MORGANTOWN — Alison Bass, journalism professor at WVU and author of “Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law,” said after researching and speaking with sex workers across the United States, she believed decriminalizing prostitution could lead to fewer STDs and less violence against women and men doing sex work consensually.
Bass said in speaking with women doing sex work, she realized that for adult women involved in sex work, the criminalization process for sex workers was not helping anyone — sex workers or actual trafficking victims.
“Criminal laws are not helping anybody, basically,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t deter prostitution. As we’ve seen, it’s only increasing. The research shows that when you decriminalize prostitution, you not only cut down on violence against all women, but you also cut down on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
“My contention in this book is that instead of arresting them, which is what law enforcement is doing in most states, we should spend our resources on giving them support, education, resources so they can get out of the life of selling sex on the streets,” she said.
Bass said this approach would only work for adult prostitution, as any type of child prostitution is automatically considered human trafficking. She said child victims are often runaways who sell sex to survive.
Bass said child trafficking is a crime and should remain so.
“But the problem is our whole approach in this country is a criminalization approach — it’s kind of similar to the approach with drugs,” she said. “For instance, in West Virginia we spend so much money arresting people for using drugs, for dealing drugs — there’s no money left over for treatment, very little money left over for rehab beds. We are using things like Narcan, which is a very short-term fix, but it’s not preventing overdoses.
“It’s not basically preventing the problem of addiction. The same holds true for underage prostitution. Instead of putting our resources into social services to help these teenagers avoid being preyed upon by pimps and getting into prostitution, we are putting our money into law enforcement. It’s kind of a screwed-up priority list.”
Bass cited a November 2017 study done by Scott Cunningham and John Tripp, both of Baylor University, and Gregory DeAngelo of WVU as evidence.
“They found that in the eight years that Craigslist’s erotic services page had been operational before it was taken down, the rate of female homicides dropped 17 percent,” she said. “The reason why, which is what I argue in my book, is that when you legalize or decriminalize sex work, it’s actually much safer for everybody. There’s other research that shows that when people have access to legal prostitution, there are fewer attacks on all women. Sexual violence goes down, as does the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Bass said that street walkers and those who do not have time to screen clients for fear of getting caught are often targeted by violent customers.
“Sex work is dangerous,” she said. “The homicide rate among sex workers is larger than any other industry for women, in large part because it attracts some violent predators. Most clients are not violent, and there’s no problem. But, there —t he serial killers in our country — many of them prey on prostitutes because prostitutes are afraid to go to the police for fear they will be arrested. It gets back to criminalization.
“They are often the canary in the coalmines. They are often the first to see the violent predator or the serial killer because they tend to prey on these women who don’t feel they can go to the police, even if they survive the assault.”
Bass cited the cases of Gary Ridgeway and Ted Bundy, serial killers who killed both prostitutes and non-prostitutes. She said the police didn’t believe the sex workers and some sex workers didn’t go to police for fear of arrest.
“If you decriminalized prostitution, you would be much more likely to catch some of these violent predators,” she said. “Nip the problem in the bud.”
Bass said in New Zealand and Amsterdam — both have decriminalized prostitution — the risk of sexually transmitted diseases has decreased as well.
“They have some of the lowest rates of HIV in the world, and it’s because sex workers and others can get access to health care, and they are much more likely. See when you criminalize something, people operate in the shadows, and they have to negotiate very quickly, particularly if they are street workers. They can’t negotiate as quickly or as safely for safe sex, meaning using condoms.”
Bass said legalizing prostitution would get rid of the criminal element and would give the opportunity for women to choose a different life. She said women who have been convicted of prostitution often struggle to find employment.
“There are legal zones for prostitutions for cities in the Netherlands,” she said. “They found again that violence against all women decreased, as did sexually transmitted diseases. There’s something there. It’s kind of like when you legalize marijuana, you get rid of the criminal element. Well, when you legalize prostitution, you’ll get rid of the criminal element. Then you can put your resources into helping women choose a better lifestyle if that’s what they want.”
Assistant US Attorney General Andy Cogar said he didn’t think legalizing prostitution was the answer to human trafficking.
“I think it’s important to step back from just the focus on adult prostitution in a given moment in time and consider the nature of the business,” he said. “The first trial I ever had as a federal prosecutor was a prostitution case.
“That was 10 years ago. Through that case, I had the opportunity to interact with a lot of prostitutes, some of whom had changed their lives around and had started families and were thriving. Some of them weren’t. All of whom, I think it’s safe to say, did not grow up aspiring to be prostitutes.”
Cogar said he did not think prostitution could be a morally neutral occupation.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “There are certainly going to be men and women who engage in prostitution that don’t fit that mold. Who engage as adults. Not engaged as minors. Who simply look at it as a commercial enterprise. A way to make money. I get that, but there’s still this aspect of human social cultural damage that frankly can’t be measured in statistics.”
