Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2024

Subjects

Sex work, Sex workers -- Legal status, Prostitution -- Law and legislation, Social justice

Abstract

Executive Summary

Context for the Study
In July, 2023, Oregon legislators voted to fund research exploring the impacts of the criminalization of sex work in Oregon. Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed the budget item, stating that the private sector should fund this type of public health research and noting the need for additional public discussion about the issue. To date, there have been no attempts to study the impacts of prostitution laws on the people most impacted by them in Oregon. The research presented in this report seeks to address this gap.

This qualitative pilot study was designed to better understand impacts of the criminalization of sex work on people in the sex trades in Oregon. Researchers conducted interviews with 18 study participants between November 2023 and March 2024. The three primary findings of this inquiry are that criminalization 1) enhances conditions of violence for people in the sex trades, 2) threatens harm reduction practices, and 3) legislates a social class of “others,” with exponential negative impacts for already racialized and minoritized individuals.

  1. Criminalization Enhances Conditions of Violence. Criminalization of sex work creates conditions of violence by forcing interactions with law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Fear of legal repercussions forces many sex workers to operate in secrecy, increasing risks of abuse, violence, and exploitation. The threat of arrest and prosecution discourages sex workers from reporting violence, which further enhances their isolation, making them even more vulnerable targets for those who cause harm. Further, the precarious legal status of sex workers facilitates their targeting for abuse from clients and police.
  2. Criminalization Threatens Harm Reduction Practices. Criminalization creates barriers to psychological, emotional, social, physical, and material well-being, while exacerbating and reinforcing existing health and social disparities for people in the sex trades. The criminalization of sex work threatens harm reduction practices by limiting safe working spaces; by limiting access to community support; and by creating a weapon of power and control wielded against sex workers by family, friends, landlords, police, and providers.
  3. Criminalization Legislates a Social Class of “Others”. The stigma and penalties associated with criminalized sex work foster “othering” through societal isolation, exclusion, precarity, and disposability. Stigma precludes access to income, banking services, loans, employment, and safe housing. This stigma negatively impacts familial, romantic, and social relationships. It limits support networks and creates barriers to building sustainable and safe communities.

Conclusions and Recommendations
This pilot study suggests that criminalization enhances violence and the conditions of precarity—the very conditions legislators claim these laws strive to mitigate—while also prohibiting those engaged in sex work from full participation in society. Respondents unanimously noted that moving toward decriminalization would facilitate some relief from the negative impacts of criminalization on their and their family’s lives. That Black sex workers are disproportionately targeted for arrest in Oregon is yet another crucial reason for policy makers to change current laws. Addressing these issues requires recognizing sex workers as the experts on their own lives, as well as experts on the lived impacts of Oregon laws criminalizing sex work.

Rights

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Description

The version best for onscreen reading can be accessed via the Download button. A supplemental version for printing is available as a supplemental file.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42972

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