Sex Work In Phoenix (October 2013)
The folks with Project Rose articulate well enough below themselves why this program is so damaging...its all about rounding up prostitutes, not fighting human traffickers. Note that only 30% of those scooped up in these stings even complete Project Rose services - the rest were promised prosecution and jail time if they wouldn't or couldn't get with the program, which involves being interviewed by the cops about your "victimization" (sounds like extracting confessions from those "victims" who are hardly entering into that conversation willingly, yet get no Miranda Warning or access to a defense attorney beofre they have to decide what to do).
Apart from the obvious violation of ones' right not to incriminate onesself in that whole process, I'm concerned that the information the cops are gathering and analyzing loses credibility and validity because of the coercive methods employed in extracting it. It's also tainted by the expectation that the prisoner is actually a "victim" - that's clearly the only way to get out of jail free: they have every reason to give them what they want to hear, not necessarily the truth. Phoenix Vice is just banking on this project bringing in all sorts of extra goodies - this is the anti-trafficking decade, and the money is flowing for the cause. I think they just have to declare War on Sex again because the War on Drugs is wearing pretty thin.
Whether they were taken to jail the night they got picked up, or sent a summons if they failed to be good candidates for indoctination, as in the case of our friend Monica Jones, these "victims" not served successfully by Project Rose are people who end up being hurt and violated by the experience instead. Project Rose amplifies only the voices of those they "rescue": we need to find some way to make sure the voices and stories of all those victimized by them get heard, too...
If you're in Phoenix this month, come to our sex positive party at the Firehouse Gallery, 9pm Nov 22! Support SWOP-PHX and sex worker rights' activists. Sounds like we'll even have a spanking booth (I get to spank the cops! We suspect PHX Vice will be dropping in, those bad boys..). Geez - I hope spanking for a good cause isn't against the law here too...these people really do know how to twist things.
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Arizona's tenacious laws against sex workers
US state's initiative that aimed to improve prostitutes' lives has brought "no real reform" as harsh penalties persist.
Jordan Flaherty 11/14/13
Arizona has some of the harshest penalties for
prostitution in the US. Even the Phoenix Police Department and District
Attorney’s office see a need for change.
Project ROSE (Reaching Out on Sexual Exploitation) is a
new collaboration between police, prosecutors and Arizona State University’s School of Social Work that is hailed as an effort at offering
an alternative.
However, after spending two days with Project ROSE, I
found many of those affected by these laws felt that this high-profile
reform made little difference.
Arizona is one of a handful of states that dictates mandatory minimums and felony upgrades
for selling sex. Those convicted for the first time serve 15 days in
jail with no possibility of probation or parole. The fourth conviction
rises to the level of an automatic felony and a minimum of 180 days.
“I've worked on these issues for more than 20 years,” said Penelope Saunders, an advocate for reform of policies related to sex work and director of Best Practices Policy Project.
“I've been a harm reductionist, I've been a service provider, I've been
a researcher, and even I was not aware of the degree to which people
are being incarcerated here in Arizona for prostitution related
offenses.”
However, the city of Phoenix has had a diversion program
on the books since 1997. On their first prostitution conviction, people
are offered the choice to take classes through a programme offered by
Catholic Charities instead of jail. If they complete the programme, they
will not have a conviction on their record.
Project ROSE, which started in 2011, brings a new
innovation: Those arrested are brought straight to a donated space in a
church rather than taken to jail or seeing a judge. Once there, they
meet with representatives from the police and prosecutors and if they
agree to stay, they meet with social service agencies and are asked to
take a several-month-long diversion programme offered by Catholic
Charities.
About 10 percent of those arrested and brought to Project
ROSE do not qualify for any assistance, generally because they have an
outstanding warrant or too many convictions. Those people are led out in
handcuffs and taken to jail.
'No real reform'
Of those that remain and choose to take the diversion
programme, about 30 percent complete it, and overall about 10 percent
are re-arrested within the first year. These percentages of completion
and of re-arrest are nearly the same as without Project ROSE, fueling
complaints from advocates that it does not offer real reform.
For many, the injustice of Arizona’s system was crystallised by the death of a 48-year-old woman named Marcia Powell.
Powell was an indigent woman with mental health issues
who had been convicted multiple times for drug possession and
prostitution. In 2008, offering oral sex to a police officer for $20 got
her a 27-month felony sentence in maximum security at Perryville
prison, just outside Phoenix.
Once inside, she got placed on suicide watch. But instead
of keeping an eye on her, corrections officers placed her in a cage in
the blazing sun for nearly four hours on a 107 degree day.
Powell died, and sixteen corrections employees were
eventually fired or disciplined. A report from the Arizona Department of
Corrections recommended negligent homicide charges against at least
seven of the officers, but the district attorney declined to pursue
charges.
“If one person faced what Marcia Powell faced, then many,
many other people who are incarcerated in Arizona are also at risk,”
says Saunders, who points out that Powell, like many women on the
fringes of society, would not have qualified for the help offered at
Project ROSE.
“Prison is not a safe place for women. Your health will
get worse while you're in prison. You are not kept safe. Violence can be
perpetuated against you. You can lose your life. Marcia Powell was
sentenced to 27 months in Perryville Prison for prostitution. But really
it was a death sentence.”
Lawyer consultations prohibited
Another issue that has legal advocates concerned: Those
arrested and taken to Project ROSE are not allowed to consult with a
lawyer. Monica Jones, a former sex worker who was arrested and brought
to Project ROSE, told officers she was innocent and asked to see a
lawyer. She says she was told the only lawyer she could talk to was the
prosecutor.
I asked John Tutelman, charging bureau chief with the Phoenix prosecutor’s office, why defense attorneys were not allowed.
“We have considered that,” he told me. “But this is not a
legal process. You are entitled to an attorney to defend you when it’s a
legal process.” Tutelman added: “The women are not under arrest. They
go in and they talk to police officers in the police room here. And they
give them a lot of information. And it’s not because they are under
arrest or they are in any way compelled to do it at that juncture, just
like we’re not compelling them as prosecutors.”
Tutelman’s stance that the women are not under arrest did
not seem to match the reality I saw around me of women in handcuffs. I
asked him about what happens when police put these women in a car and
tell them they are coming to Project ROSE. If the woman asks if she is
under arrest, what will police officers say? “They are under arrest,”
admitted Tutelman.
“But when a police officer arrests someone, they don’t
have to book them into jail. And basically, that’s what they’re doing.”
Advocates I spoke with questioned if those arrested and denied attorney
are really not “compelled” to speak with officers and prosecutors.
'Traumatic police force'
Project ROSE involves 100 officers or more engaging in two
days of mass arrests. For founders, the large amount of officers
involved is part of the appeal. But advocates say this is part of the
problem. A recent editorial in a social work journal questioned the ethics of Project ROSE because of this collaboration.
“Social workers should be deeply troubled by social work
interventions that target individuals for arrest as a means of providing
services,” write Stéphanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli. “We believe 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.”
“Project Rose seems to be blurring the lines between
linking people to social services and arresting them,” agrees Saunders.
“And as a harm reductionist, that is worrisome
to me. When we link people to services, they should be given freely. No
one should be forced to engage in the program. There's a justification
to say even if we help only one person, or 10 people, the rights
violations of all the other people are worth it. And I would say that
that's a false dichotomy.”
Activists from Sex Workers Outreach Project of PHOENIX
have protested against Project ROSE, and done public outreach in the
days leading up to the raids, offering supplies for both safe sex and
drug use. The group also warned people about the raids.
“By viewing all sex workers as victims, and then going out
and revictimizing them through using police force, which is violent and
traumatic, it just seems very counterintuitive,” says Jaclyn
Moskal-Dairman, a volunteer with the organization. “The way they're
going about it completely lacks a nuanced analysis of these women's
lives. For example, if I was working and taken off the street and told I
couldn't work, then I wouldn't be able to afford basics or I wouldn't
be able to go to school, or take care of my children, or have child
care.”
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, Associate Professor at the
University of Arizona’s School of Social Work and co-founder of the
program, strongly defends Project ROSE. She says that almost all of the
people she sees in this work are victims in need of rescue.
“Once you've prostituted, you can never not have
prostituted. You are always identified, even by yourself that way,” she
says. “Having that many body parts in your body parts, having that many
body fluids near you and doing things that are freaky and weird really
messes up your ideas of what a relationship looks like, and intimacy.”
'Enforcing morals'
Monica Jones, who has been through the programme and is also a member of SWOP, finds this attitude overly judgemental.
“They're forcing their morals on you,”
she says. “It doesn't help the women that are single mothers and trying
to make money. It doesn't help a runaway teen. It doesn't help a person
out there making money for themself.”
When Jones went through the
prostitution diversion programme offered at Project ROSE, she says she
was kicked out because of her views. SWOP activists believe that in her most recent arrest Jones was targeted because she is a transgender woman.
The fact that she was arrested just hours after she was protesting
Project ROSE has also drawn suspicion about the motivations behind her
arrest.
Jones is being charged with “manifesting” prostitution. Phoenix city law allows officers to arrest people they suspect of prostitution, even if they don’t offer sex for money.
Evidence can include what they are wearing, what neighborhood they are
in, and even asking someone if they are a police officer or attempting
to “engage passerby in conversation.”
'The push to treat sex workers as victims'
Nationally, there has been a shift towards seeing women
involved in the sex trade as victims, rather than criminals. Public
relations campaigns by celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, and increased federal funding that encourages law enforcement to go after “sex traffickers” has fueled the push for reforms.
But activists say the result has been to treat all women
in the trade as victims. Organistions like Sex Workers Outreach Project,
which are mostly made up of current and former sex workers, say that
the victimisation framework ignores the experiences of women who make
the choice to sell sex and robs them of their free agency.
A study of sex workers by Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago
found that violence and harassment by police was the biggest danger
reported by those in the business. About 32% of respondents reported
violence or harassment from police, including sexual assault, while only
4% reported violence from pimps.
They concluded that the biggest threat was not the work itself, but the atmosphere created by making it illegal.
This data makes clear why advocates are distrustful of programs like Project ROSE that rely on police. In two days at Project ROSE, I watched dozens of handcuffed women led in by police. It seemed like a traumatic experience.
“This is hostile. I'm the one being kidnapped,” said one woman I observed during her intake into Project ROSE.
'Victims of trafficking'
Lieutenant Gallagher, an 18-year veteran of the Phoenix police department sees every sex worker as a victim of trafficking.
“What we have found through our investigations, through
interviews and our contacts with the victims of this problem is that
everybody's trafficked by something,” he says. “Most often they're
trafficked by a pimp. Other times they're trafficked by an economic
need or, you know, a need for socialisation, or they've got a kid that
they have to feed.”
While seeing the women as victims, Gallagher also believes
that arrest is an important tool. “You have to break down these
barriers that traffickers put on these women, to get them to give up
their normal. They've come to normalise the abnormal.”
Not surprisingly, Saunders disagrees. “Trafficking in
humans is not the same as sex work,” she says.
“Trafficking is an
egregious human rights violation that can occur in any sector. It can
occur in agriculture, it can occur in domestic work, it can occur in
restaurants. I think that Project Rose miscommunicates this by saying
that arresting people who are engaged in sex work on any level is an
initiative against human trafficking. No, arresting people engaging in
sex work is arresting people engaged in sex work.”
Another woman I met after her arrest, Cacee (she asked me
not to reveal her real name), was arrested three times this year. In the
spring, she completed the diversion programme offered through Project
ROSE, so she is not eligible again. This means this arrest will likely
bring her jail time. She thought the diversion program was a positive
experience, but the allure of the money makes sex work hard for her to
leave.
“If someone offers you 200 bucks and says ‘let's go have
some sex,’ you're just like, oh wow. You know what you can do in 10, 15
minutes to bust a nut with somebody, you can get 200 bucks. It's like
wow, I've been doing it all my life for free. It's so easy to make
somebody come. Somebody can look at your breasts and just come, and
you'll get 200 bucks.”
Cacee has tried other jobs, and was good at them. “I was
the assistant manager to Denny's for all the servers, and I was the
trainer for all the servers,” she says. “I even worked at McDonalds. I
did CNA work, I've been in pretty much every field that you can be in.
But as a single mother, I just never wanted to struggle, ever.”
But Cacee found sex work offered stability she couldn’t
find in other work. “When I was going through the Project Rose, I was
getting kicked out, evicted from a lot of places,” Cacee explained. “I
didn't have money for rent because I was doing so much to, you know,
trying to be good and have a job and stay out.”
The experience of going through Project ROSE made Cacee
want to start her own programme, one that would offer free housing to
women that needed support, and be less judgmental than shelters and
other services that exist now.
“Any place like that should be open to anyone,” she said.
“You accept all people for who they are, no matter what they've done,
they should all be able to have a home.”