April 02, 2021
Committee on Public Safety
California State Senate
State Capitol, Room 2031
Sacramento, CA 95814
Re: SB 357 (Wiener) – Safer Streets for All — Support
To the Senate Committee on Public Safety:
Sex Worker’s Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA) is a peer based community support group dedicated to advancing the fundamental human rights of sex workers through advocacy, education, community building, harm reduction, and violence prevention. We are writing in support of SB 357, a measure that will repeal California Penal Code § 653.22, which criminalizes loitering for the intent to engage in prostitution.
As an organization run by sex workers, we are highly aware of how the criminalization of our community negatively impacts the lives of people in the sex trade and disporportionately affect members of our population who are already marginalized by their race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or due to their disability. We are cosponsoring SB 357 because we have lived experience of the issue and have first hand experience of how being criminalized by law enforcement not only puts our safety and livelihood at immediate risk, but also limits our ability to transition out of the field in the future if we so choose.
Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that the criminalization of sex workers both increases violence against sex workers and is detrimental to public health. (See, Baldwin, Edwards et. al., Health Outcomes Associated with Criminalization and Regulation of Sex Trade (2021) California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center; see also Nai, Macioti, et. al. Sexual Humanitarianism: Understanding Agency and Exploitation in the Global Sex Industry (2021) ERC European Research Council CoG 2015-682451). Policing puts sex workers at greater risk—it does not make us safer.
The broad subjective nature of the anti-loitering law has created opportunities for law enforcement to engage in discriminatory policing that targets Black and Brown women and members of the transgender community. For instance, Black adults accounted for 56.1% of the § 653.22 charges in Los Angeles between 2017-2019, despite only making up 8.9% of the city’s population.
By repealing Section 653.22, SB 357 eliminates a law that allows police to rely on bias rather than evidence to criminalize otherwise legal activities like walking, dressing or standing in public, and results in the harassment of LGTBQ+, Black and Brown communities for simply looking like a “sex worker” to law enforcement. Arresting sex workers or persons perceived to be sex workers increases safety risks for people trading sex. Sex workers are more vulnerable to exploitation and violence, and have barriers to accessing safe housing and legal employment, when they can be arrested for loitering.
As cosponsors of SB 357, we strongly urge you to support this bill as a step towards increasing sex worker safety. We must stop criminalizing the color of a person’s skin, their gender or livelihood. We all deserve to exist in public peacefully without fear of arrest.
Sincerely,
Lucy Khan
Co-Director, SWOPLA
Tiffany Hwang
Co-Director, SWOPLA
Ashley Madness,
Secretary & Fundraiser, SWOPLA
Kimberly Fuentes
Direct Services & Outreach, SWOPLA