Sex workers such as ladies on Skissr aren’t always a part of the conversation about police brutality, but they should be. Police regularly target, harass, and assault sex workers or people they think are sex workers.
The police usually get away with the abuse because sex workers fear being arrested if they report. If we lived in a world that didn’t criminalize sex work, sex workers could better protect themselves and seek justice when they are harmed. Sex workers in Sydney, Melbourne Escorts and private escorts Brisbane are doing all they can to protect their sex workers as well as the interest of their clients.
Protecting sex workers from police violence is just one of the reasons we need to decriminalize sex work.
This would help sex workers access health care, lower the risk of violence from clients, and reduce mass incarceration. In 2020, the call for decriminalization has made progress, but there are still widespread misconceptions about sex work and sex workers that are holding back. Some even think that decriminalization would harm sex workers which of course isn’t true.
Below are three reasons to decriminalize sex work that would protect sex workers, help hold police accountable, and ensure equality for all members of society, including those who choose to make a living based by self-governing their own bodies.
- Decriminalization would reduce police violence against sex workers
Police abuse against sex workers is common, but police rarely face consequences for it. That is partly because sex workers fear being arrested if they come forward to report abuse. Police also take advantage of criminalization by extorting sex workers or coercing them into sexual acts, threatening arrest if they don’t comply. Criminalizing sex work only helps police abuse their power, and get away with it.
If sex work were decriminalized, sex workers would no longer fear arrest if they seek justice, and police would lose their power to use that fear in order to abuse people.
- Decriminalization would make sex workers less vulnerable to violence from clients
Like the police, sex workers’ clients can also take advantage of a criminalized environment where sex workers have to risk their own safety to avoid arrest. Clients know they can rob, assault, or even murder a sex worker — and get away with it — because the sex worker does not have access to the same protections from the law. At Sydney Escorts, Melbourne Escorts and private escorts Brisbane measures are put in place to verify all clients before business transactions as escorts welfare is germane.
- Decriminalization would allow sex workers to protect their own health
Sex workers sometimes go without medical care out of fear of arrest or poor treatment by medical staff if it comes out that they are a sex worker. And because the law doesn’t treat sex work like a real job, sex workers do not have access to employer-based health insurance, which means that many cannot afford care.
Criminal law enforcement of sex work comes with unjust police practices, like the use of condoms as evidence of intent to do sex work. As a result, some sex workers and people who are profiled as sex workers may opt not to carry condoms due to the risk of arrest. This puts them at risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Above all, Sex workers deserve the same legal protections as any other people. They should be able to maintain their livelihood without fear of violence or arrest, and with access to health care to protect them. We can bring sex workers out of the dangerous margins and into the light where people are protected — not targeted — by the law.
