For almost 30 years, prostitution wasn’t a crime in Rhode Island, as long as it took place indoors. What was the result?
According to one study, in addition to fewer arrests, which would have been expected, reports of sexual assaults and the sexual transmission of disease dramatically decreased among sex workers in the five years ending in 2009.
A recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union summarized 80 studies on the impact of decriminalization of sex work. It supports the assertion by the national ACLU, as well as its Rhode Island organization, that decriminalizing prostitution protects sex workers from physical assault, mental distress, social stigma and economic peril.
The report advocates for decriminalizing sex work to better improve health, public safety and economic outcomes for the people who engage in it.
The report outlines what advocates say is the reality – that with criminalization of prostitution, escort services, massage and other forms of sex work, people who are assaulted by clients are unlikely to seek help from the police because of an actual or perceived lack of protection. The report found decriminalizing sex work led to better health outcomes for workers, particularly with sexually transmitted diseases because they could better negotiate the conditions of their work.
Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island Inc., said the report documents the harms that flow from the criminalization of sex work. “It puts sex workers at physical harm. It makes it difficult for them to contact the police when they end up being the victims of harm,” he said.
Rhode Island’s nearly 30-year period of allowing prostitution to take place indoors was largely accidental. An effort to rein in prostitution in 1980 only defined it as taking place outdoors. Revising the 1980 law to outlaw indoor prostitution took several attempts over many years, but in 2009 the General Assembly closed what was described as a loophole.
The recent ACLU report cited a 2014 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that asserted that between 1980 and 2009, reported rapes against sex workers in Rhode Island declined 30% and rates of gonorrhea among sex workers declined more than 40%.
Some state legislators have made periodic attempts to reopen the conversation.
Activists and advocates for sex workers, such as Bella Robinson, executive director of the advocacy group Coyote RI, last tried to persuade Rhode Island lawmakers to revisit the criminalization of sex work in 2019.
‘It puts sex workers at physical harm. It makes it difficult for them to contact the police.’
STEVEN BROWN, American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island Inc. executive director
State Rep. Anastasia Williams, D-Providence, introduced a resolution calling for the establishment of a legislative commission to explore revising state law on commercial sexual acts. The proposal would have created a 12-member commission.
Although the resolution had a lengthy hearing, the committee that heard the bill never voted on it, said Robinson. “They’re uncomfortable. It’s political suicide,” she said. “Because of the stigma.”
Nationally and locally, Robinson said, people are confusing prostitution for sexual trafficking, which is forced or coerced. Robinson, whose online biography states she worked for decades in sex work, said there is misunderstanding applied to it. “Rhode Island has a law that says if I drive another escort over the state line, I’m a trafficker,” Robinson said.
Some legislators may think that they’re helping sex workers by making the conduct illegal, according to Brown.
“No one has ever argued that [trafficking] should not be criminalized and treated severely,” Brown said. “But there is this conflation” among policymakers that banning prostitution will somehow eradicate human trafficking.
“That’s just false,” he said. “There is no basis for making that logical leap, that banning consensual sex will somehow stop human trafficking. All that it has done is make criminals of mostly women who engage in this sex work. That’s a strange way of helping them.”
Of the 1,000 people Robinson believes are engaged in sex work in Rhode Island, most are white women. And they include about 300 erotic dancers, which her organization includes in the broader group of sex workers. “Some dancers only dance. Some say they dance because they don’t want to admit they’re selling sex,” Robinson said. “We consider anyone a sex worker who earns their labor off erotic labor.”
Her organization is part of a national network. Coyote RI – an acronym for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics – advocates for workers, as well as decriminalization.
Her focus in recent years has been education. Robinson has spoken at numerous universities on the needs of sex workers to be seen as people, not criminals.
“[The students are] the next generation of policymakers and voters,” she said. “When I talk to students, they immediately begin to see that just because you support the health and safety of sex workers doesn’t mean you agree with it or like it. It just means you understand it’s not OK to abuse this population.”
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
