Immigrant Sex Workers Victimized by NYPD, Not Traffickers

For the second time since September, The New
York Times profiles one of the state’s specialized criminal
courts created to handle prostitution cases, known as “human
trafficking intervention courts”. This one, in Queens, sees largely
Latin American and Asian defendants, including a large number of
undocumented immigrants. Many turned to sex work with debt piling
up and few other employment options. 

This is, of course, precisely the cohort that gets white-savior
boners popping. All those American-born sex workers on Twitter may
insist they want rights not rescue, but surely these
low-income, low-skill women are victims. Surely they’ll appreciate
state power being used to help rend them from their wretched
lives. 

Yeah, no. The women the Times talked to “often don’t
define themselves as having been trafficked.”

On several Fridays, nearly a dozen women said during interviews
in Mandarin that they did not feel like trafficking victims, but
victims of the police.

While some appreciated the social services they were connected
to through the court, they didn’t appreciate the arrest and court
dates required to get there. “We’re still arresting them at a very
rapid pace,” Leigh Latimer, a Legal Aid Society lawyer assigned to
the court, told the Times. “We’re trying to solve their
problems through being arrested, which is not an affirming
process.”

So far in 2014, Queens has seen 686 arrests for misdemeanor
prostitution and loitering charges. (In contrast, it’s seen only 15
cases against traffickers.)

Those who go through the New York’s Human Trafficking
Intervention Courts can opt for a series of counseling sessions in
lieu of jail time. If they remain out of trouble for six months,
the charge will be wiped from their records. While this is
certainly better than giving everyone jail time and
criminal records, nearly 40 percent of cases in the past year did
not end in counseling but traditional prostitution
punishments. 

“The women who accept the court’s deal attend full-day group
counseling sessions once a week,”
the Times notes. One can’t imagine it’s
financially easy for low-income women—whether working in sex work
or whatever—to lose a full day’s pay once a week for six weeks or
to arrange for this time off from work or child care. But at least
they may learn some useful skills to help them start earning money
in a post-prostitution life right?

… they often begin the day with yoga, and then learn about the
court process, their rights and prostitution law. 

Let them eat yoga, darlings! Who needs to earn a living
when you have progressive good intentions on your side?