Last week, without any fanfare or media attention, California became the first state in the nation to adopt a law aiming to protect sex workers from having condoms used against them as evidence in court. But while advocates applaud the legislation as a step in the right direction, they caution that the measure as written doesn’t go far enough.
“It's great that the California legislature has contemplated this issue and taken it seriously,” Sienna Baskin, managing director of the Sex Worker Project at the Urban Justice Center, told The Huffington Post. “That said, I do think a more comprehensive bill would be more effective.”
The California measure, which Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law last Friday, requires courts to explicitly state condoms are relevant to individual cases against sex workers before prosecutors can use them as evidence. The original bill, authored by California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would have banned the use of condoms as evidence entirely, but it didn’t have the votes to pass in that form.
“Right now, there’s no process, and condoms are admitted into court even when they aren’t actual evidence,” Wendy Hill, Ammiano’s senior legislative assistant, said to HuffPost. “There are very few cases [against sex workers] in which an actual condom is listed as a valid piece of evidence.”
A report released by the Human Rights Watch in 2012 looked at prostitution cases in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and found that in all four cities, police officers frequently seized condoms from sex workers and used them as justification for their arrest. “The practice makes sex workers and transgender women reluctant to carry condoms for fear of arrest, causes them to engage in sex without protection, and puts them at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,” the 112-page report, published in advance of the International AIDS Conference, read.
Advocates hope the additional layer of bureaucracy outlined in California’s new law will act as a deterrence against targeting sex workers who carry condoms. “We believe that the process of having to seek a court’s permission on a repeated basis will ultimately prove too burdensome for many district attorneys to pursue,” Whitney Engeran-Cordova, Senior Director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Public Health Division, which co-sponsored Ammiano’s measure, said in a statement. “As a result, sex workers, prostitutes and others may now possess more than one condom without the current--and rational--fear of incriminating themselves.”
Last year, San Francisco banned the practice of confiscating condoms to use as evidence against sex workers outright. But according to Hill, similar stories to those chronicled in the Human Rights Watch study are still commonplace in Los Angeles.
“There are cases where HIV health outreach workers would go out and distribute condoms, and then law enforcement will follow up right behind them as a means of ‘cleaning up the streets,’” she said. “[Police officers] would threaten them, arrest them or just scare the crap out of them.”
Experts say the actions of such officers have done nothing to “clean up the streets” and has only led to more unprotected sex. Hill argues that the only way to reduce instances of prostitution is to “provide services and alternatives to the folks who are engaging in that kind of work.”
She added that prostitution is usually considered a misdemeanor, resulting only in an expensive legal process and the offender spending a night or two in jail, if any. “It ends up costing the public in tax money, and it ends up being harder for [the sex worker] to get a job,” she said. “And so the cycle repeats itself.”
While the four cities featured in the Human Rights Watch report are currently the only ones with a spotlight on police officers using condoms to intimidate sex workers, Baskin said further research has found the practice to be rampant not only across the United States, but worldwide. “It’s an issue in many countries around the world,” she said. “There’s a real need for this kind of documentation.”
And although she believes the California law doesn’t go far enough, Baskin said she’s encouraged by its passage regardless. “It takes one state to take the first step,” she said. “I’m excited to see a piece of legislation pass. There’s been a slow and steady building movement.”
Baskin’s organization, which provides legal and social services for sex workers, is currently rallying behind a bill pending in the New York state legislature that would ban the use of condoms as evidence in prostitution cases outright. New York City adopted a similar ban earlier this year.
“Sex workers should have full access to human rights just like all other individuals,” she said. “The right to protect yourself and to protect your health is something we’ve spent a lot of of resources ensuring everyone has. We shouldn’t take that right away from anyone.”
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“It's great that the California legislature has contemplated this issue and taken it seriously,” Sienna Baskin, managing director of the Sex Worker Project at the Urban Justice Center, told The Huffington Post. “That said, I do think a more comprehensive bill would be more effective.”
The California measure, which Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law last Friday, requires courts to explicitly state condoms are relevant to individual cases against sex workers before prosecutors can use them as evidence. The original bill, authored by California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would have banned the use of condoms as evidence entirely, but it didn’t have the votes to pass in that form.
“Right now, there’s no process, and condoms are admitted into court even when they aren’t actual evidence,” Wendy Hill, Ammiano’s senior legislative assistant, said to HuffPost. “There are very few cases [against sex workers] in which an actual condom is listed as a valid piece of evidence.”
A report released by the Human Rights Watch in 2012 looked at prostitution cases in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and found that in all four cities, police officers frequently seized condoms from sex workers and used them as justification for their arrest. “The practice makes sex workers and transgender women reluctant to carry condoms for fear of arrest, causes them to engage in sex without protection, and puts them at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,” the 112-page report, published in advance of the International AIDS Conference, read.
Advocates hope the additional layer of bureaucracy outlined in California’s new law will act as a deterrence against targeting sex workers who carry condoms. “We believe that the process of having to seek a court’s permission on a repeated basis will ultimately prove too burdensome for many district attorneys to pursue,” Whitney Engeran-Cordova, Senior Director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Public Health Division, which co-sponsored Ammiano’s measure, said in a statement. “As a result, sex workers, prostitutes and others may now possess more than one condom without the current--and rational--fear of incriminating themselves.”
Last year, San Francisco banned the practice of confiscating condoms to use as evidence against sex workers outright. But according to Hill, similar stories to those chronicled in the Human Rights Watch study are still commonplace in Los Angeles.
“There are cases where HIV health outreach workers would go out and distribute condoms, and then law enforcement will follow up right behind them as a means of ‘cleaning up the streets,’” she said. “[Police officers] would threaten them, arrest them or just scare the crap out of them.”
Experts say the actions of such officers have done nothing to “clean up the streets” and has only led to more unprotected sex. Hill argues that the only way to reduce instances of prostitution is to “provide services and alternatives to the folks who are engaging in that kind of work.”
She added that prostitution is usually considered a misdemeanor, resulting only in an expensive legal process and the offender spending a night or two in jail, if any. “It ends up costing the public in tax money, and it ends up being harder for [the sex worker] to get a job,” she said. “And so the cycle repeats itself.”
While the four cities featured in the Human Rights Watch report are currently the only ones with a spotlight on police officers using condoms to intimidate sex workers, Baskin said further research has found the practice to be rampant not only across the United States, but worldwide. “It’s an issue in many countries around the world,” she said. “There’s a real need for this kind of documentation.”
And although she believes the California law doesn’t go far enough, Baskin said she’s encouraged by its passage regardless. “It takes one state to take the first step,” she said. “I’m excited to see a piece of legislation pass. There’s been a slow and steady building movement.”
Baskin’s organization, which provides legal and social services for sex workers, is currently rallying behind a bill pending in the New York state legislature that would ban the use of condoms as evidence in prostitution cases outright. New York City adopted a similar ban earlier this year.
“Sex workers should have full access to human rights just like all other individuals,” she said. “The right to protect yourself and to protect your health is something we’ve spent a lot of of resources ensuring everyone has. We shouldn’t take that right away from anyone.”
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