Guilty of walking while trans in Phoenix: Activist Monica Jones.

At the 2014 Phoenix Pride Parade

this cop actually threatened to arrest me for chalking him- 

which means he was ready to put me in cuffs and drag me off against my will, 

and could have legally killed me if I resisted or tried to flee. 

Hell, he'd probably get a promotion for killing me.

Anyway, how is it that cops think arresting people isn't violent?

Moreover, how could all these social workers and community non-profits 

dedicated to serving marginalized people 

stand by and not call that out as violence as well?

 

I will save my comments for a separate post in which they won't be directly linked to  SWOP-Phoenix or Monica Jones, because I don't speak for either and I won't be as polite as this press release is about the injustice I witnessed today. Monica, however, was an awesome witness and advocate for human rights in court today, and is dealing with the verdict with more grace than I could ever hope to muster. 

Blessings to all the good friends who turned out to support today, and those around the world who have been raising hell about the violence that is ASU's Project Rose! 

Oh, and come to this talk on April 17th with all your questions and concerns for the ASU school of Social Work. The talk is by the architect of Project Rose; what a fitting conclusion to ASU"s "2014 Humanities Lecture Series", as we all have so much to learn from her.

"Dominique Roe-Sepowitz will conclude the spring 2014 Humanities Lecture Series at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus with her presentation, “Sex Trafficking In Arizona.” Hosted by the School of Letters and Sciences, the lecture starts at 6:30 p.m., April 17, at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, room 128, 555 N. Central Ave., Phoenix." (https://asunews.asu.edu/20140409-az-sex-trafficking-lecture)

See you all there!

--------------------

BREAKING from SWOP-Phoenix

Contact: Margie Diddams, 480-553-3777,

swop.phx@gmail.com

Guilty Verdict for Monica Jones Reveals Broken Legal System: 

Urgent Need For Action

PHOENIX--- Over 50 supporters rallied in front of the Phoenix Court house this morning in support of ASU student and anti-1062 activist Monica Jones. Ms. Jones was facing unjust charges of “manifestation of intent to prostitute,” a vague and discriminatory law that criminalizes activities like waving at cars, talking to passersbys, and inquiring if someone is a police officer. The ACLU of Arizona joined Jones’ lawyer in contesting the constitutionality of the manifestation statute. Dan Pochoda of the ACLU explained in his arguments, “The statute eviscerates first amendment rights.” In a packed courtroom filled with supporters wearing “I Stand With Monica Jones: Stop Profiling Trans Women of Color” t-shirts, the judge found Ms. Jones guilty based solely on the statements of the police officer who targeted Monica for her race and gender. Supporters across AZ and the nation are in an uproar about the injustice of this ruling.

In Arizona and across the country, trans women of color like Ms. Jones are routinely profiled and swept up in the criminal justice system on prostitution-related charges, due to a phenomenon many call “Walking While Trans”---a widely held belief by law enforcement and others that all transgender women are criminals.  Because of the injustice that leads people to take pleas against their best interest due to lack of community support, Ms. Jones decided she was going to fight the charges, so that no more trans women, sex workers, or people profiled as sex workers would have to face these injustices. Ms. Jones has remained adamant about her innocence, and that sex workers need rights, not arrests. Ms. Jones stated after the verdict, “As an African American and as a woman, the justice system has failed me.”

In light of this devastating ruling, SWOP Phoenix (Sex Worker Outreach Project) and Monica Jones will fight the case in an appeals process, while building national and international momentum against unjust policies that target trans women, people of color, and sex workers. SWOP Phoenix is calling on people from around the country to keep demanding justice for Ms. Jones. Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders is monitoring the trial as an example of discriminatory policing and retaliation on activists organizing for human rights.

Ms. Jones states, “I am saddened by the injustice that took place at my trial this morning, but we are not giving up the fight. It’s time that we end the stigma and the criminalization of sex work, the profiling of trans women of color, and the racist policing system that harms so many of us.”

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:

STAND WITH MONICA JONES: Project Rose is Violence!

(Edited November 10, 2013) 

When I first put up this blog post, I didn't realize how toxic the environment was in which the debate between sex worker rights activists and anti-traffickers has been taking place these past several years. It was not my intent to polarize local parties even further by focusing so much on the person who developed and implemented Project Rose, as opposed to simply critiquing the methods the program employs to rescue people. The edits made in this post account for that concern.

I also didn't intend to diminish the reality that there are many lives torn apart by human trafficking, whether or not the labor exploited and stolen is sexual in nature. There are enough in the business who would choose a diferent line of work, given the option, that I don't want to minimize that reality, either. In a truly healthy economy, people would have more choice and mobility.

Sex work really isn't for everyone - but those who do work in the field deserve respect, safety and protection from exploitation and violence. I don't see how Project Rose does anything for them but expose them to even more state violence than they otherwise would be...and it seems as if Social Work should be very much concerned with the principle of "first do no harm" when professional interventions are designed for public policy and private lives. I was a social work student for many years myself, and Project Rose runs counter to so much I learned about social work ethics.

I still adamantly object to a program design which casts a large net to round everyone up in handcuffs and sorts through who gets to be free and who goes to jail later. It "liberates" some at the expense of others, and does immeasurable harm to those arrested in the end.  That said, I hope readers who take issue with Project Rose - particularly those of you who are ASU students, will still raise your concerns with Professor Roe, but please do so in a respectful  way which allows the dialogue to continue. I don't think her ultimate objective is to hurt anyone, by any means, and I hope there is at least some common ground we can agree on...like the principle that consensual sex workers and their allies also deserve to be free of violence, and thus Project Rose should offer everyone assistance, regardless of priors or other factors, and arrest no one (especially not those of us protesting it). If the people behind Project Rose could at least agree to that much, we will have made progress.


Peggy Plews

 SWOP-Phoenix Activist Monica Jones

 

SUPPORT MONICA HERE!!!!

  

Last May I joined the  Phoenix Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-Phoenix) in a protest of Project Rose, a Phoenix Police prostitution sting operation that purports to rescue victims of sex trafficking, and claimed not to arrest those voluntary sex workers swept up in its net (See: Cracking down on sex trafficking by not arresting prostitutes). My friends and I were not terribly well-received, and the day after our protest - which was the second day Project Rose was operating - one of our transgender friends who was out there with us, Monica Jones, was even arrested for "manifestation" of the intent to commit prostitution for accepting a ride to the bar in her own neighborhood.


Specifically, the Phoenix Police say that under the Phoenix Municipal Code, she is guilty of this:

23-52 Prostitution, soliciting an act of prostitution and related offenses.

A.    A person is guilty of a misdemeanor who: 


3. Is 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;  


The first time I put this post up, I did some speculating about the mindset of the Phoenix Police when they decided to arrest Monica. My comments were kind of inflammatory and probably unfair to the arresting officer, so I've taken them down. The truth is, I don't know what the PPD was thinking - maybe they weren't thinking at all. I can't believe they thought we would all quietly go away after this. 

It's possible the cop who did the dirty work is the one who made the call to target her while he was driving through her neighborhood, and thought she was really out hooking. I'm skeptical of the arresting officer's veracity and his bias about transgender people, though, having read the report. For one thing, even though Monica's driver's license identifies her as female, the cop identified her using male pronouns throughout the entire police report - he really felt she should be clearly identified as a man, not a woman. And there are a few variations between his version (or interpretation of events) and hers.


I'm more inclined to think that the commander made the decision the day before after they identified her at the protest and saw that she had a prior - which is what makes her so vulnerable to that "manifestation" charge: they apparently use a prior offense as evidence that you intended to commit that crime again. I guess it's possible that her neighborhood was on their map of areas to target, but it seems awfully coincidental that the Project Rose officers were lurking around there.


  In any case, here's pretty much what went down: The day after our protest, Monica got dressed up and decided to go to the bar.  She's on her way, by foot (through her own neighborhood, mind you), when this guy pulls up in front of her, literally blocking her path, and offers her a ride. She has a mile yet to walk to the bar and was bothered by another dude in the area, so she figures "either this guy is a cop and I've got a safe ride, or he's someone who might buy me a drink when we get there", and she gets in.


Almost immediately the guy starts propositioning her, asking how much she wants for a sex act. Monica wasn't working, though - besides, she knew full well what was going down with Project Rose; he must have been disappointed that she wouldn't take his bait. This guy kept being really pushy, too, so she asked him "look are you a cop? Because there's this sting going down and you really need to be more careful about asking those kinds of things..." He was obviously a cop.

The guy insists several times that he's not a cop, though, as he passes by Monica's bar, and keeps going when she says "turn here!" "stop!" "I want to get out!". So what was she supposed to think? If he wasn't a cop, then he was in the process of abducting her, so she grabs his..umm..male organ,  having every reason to be concerned for her safety now (what would you do if you thought you were being kidnapped? That's better than going for the jugular...). Of course, in his report Officer John made that moment sound like a sex act. At that point he gave his buddies the signal to pull him over, and they arrested her for trying to solicit him.

The cops took Monica (in cuffs) to Project Rose's HQ at the Bethany Home Bible Church, where she asked for an attorney, and was introduced to the prosecutor, who threatened to send her to jail that night if she didn't agree to participate in their program. She was not entitled to consult an attorney before deciding whether or not to sign away her rights and enter the diversion program (which is an implied admission of guilt). 



Monica had already been through a diversion program, though, which they soon discovered - that disqualifies you from ever being diverted from the criminal system again (that's how they sort out the "victims" from the "repeat offenders"  - the  "real prostitutes" who they apparently do feel belong in jail). She also would have been disqualified from the program if she had so much as a baggie they thought once held pot in it. After detaining and processing Monica that night, though, they released her without charges...that is, until this fall, when they sent her a summons to answer the charge of "manifestation".

This is no small thing. Monica is facing up to 6 months in jail and a $2,500 fine - with a minimum mandatory of 30 days in jail.  Even if the judge doesn't think imprisonment is appropriate, with a conviction she would lose not only her freedom, but also her student loans and class standing, as well as her safe, affordable housing. Now, I ask the perpetrators of Project Rose: just how are you "saving" trafficking victims with this program again? Are you sure it isn't inadvertently hurting anyone?

As a transgender woman who would be locked up in a male facility, Monica faces infinitely higher levels of violence, abuse and exploitation from both prisoners and officers than cisgender people are when incarcerated. She would be forced to remain in solitary confinement for her own safety through the course of her imprisonment - which still doesn't protect prisoners from lecherous guards and the jail trustees. She would have to endure the special "care" of Joe Arpaio's gracious deputies, who are known for beating up some of thier mentally ill prisoners in restraints, and killing others through overt violence or deliberate indifference, among other things.

The law that Monica is being prosecuted under assumes that certain things she did that day: walking in a "high-vice area", accepting a ride from a stranger, asking the man who was propositioning her repeatedly for sex if he was a cop, and making physical contact with his, um, sex organ - were motivated by the intent to trade sex for money. Now, how do they prove criminal intent? They'll point to her prior conviction for a prostitution charge as evidence of that intent: after all, "Once a whore always a whore". They may even use her statement from the protest the day before - she, like myself - believes sex work should be legalized. Does that mean she was out hooking the next day herself? C'mon, guys - you know she wasn't.

If anything, the fact that this arrest went down during Project Rose - the day after she publicly criticized the sting - should have been evidence enough to the cops that Monica WASN'T attempting to solicit anyone  - she knew full well what they were up to. They should have been wary that SHE might be stinging them when they went after her - none of us would be so stupid, though, as to deliberately bait a Vice operation.

Even if the cops who picked Monica up were totally oblivious to her role in the protest the day before, Daniel Garcia, the Chief of Police and Aarón J. Carreón-Aínsa, the Phoenix City Prosecutor, are well aware of the back-story to this arrest now - and yet these charges still stand. What does that tell you about the overall "intent" and integrity of  Project Rose?

 Can't miss Monica standing tall, even in this one...

(May 2013: Protesting Project Rose)

Interestingly, given that some of these Project Rose arrests are being based on assumptions about the target's "intent" behind non-criminal behaviors and their response to having someone aggressively proposition them for a sex act, the Phoenix Police department apparently decided not to record any of their cops in the act of setting these people up - or any of these people actually committing their crime. I guess they know that in court their testimony alone always wins against some streetwalker's version of events - and a recording might contradict the good officer's word, so they made sure not to have any way for these women to defend themselves if they alleged the officers version ws inaccurate. That alone brings the validity and credibility of Project Rose arrests into question.

I recently wrote to the professor at the Arizona State University School of Social Work who is supervising the academic/research side of Project Rose about my concerns for Monica and the charges she's facing. She never responded to it, though. ASU insists that Project Rose first does no harm...of course, we can see from Monica's prosecution that this assertion isn't true at all - they appear to be going out of their way at the Phx PD to do my friend as much harm as possible for challenging them.

Project Rose is also embraced by a host of non-profit organizations in the valley, most of which serve populations at high risk of victimization by state violence. They're all collaborating with the cops in the worst kind of way, encouraging violence against sex workers by lining up to have the police deliver their prospective clients to them in a church basement in handcuffs and tears, so they're more receptive to the great services those kind people have to offer them. I think those agencies are being paid from anti-trafficking funds for the time they give to Project Rose, by the way, but don't quote me on that.


Shame on all of those organizations (including ASU, Catholic Charities, EMPACT, Community Bridges, and HealthCare for the Homeless , StreetlightUSA, and ALERT) - beginning with the biggest provider of services to homeless youth in the valley, Tumbleweed. Most of these agencies appear to have a bunch of cops, prosecutors, and big business CEOs on their boards of directors - no wonder they don't know what they're doing. And they all seem to be quite happy to be in bed with the Phoenix Police - how can they really be serving the vulnerable populations that are most violated by the police, then? Word must be out on the street that these places can't be trusted by now.


Anyway, if you're hungry and homeless and you call Tumbleweed for a crisis outreach team to take you to a homeless shelter, you better make sure you don't have a warrant out for your arrest: before they come to your aid those nice people at Tumbleweed are going to call the cops to see where you stand with them - and to tell them where to grab you if you're wanted. I was floored. I had to drag it out of them, but they really told me that when I called them about a homeless 18 year old kid getting out of prison the other day.  They said "well, we can't have people up in here who have warrants out for them." That doesn't mean you have to call the cops on them yourself, though! What a violation of trust.


Now, why should homeless and runaway youth ever ask these people for help?  They seem far more interested in their corporate image than the safety and survival of their clientele, and clearly lack a meaningful, critical analysis of how state violence plays out against the youth they serve.  They certainly don't seem to understand the basics of street outreach and harm-reduction, with these kinds of policies and their cozy "partnerships" with the police. Far too often the people who are there to help those kids only do them harm by involving the police. Good intentions can even kill.

Project Rose has already been roundly criticized in a well-respected professional journal, AFFILIA - and I expect more to hit the presses soon. Please read that article if you still believe programs like this "help" more people than they hurt, or that the harm they do to some is worth the good they do for others. There are far more effective outreach programs to help people who are really being trafficked against their will, and the best jail "diversion" program for sex workers would be to simply legalize prostitution altogether. It would certainly undermine those who are trafficking others by bringing the entire sex work industry out of the shadows, making it safer for victims to ask for help.


The City of Phoenix needs to drop these charges against Monica now, before it takes any more of a toll on her. The intent of prosecuting her seems not only to punish her, but to silence anyone who would publicly call this project what it is - a conspiracy between cops and social workers to lock up people they think are "willing whores". They had to charge Monica for "manifesting" her "intent" because she wasn't actually doing anything criminal - they know full well she wasn't out there prostituting during their sting, and that she had every reason to think their buddy was indeed a cop.  This prosecution is malicious - and when she beats it, she's going to have one hell of a good wrongful arrest suit on her hands.

Monica's next court date (we thought it would be her trial, but it's a pre-trial) is November 27, 2013 at the Phoenix Municipal Court. Tune into SWOP-PHX to keep up on what's happening, and visit our INDIEGOGO page to support Monica's defense - though I'm going to be really pissed off if the city makes us spend all that money on a lawyer just to motion to dismiss this garbage...


(note: I made prior reference to Monica being Dr. Roe-Sepowitz' student - she never was. She's an ASU student planning to major in social work, and had simply spoken to Professor Roe before about Project Rose).

Social work values, state violence, and Project Rose.

The following post from the Best Practices Policy Project references a great article in AFFILIA: Journal of Women and Social Work that sums up my own major concerns about Project Rose being supported by the ASU School of Social Work program.

Download the PDF and read on...

 SWOP-Phoenix 

protesting Project Rose 

October 17, 2013

-------------------------------

Questionable Practices: Arresting people “for their own good” violates social work ethics

Best Practices Policy Project

October 18th, 2013 ·

Tags: diversion programs, Phoenix, policing

 

Stephanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli provide a succinct analysis of the ethical considerations associated with diversion programs that arrest people in the sex trade in order to force them to accept services. Their commentary which appears in a 2013 edition of AFFILIA, a peer reviewed social work journal addressing the concerns of social workers and their clients from a feminist point of view, challenges the “assumption that arresting (or participating in the arrest of) people ‘for their own good’ constitutes good or ethical social work practice.” The authors conclude 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” and express concerns that such an approach “constitutes an act of structural violence against individuals who already frequently report negative, discriminatory, and often violent encounters with law enforcement including people with precarious migratory or citizenship status, poor, youth, transgender, and people of color.”

The example that sparked the writing of the AFFILIA editorial is Project ROSE, a program in which social workers from Arizona State University  School of Social Work and some service providers collaborate with city wide raids orchestrated by the Phoenix Police Department. Project ROSE is found to violate ethical standards described in the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, and the International Federation of Social Work Ethical Principles. Informed consent–an essential element of social work practice and the standard in many other professions–is violated because the services provided rely on recruitment via ”massive police (in this case 125 officers) sting operations.” The authors explain that, ‘if targeted sex workers (and people profiled as sex workers) reject the ‘offer’ to enter the diversion program and/or if they fail to successfully complete a diversion program… they face criminal prosecution.”

Wahab and Panichelli provide the reader with clear guidance on how to avoid unethical practice from the perspectives of social workers. “Whether you believe that sex work = sex trafficking or whether you believe that there is no universal sex work experience and that sex workers can make their own decisions about what they need and when they need it,” they write. “Schools of Social Work and social work in general should not be in the business of arresting people for their own good.”

The full text for the commentary is available at: Ethical and Human Rights Issues in Coercive Interventions With Sex Workers Stéphanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli, Affilia 2013 28: 344.

Sex Work, Race, and Misogyny: Time to Change these Laws.

This came to my attention via Vikki Law today, the author of Resistance Behind Bars. 

I find it deeply troubling. Sex work should not be a crime - much less compel registration as a sex offender.


Here, by the way, is info on laws regarding prostitution in Arizona. I think we need to change the laws. First we need to change the lawmakers, though - before they do too much more damage:

------------------

Prostitution/Solicitation of Prostitution

The Law

In Arizona, under A.R.S. §13-3214(A) "it is unlawful for a person to knowingly engage in prostitution."
Prostitution is defined under A.R.S. §13-3211(5) as "engaging in or agreeing or offering to engage in sexual conduct under a fee arrangement with any person for money or any other valuable consideration." 

Potential Penalties

A violation of this section is a class 1 misdemeanor and carries a maximum six month jail sentence. A first offense of this section carries a mandatory minimum 15 day jail sentence; a second offense carries a mandatory minimum 30 day jail sentence; a third offense carries a mandatory minimum 90 day jail sentence.

A person who has been convicted of three or more violations of this section and who commits a subsequent violation of this section is guilty of a class 5 felony and must serve a mandatory minimum of 180 days jail, and may be face imprisonment. (Please see our "Classification of Offenses" page for specific provisions on felony sentencing provisions.)

In addition to these penalties, the court, in its discretion, may require the person convicted to register as a sex offender pursuant to A.R.S. §13-3821(C), although such registration is not mandatory. 

Also, pursuant to A.R.S. §13-3214(B), cities or towns may enact and enforce ordinances to suppress and prohibit prostitution, and provide a punishment for misdemeanor violations that is at least as strict as A.R.S. §13-3214(A).

from the website of keith barton law.

------------------

Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans

More than half of the people on Louisiana's Sex Offender Registry - which was designed for rapists and child molesters - are indigent women convicted of sex work

By Jordan Flaherty, for ColorLines Magazine
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/her-crime-sex-work-in-new_b_424774.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/19/new-orleans-cops-use.html

Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13. Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner just outside of the French Quarter. A small and slight white woman, she has battled both drug addiction and illness and struggles every day to find a meal or a place to stay for the night.

These days, Tabitha, who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has yet another burden: a stamp printed on her driver’s license labels her a sex offender. Her crime? Offering sex for money.

New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, declares it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation”—a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders.

Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of a crime against nature, according to Doug Cain, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police. And of those convicted of a crime against nature, 78 percent are Black and almost all are women.

Impacts on Women's Lives

The law impacts sex workers in both small and large ways. Tabitha has to register an address in the sex offender database. Her driver’s license has the label “sex offender” printed on it. She also has to purchase and mail postcards with her picture to everyone in the neighborhood informing them of her conviction. If she needs to evacuate to a shelter during a hurricane, she must evacuate to a special shelter for sex offenders, and this shelter has no separate safe spaces for women. She is even prohibited from ordinary activities in New Orleans like wearing a costume at Mardi Gras.

“This law completely disconnects our community members from what remains of a social safety net,” said Deon Haywood, director of Women With A Vision, an organization that promotes wellness and disease prevention for women who live in poverty. Haywood’s group has formed a new coalition of New Orleans activists and health workers who are organizing to fight the way police are abusing the 1805 law.

Activists like Haywood believe that using the law in this way is part of an overall policy by the New Orleans Police Department to go after petty offenses. According to a report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission, New Orleans police arrest more than 58,000 people every year. Of those arrested, nearly 50 percent are for traffic and municipal offenses, and only 5 percent are for violent crimes.

“What this is really about is over-incarcerating poor and of-color communities,” said Rosana Cruz of VOTE (Voice Of The Ex-offender), a prison reform organization that is also a part of the new coalition.

Haywood, Cruz and other activists believe they have an opportunity with the mayoral and city council elections next month to change the system. With all of the candidates attempting to distance themselves from Mayor Nagin, who is prevented by term limits from running again, the new mayor is likely to be open to making changes. This includes hiring a new police chief, as all the candidates have pledged to do. Advocates are hoping this is an opportunity to shift the department’s focus. “When there's a new police chief, we can educate them,” said Haywood.

Many of the women Haywood’s group works with are at the most high-risk tier of sex work. They meet customers on the street and in bars. Most are dealing with addiction and homelessness, and many cannot get food stamps or other public assistance because of felony convictions on their record.

“I’m hoping that the situation will look different because of this coalition,” Haywood said. “I can’t tell you how overwhelmed we’ve been from the needs of this population.”

Condemned

Miss Jackie is one of those women. A Black woman in her 50s, she was arrested for sex work in 1999 and charged as a sex offender. Her name was added to the registry for 10 years. When the registration period was almost over she was arrested for possession of crack. She says the arresting officer didn’t find any drugs on her person, but the judge ruled that she needed to continue to register as a sex offender for another 15 years (the new federal requirement for sex offenders) because her arrest was a violation of her registration period.

"Where is the justice?” she asked, speaking through tears. “How do they expect me to straighten out my life?” Struggling with basic needs like housing, Miss Jackie added: “I feel condemned."

Advocates and former defendants claim that the decision over who is charged under which penalty is made arbitrarily, at the discretion of police and the district attorney’s office, and that the law disproportionately affects Black people, as well as transgender women. When asked about the allegations of abusing the crime against nature statue, New Orleans Police Department spokesman Bob Young responded: “Persons are charged according to the crime they commit.”

Wendi Cooper’s story, however, paints a different picture.

In 1999, Cooper had recently come out as transgender. A Black transwoman, she tried prostitution a few times and quickly discovered it wasn’t for her. But before she quit, she was arrested. At the time, Cooper was happy to take a plea that allowed her to get out of jail and didn’t think much about what the “crime against nature” conviction would mean on her record. As she got older and began work as a healthcare professional, the weight of the sex offender label began to upset her more and more. “This is not me,” she said. “I’m not that person who the state labeled me as…it slanders me.”

Cooper appealed to the state to have her record expunged and talked to lawyers about other options, but she still must register for at least another five years and potentially longer. “I feel like I was manipulated, you know, pleading guilty to this crime…And it’s hard, knowing that you are called something that you’re not,” she said. She is also afraid now that the conviction will prevent her from getting her license as a registered nurse or from being hired.

Although some women have tried to fight the sex offender charges in court, they’ve had little success. The penalties they face became even harsher in 2006 when Congress passed the Adam Walsh act, requiring tier-1 (the least serious) sex offenders to stay in the public registry for 15 years. There’s also an added danger to fighting the charges, according to Josh Perry, a former attorney with the Orleans Public Defenders office.

“The way Louisiana’s habitual offender law works, if you challenge your sentence in court and lose, and it’s a third offense, the mandatory minimum is 20 years. The maximum is life,” he explained.

Perry estimates that on an average day two or three people are arrested for prostitution in New Orleans, and about half of them are charged under the crime against nature statute. “Right now, there are 39 people being held at Orleans Parish Prison [for] crimes against nature,” Perry told a gathering of advocates. “And another 15 to 20 people…charged with failure to register as a sex offender.”

Sex workers accused as sex offenders face discrimination in every aspect of the system. In most cases, they cannot get released on bond, because they are seen as a higher risk of flight than people charged with violent crimes. “This is the level of stigma and dysfunction that we’re talking about here,” said Perry. “Realistically, they’re not getting out.”

Organizing for Change

Advocates have said the ideal solution would be to get state lawmakers to change the law, but they feel there’s little hope of positive reforms from the current legislature. For now, organizers want to put pressure on police and the district attorney’s office to stop charging sex workers under the crime against nature statute.

There is a great deal of work that needs to be done. Haywood is working with lawyers and national allies to develop a legal strategy, as well as a broad local coalition that includes criminal justice reform organizations like VOTE-NOLA and activist groups like the New Orleans chapters of Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.

“We’re trying to organize, but we’re also working on the human rights side of how it’s affecting their lives,” she said. “This is a population that works in crisis mode all the time.”

Jennifer, a 23-year-old white woman who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has been working as a prostitute since she was a teenager, and also works as a stripper at a club on Bourbon Street. She recently broke free of an eight-year heroin addiction. Unless the law changes, she will have the words “sex offender” on her driver’s license until she is 48 years old.

Haywood said that stories like this show that the law has the effect of forcing women to continue with sex work. “When you charge young women with this—when you label them as a sex offender—this is what they are for the rest of their lives,” she said.

Jennifer said it’s affected her job options. “I’m not sure what they think, but a lot of places wont hire sex offenders,” she said.

Haywood said the women she sees have few options. Many of them are homeless. They are sleeping in abandoned houses or on the street, or they are trading sex for a place to stay. “The women we work with, they don't call it sex work,” she said. “They don't know what that means. They don’t even call it prostitution. They call it survival.”


Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute (http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com). He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and audiences around the world have seen the television reports he’s produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, GritTV, and Democracy Now. His post-Katrina reporting for ColorLines shared an award from New America Media for best Katrina-related reporting in ethnic press. Haymarket Press will release his new book, FLOODLINES: Stories of Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.

Wendi Cooper, Deon Haywood, and other advocates mentioned in this article are available for interviews.

Photos for article by Abdul Aziz for ColorLines, http://photoactivist.blogspot.com.

Organizations Mentioned in this article:
Women With A Vision: http://wwav-no.org
V.O.T.E.: http://www.vote-nola.org

Recent Reporting by Jordan Flaherty:
New Orleans' Heart is in Haiti:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-orleans-heart-is-in-h_b_427108.html
Discriminatory Housing Lockouts Amid Post-Katrina Rebuilding: http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=617
Homeless and Struggling in New Orleans: http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=591

Other Resources:
Louisiana Justice Institute: http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org
Justice Roars: http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com
Project Transparency: http://www.nolapublicrecords.org
Left Turn Magazine: http://www.leftturn.org