Project Rose are people who end up being hurt and violated by the experience instead. Project Rose amplifies only the voices of those they "rescue": we need to find some way to make sure the voices and stories of all those victimized by them get heard, too...

If you're in Phoenix this month, come to our sex positive party at the Firehouse Gallery, 9pm Nov 22! Support SWOP-PHX and sex worker rights' activists. Sounds like we'll even have a spanking booth (I get to spank the cops! We suspect PHX Vice will be dropping in, those bad boys..). Geez -  I hope spanking for a good cause isn't against the law here too...these people really do know how to twist things.

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Arizona's tenacious laws against sex workers

US state's initiative that aimed to improve prostitutes' lives has brought "no real reform" as harsh penalties persist. 

Jordan Flaherty 11/14/13

Arizona has some of the harshest penalties for prostitution in the US. Even the Phoenix Police Department and District Attorney’s office see a need for change.

Project ROSE (Reaching Out on Sexual Exploitation) is a new collaboration between police, prosecutors and Arizona State University’s School of Social Work that is hailed as an effort at offering an alternative.

However, after spending two days with Project ROSE, I found many of those affected by these laws felt that this high-profile reform made little difference.

Arizona is one of a handful of states that dictates mandatory minimums and felony upgrades for selling sex. Those convicted for the first time serve 15 days in jail with no possibility of probation or parole. The fourth conviction rises to the level of an automatic felony and a minimum of 180 days.

“I've worked on these issues for more than 20 years,” said Penelope Saunders, an advocate for reform of policies related to sex work and director of Best Practices Policy Project. “I've been a harm reductionist, I've been a service provider, I've been a researcher, and even I was not aware of the degree to which people are being incarcerated here in Arizona for prostitution related offenses.”

However, the city of Phoenix has had a diversion program on the books since 1997. On their first prostitution conviction, people are offered the choice to take classes through a programme offered by Catholic Charities instead of jail. If they complete the programme, they will not have a conviction on their record.

Project ROSE, which started in 2011, brings a new innovation: Those arrested are brought straight to a donated space in a church rather than taken to jail or seeing a judge. Once there, they meet with representatives from the police and prosecutors and if they agree to stay, they meet with social service agencies and are asked to take a several-month-long diversion programme offered by Catholic Charities.

About 10 percent of those arrested and brought to Project ROSE do not qualify for any assistance, generally because they have an outstanding warrant or too many convictions. Those people are led out in handcuffs and taken to jail.

'No real reform'

Of those that remain and choose to take the diversion programme, about 30 percent complete it, and overall about 10 percent are re-arrested within the first year. These percentages of completion and of re-arrest are nearly the same as without Project ROSE, fueling complaints from advocates that it does not offer real reform.

For many, the injustice of Arizona’s system was crystallised by the death of a 48-year-old woman named Marcia Powell.

Powell was an indigent woman with mental health issues who had been convicted multiple times for drug possession and prostitution. In 2008, offering oral sex to a police officer for $20 got her a 27-month felony sentence in maximum security at Perryville prison, just outside Phoenix.

Once inside, she got placed on suicide watch. But instead of keeping an eye on her, corrections officers placed her in a cage in the blazing sun for nearly four hours on a 107 degree day.

Powell died, and sixteen corrections employees were eventually fired or disciplined. A report from the Arizona Department of Corrections recommended negligent homicide charges against at least seven of the officers, but the district attorney declined to pursue charges.

“If one person faced what Marcia Powell faced, then many, many other people who are incarcerated in Arizona are also at risk,” says Saunders, who points out that Powell, like many women on the fringes of society, would not have qualified for the help offered at Project ROSE.

“Prison is not a safe place for women. Your health will get worse while you're in prison. You are not kept safe. Violence can be perpetuated against you. You can lose your life. Marcia Powell was sentenced to 27 months in Perryville Prison for prostitution. But really it was a death sentence.”

Lawyer consultations prohibited

Another issue that has legal advocates concerned: Those arrested and taken to Project ROSE are not allowed to consult with a lawyer. Monica Jones, a former sex worker who was arrested and brought to Project ROSE, told officers she was innocent and asked to see a lawyer. She says she was told the only lawyer she could talk to was the prosecutor.

I asked John Tutelman, charging bureau chief with the Phoenix prosecutor’s office, why defense attorneys were not allowed.

“We have considered that,” he told me. “But this is not a legal process. You are entitled to an attorney to defend you when it’s a legal process.” Tutelman added: “The women are not under arrest. They go in and they talk to police officers in the police room here. And they give them a lot of information. And it’s not because they are under arrest or they are in any way compelled to do it at that juncture, just like we’re not compelling them as prosecutors.”

Tutelman’s stance that the women are not under arrest did not seem to match the reality I saw around me of women in handcuffs. I asked him about what happens when police put these women in a car and tell them they are coming to Project ROSE. If the woman asks if she is under arrest, what will police officers say? “They are under arrest,” admitted Tutelman.

“But when a police officer arrests someone, they don’t have to book them into jail. And basically, that’s what they’re doing.” Advocates I spoke with questioned if those arrested and denied attorney are really not “compelled” to speak with officers and prosecutors.

'Traumatic police force'

Project ROSE involves 100 officers or more engaging in two days of mass arrests. For founders, the large amount of officers involved is part of the appeal. But advocates say this is part of the problem. A recent editorial in a social work journal questioned the ethics of Project ROSE because of this collaboration.

“Social workers should be deeply troubled by social work interventions that target individuals for arrest as a means of providing services,” write Stéphanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli. “We believe that targeting people for arrest under the guise of helping them violates numerous ethical standards as well as the humanity of people engaged in the sex industry.”

“Project Rose seems to be blurring the lines between linking people to social services and arresting them,” agrees Saunders. “And as a harm reductionist, that is worrisome to me. When we link people to services, they should be given freely. No one should be forced to engage in the program. There's a justification to say even if we help only one person, or 10 people, the rights violations of all the other people are worth it. And I would say that that's a false dichotomy.”

Activists from Sex Workers Outreach Project of PHOENIX have protested against Project ROSE, and done public outreach in the days leading up to the raids, offering supplies for both safe sex and drug use. The group also warned people about the raids.

“By viewing all sex workers as victims, and then going out and revictimizing them through using police force, which is violent and traumatic, it just seems very counterintuitive,” says Jaclyn Moskal-Dairman, a volunteer with the organization.  “The way they're going about it completely lacks a nuanced analysis of these women's lives. For example, if I was working and taken off the street and told I couldn't work, then I wouldn't be able to afford basics or I wouldn't be able to go to school, or take care of my children, or have child care.”

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Social Work and co-founder of the program, strongly defends Project ROSE. She says that almost all of the people she sees in this work are victims in need of rescue.

“Once you've prostituted, you can never not have prostituted.  You are always identified, even by yourself that way,” she says. “Having that many body parts in your body parts, having that many body fluids near you and doing things that are freaky and weird really messes up your ideas of what a relationship looks like, and intimacy.”

'Enforcing morals'

Monica Jones, who has been through the programme and is also a member of SWOP, finds this attitude overly judgemental.

“They're forcing their morals on you,” she says. “It doesn't help the women that are single mothers and trying to make money. It doesn't help a runaway teen. It doesn't help a person out there making money for themself.” 

When Jones went through the prostitution diversion programme offered at Project ROSE, she says she was kicked out because of her views. SWOP activists believe that in her most recent arrest Jones was targeted because she is a transgender woman. The fact that she was arrested just hours after she was protesting Project ROSE has also drawn suspicion about the motivations behind her arrest.

Jones is being charged with “manifesting” prostitution. Phoenix city law allows officers to arrest people they suspect of prostitution, even if they don’t offer sex for money. Evidence can include what they are wearing, what neighborhood they are in, and even asking someone if they are a police officer or attempting to “engage passerby in conversation.”

'The push to treat sex workers as victims'

Nationally, there has been a shift towards seeing women involved in the sex trade as victims, rather than criminals. Public relations campaigns by celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, and increased federal funding that encourages law enforcement to go after “sex traffickers” has fueled the push for reforms.

But activists say the result has been to treat all women in the trade as victims. Organistions like Sex Workers Outreach Project, which are mostly made up of current and former sex workers, say that the victimisation framework ignores the experiences of women who make the choice to sell sex and robs them of their free agency.

A study of sex workers by Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago found that violence and harassment by police was the biggest danger reported by those in the business. About 32% of respondents reported violence or harassment from police, including sexual assault, while only 4% reported violence from pimps.

They concluded that the biggest threat was not the work itself, but the atmosphere created by making it illegal.

This data makes clear why advocates are distrustful of programs like Project ROSE that rely on police. In two days at Project ROSE, I watched dozens of handcuffed women led in by police. It seemed like a traumatic experience.

“This is hostile.  I'm the one being kidnapped,” said one woman I observed during her intake into Project ROSE.

'Victims of trafficking'

Lieutenant Gallagher, an 18-year veteran of the Phoenix police department sees every sex worker as a victim of trafficking.

“What we have found through our investigations, through interviews and our contacts with the victims of this problem is that everybody's trafficked by something,” he says. “Most often they're trafficked by a pimp.  Other times they're trafficked by an economic need or, you know, a need for socialisation, or they've got a kid that they have to feed.”

While seeing the women as victims, Gallagher also believes that arrest is an important tool. “You have to break down these barriers that traffickers put on these women, to get them to give up their normal.  They've come to normalise the abnormal.”

Not surprisingly, Saunders disagrees. “Trafficking in humans is not the same as sex work,” she says. 

“Trafficking is an egregious human rights violation that can occur in any sector. It can occur in agriculture, it can occur in domestic work, it can occur in restaurants. I think that Project Rose miscommunicates this by saying that arresting people who are engaged in sex work on any level is an initiative against human trafficking. No, arresting people engaging in sex work is arresting people engaged in sex work.”

Another woman I met after her arrest, Cacee (she asked me not to reveal her real name), was arrested three times this year. In the spring, she completed the diversion programme offered through Project ROSE, so she is not eligible again. This means this arrest will likely bring her jail time. She thought the diversion program was a positive experience, but the allure of the money makes sex work hard for her to leave.

“If someone offers you 200 bucks and says ‘let's go have some sex,’ you're just like, oh wow. You know what you can do in 10, 15 minutes to bust a nut with somebody, you can get 200 bucks. It's like wow, I've been doing it all my life for free. It's so easy to make somebody come. Somebody can look at your breasts and just come, and you'll get 200 bucks.”

Cacee has tried other jobs, and was good at them. “I was the assistant manager to Denny's for all the servers, and I was the trainer for all the servers,” she says. “I even worked at McDonalds. I did CNA work, I've been in pretty much every field that you can be in. But as a single mother, I just never wanted to struggle, ever.”

But Cacee found sex work offered stability she couldn’t find in other work. “When I was going through the Project Rose, I was getting kicked out, evicted from a lot of places,” Cacee explained. “I didn't have money for rent because I was doing so much to, you know, trying to be good and have a job and stay out.”

The experience of going through Project ROSE made Cacee want to start her own programme, one that would offer free housing to women that needed support, and be less judgmental than shelters and other services that exist now.

“Any place like that should be open to anyone,” she said. “You accept all people for who they are, no matter what they've done, they should all be able to have a home.”

From Tits and Sass: SWOP Phoenix and Project Rose.

Thanks to Caty at  titsandsass.com for checking in with SWOP-Phoenix organizers about our local struggle over Project Rose. SWOP-Phoenix (go like their page) is fighting back with a sex positive dance party November 22  at 9pm at the Firehouse Gallery in Phoenix - come one and all!

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For Their Own Good: SWOP-Phoenix’s Campaign Against Diversion Intiatives

titsandsass.com

by Caty Simon on November 12, 2013 ·  

Monica Jones with other SWOP-Phoenix members (Photo by Margie Diddams, courtesy of SWOP-Phoenix)

SWOP-Phoenix, a new branch of national sex workers’ rights organization Sex Workers Outreach Project, mounted a campaign this year against the Project ROSE (Reaching Out To The Sexually Exploited) Prostitution Diversion Initiative, in which Phoenix police and students from the Arizona State University School of Social Work team up twice a year to arrest local sex workers who then face criminal charges or a six-month diversion program. After SWOP-Phoenix protested against Project ROSE in May, one of the protest participants was picked up by an undercover officer the following night and taken to the Project ROSE site. The SWOP member, Monica Jones, an accomplished activist and a student who takes courses at the ASU School of Social Work herself, was deemed ineligible for diversion, and now faces up to six months in jail. Fellow Phoenix activists started an indiegogo fundraiser for Jones’ legal defense. I interviewed SWOP-Phoenix member Jaclyn Moskal-Dairman over the course of a week. The following is modified from the Google doc shared between us as an outgrowth of an email interview.

One of your members, Monica Jones, was arrested for “manifestation of prostitution” after participating in the protests against Project Rose. Jones was in the diversion program before, and spoke eloquently about her experience being mistreated there as a trans woman and a student sex worker. Can you tell me more about her case?

We believe Monica was targeted by the Phoenix police department. The evening after she spoke at the protest she was walking to a bar in her neighborhood. She accepted a ride from what turned out to be an undercover cop. He began to solicit her and she warned him he that he should be careful because of the Project ROSE stings that were going on that evening. He kept propositioning her and she asked to be let out of his vehicle. He did not let her out and actually changed lanes so she couldn’t exit the car. She was frightened and thought she was being kidnapped (which she was). She asked him if he was a cop, because she didn’t want to assault an officer. They were pulled over for a “routine traffic stop” and she was placed under arrest for the intent to manifest prostitution.

What was SWOP-Phoenix’s response when you first heard about Project ROSE? What would you say to those who claim that diversion is at least an improvement over wholesale incarceration?

When I heard about Project ROSE through an activist friend I set out to interview the professor at the ASU School of Social Work who spearheaded the initiative, Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz. As a researcher, I tried my best to go into the interview unbiased until I had all of the details. Upon completing the interview I confronted Dr. Roe-Sepowitz about what I felt was wrong with Project ROSE, particularly the inherent contradiction of fighting coercion with coercion. Dr. Roe-Sepowitz explained that the initiative is completely police-driven. The School of Social Work has community organizations meet the apprehended community members at the initiative’s command post at Bethany Bible Church. The arrestees are met with prosecutors, as well as “tour guides,” who are ex-sex workers, and are told that they can have access to hygiene products, a hot meal, clothing, detox, mental healthcare, healthcare, safe housing and more, if they meet the eligibility criteria. After the interview, I compiled the research and met with a couple of activists from the Phoenix Harm Reduction Organization to discuss what we should do about it. They knew some folks from SWOP Tucson (who are incredible and have been supportive and essential in the creation of the Phoenix chapter) and SWOP PHX was formed as an emergency response. We immediately reached out to other activists and organizations, such as members of  [immigrant rights organization] Puente and Arizona Prison Watch, and began to strategize. We found out the exact dates of the next stings and began street and internet outreach to inform workers of the impending raids, handing out pamphlets and Know Your Rights information. We also protested outside of the Project ROSE command post, Bethany Bible Church.


Diversion is not an “improvement” in any way. Research states that there is little, if any, evidence of diversion initiatives helping sex workers or reducing prostitution rates. Those involved in creating diversion initiatives want people to believe that they are an improvement because they benefit from it due to special interests. Social workers and non profit organizations stand to benefit from diversion projects through the creation of jobs, grants, other funding and publication. The Project creates good publicity for the police department, and offers the police more billable hours in the form of opportunities to travel to train other police departments in the treatment of sex workers as victims. Project ROSE actually widens the net of the prison industrial complex by pushing individuals into the system. The police department organizes more stings and raids, and since most of those arrested are ineligible for diversion or do not complete it successfully, they are then funneled back into the criminal justice system. The organizations involved should be ashamed because they scare away the oppressed and marginalized populations they seek to serve by using police force. This creates fear within these communities and exacerbates danger because individuals cannot trust their local resources and so sex work is driven further underground.

Diversion programs and criminalization mainly target street based sex workers and trans sex workers. These community members are already targeted, marginalized and oppressed. Profiling laws like the manifestation statute only seek to reinforce and justify this discrimination. Diversion and criminalization perpetuate the stigma against street sex workers and trans sex workers as well as reinforce racism, sexism, and transphobia.

Jaclyn Moskal-Dairman at a SWOP Phoenix protest (Photo by Margie Diddams, courtesy of SWOP-Phoenix)

Jones was deemed “ineligible” for diversion. What does that mean—does that translate into not being repentant enough about being a sex worker? She was arrested for “manifestation of prostitution”—what does that legally mean?

Ineligibility for this particular diversion initiative means that the apprehended community member has had prior arrests for prostitution, a warrant out for their arrest, or had illegal substances on them at the time of arrest.

Monica was “ineligible” for diversion because she had already been through a similar diversion program titled DIGNITY House through Catholic Social Services. She was told to not come back to that particular program after only a few days because she was very outspoken about how they treated her as a victim and she told the people in charge as well as other individuals in the program that she has the right to her own body.

The Phoenix manifestation law is a municipal statute which states that “[a] person is guilty of a misdemeanor (prostitution, soliciting an act of prostitution and related offenses) [if they are] in a public place, a place open to public view or in a motor vehicle on a public roadway and manifests an intent to commit or solicit an act of prostitution. Among the circumstances that may be considered in determining whether such an intent is manifested are: that the person repeatedly beckons to, stops or attempts to stop or engage passersby in conversation or repeatedly, stops or attempts to stop, motor vehicle operators by hailing, waiving of arms or any other bodily gesture; that the person inquires whether a potential patron, procurer or prostitute is a police officer or searches for articles that would identify a police officer; or that the person requests the touching or exposure of genitals or female breast.”

We feel that this statute clearly violates rights to free speech and is unconstitutionally vague. It gives the police permission to profile sex workers.

Can you explain how the ASU School of Social Work’s spearheading this diversion program goes against the ethical guidelines of social work?

Using police force as an impetus to coerce and force individuals into services strips them of their autonomy. By disregarding the principle of self-determination, Project ROSE violates many standards of social work practice ¹ The Project reiterates the ideal that marginalized groups need constant surveillance. It perpetuates the “this is for your own good” ideology which, in the social work field, has historically created oppressive consequences.

Some sex workers found fault with the wording of SWOP-Phoenix’s statement that diversion programs “ignore the fact that many people who work in the sex industry are not victims in need of rescue, but consenting adults who should not be arrested, coerced into diversion, or incarcerated for working,” saying that trafficking victims shouldn’t be arrested or coerced into diversion either. Monica Jones was quoted saying, “I’m not on drugs. I’m not like one of these crazy people.” Surely SWOP-Phoenix doesn’t believe that sex workers who are drug users, sex workers with mental illness diagnoses, and sex workers who are in coercive situations deserve to be criminalized or forced into Project Rose?

In May we had only just begun to come together as a community to organize and we were placed under tremendous pressure by the impending citywide stings that we knew would lead to a very large number of people being incarcerated. And here in Arizona, when people are incarcerated their very lives are at stake. In a fast-moving situation like this sometimes messages are not as clear as they should be, and lessons are learned every time communities stand up for rights. All of the activists in Phoenix working on this issue would like to say here and now that we don’t agree with ANYONE being arrested and coerced in order to be “helped,” whether they identify as sex workers or trafficked persons.

As to the second part of your question, the comment you quote Monica making was from her speaking off the cuff at the protest in May. I feel as if her comments are being taken out of context. She was speaking about her experience in solitary confinement where because of her gender she was stigmatized as a “crazy person who needed to be isolated.” And to be clear, I am not implying that all individuals in solitary confinement are crazy, and I acknowledge that solitary confinement can wreak havoc upon one’s psychological and physical health. Monica’s comment also referred to how she was treated in diversion (she is not struggling with substance abuse issues, so why was she forced into drug counseling?) I think closer consideration of Monica’s real intent actually highlights the inherent problem with diversion initiatives: these programs completely lack a nuanced analysis of our community members’ individual lives. By treating ALL sex workers as victims and generalizing their personal needs, the Project perpetuates stigma and stereotypes which convey that all sex workers are helpless victims in need of forced detox, forced drug counseling, forced mental healthcare, etc. Diversion programs like Project ROSE stand in direct opposition to powerful harm reduction based and rights affirming substance abuse and mental health approaches, the kind that actually help make a difference.

Marcia Powell RIP (Photo by Gary Millard, 2008, courtesy of SWOP Phoenix)

Some of the press coverage on SWOP-Phoenix mentioned the death of Marcia Powell, a local sex worker. How did prison abuse and negligence contribute to Powell’s death, and how has this influenced SWOP-Phoenix in working against violence against sex workers?

According to Peggy Plews, an Arizona Prison Watch member, Marcia was a 48-year-old sex worker diagnosed with mental illness, with a long history of drug and prostitution convictions and no family willing to claim her body once she was gone. She got 27 months for offering a cop a $20 blow job, serving much of it on the maximum security yard at Perryville. Marcia was supposed to be on a ten minute suicide watch when she was left in an uncovered cage, largely ignored, for nearly four hours in the mid-day sun. It was at least one hundred and seven degrees out that day. By the time someone noticed her unconscious on the ground, Marcia had defecated on herself, her organs were overheated and failing, and she had second degree burns all over her body. She went into a coma and passed away that night after the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections removed her from life support.

In the wake of Marcia’s death, sixteen ADC employees were disciplined, seven of whom were referred for criminal prosecution. No one ended up being charged, unfortunately; they all got their jobs back, except for the deputy warden, who was allowed to retire. Conflicting testimony was one reason no one was prosecuted. All the prisoners said the guards ignored Marcia’s pleas for water and relief from the sun; the guards had another story, of course. 10,000 pages of ADC investigative material, and the county attorney couldn’t make a single case out of it to hold anyone responsible—not even on a misdemeanor.

Marcia Powell’s death has deeply influenced SWOP-PHX to try our hardest to keep our sex workers safe in every possible way, especially from criminalization. A prison sentence in Arizona, along with many other states, can mean a death sentence. This is evidenced in many other cases besides Marcia Powell’s.

Marginalized and oppressed populations that are incarcerated are often already targeted by discrimination and stigma. The laws the police enforce only seek to justify the targeting. It’s total bullshit. Through harm reduction, handing out Know Your Rights information, attorney assistance (to the best of our ability), creating awareness about stings (those of which are already public information), and through fighting profiling and shitty laws, we are trying to create a safer community and build back trust that the system has completely annihilated through police force and brutality, redirecting it to community organizations. (This distrust also stems from social workers and community organizations teaming up with the police.) We understand that the resources we have are minimal but we can only work with what we have at this point.

SWOP-Phoenix members protesting Project Rose (Photo byMargie Diddams, courtesy of SWOP-Phoenix)

What can the sex worker community as a whole do to support your campaign? Now that Monica Jones faces incarceration again, what can the national sex workers’ rights movement do to help her besides donating towards her legal defense?

Please speak out against Project ROSE and similar diversion initiatives by contacting your representatives and those who are involved with spearheading these projects. Know your rights as well as your local laws and speak out against ambiguous legislation that justifies profiling sex workers like the manifestation statute. Speak out against the Phoenix municipal manifestation statute and speak out against activists being targeted by the state!

We feel that the national sex workers’ rights movement can help Monica by bringing awareness to ambiguous and unconstitutional laws that profile workers, like the manifestation statute Monica is being charged with. The movement can also further highlight the ways in which our trans community members are mistreated and profiled by the police. Social workers should speak out against Project ROSE and similar diversion initiatives initiated by their colleagues. If Monica is found guilty, than writing to her to show your support would help boost her morale. Write to your local university’s school of social work and ask them to speak out against social workers using police force as an impetus to “rescue” sex workers and provide services. On Nov. 27th, Monica’s pre-trial date, the national movement can come together and rally at local courthouses to protest diversion initiatives, unconstitutional laws that profile sex workers, and Monica’s targeting by the police as a trans woman of color and an activist.

If you’d like to do more, you can call the city of Phoenix prosecutor’s office and demand that they drop charges against Monica Jones immediately: City Prosecutor’s Office Phoenix, Municipal Courthouse, 300 West Washington St., Phoenix, Arizona 85003, 602-262-6461. Jones is a student of the ASU School of Social Work so SWOP-PHX urges you to write to the director of the school, Steve Anderson, tell him that he’s criminalizing his own students, and demand that Project ROSE be shut down: 602-496-0058/ steven.anderson.2@asu.edu. You can also  check out SWOP-PHX’S Facebook page, like it, and advertise the events posted.  SWOP-PHX is planning a benefit for Monica in the form of a sex positive dance party on Nov. 22nd, at the Firehouse Gallery in Phoenix.

^1. According to the National Association of Social Workers [NASW] Code of Ethics [Standards 1 and 6], Council on Social Work Education [CSWE], Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (Policies 2.1.2 and 2.1.5), and the International Federation of Social Work [IFSW] Ethical Principles (Principles 4.1 [1 and 2] and 4.2 [3–5] [Wahab and Panichelli, Ethical and Human Rights Issues in Coercive Interventions With Sex Workers])↩