Setting a Good Example for the Ladies: Specialized Prostitution Court and the Use of Essentialism as a Technique of Penal Reform

• In Event: Roundtable: Courts and Sentencing

Abstract

Between 1985 and 2013, regimes of prostitution governance in the state of Illinois shifted from a hyper punitive response of felonization to the contemporary one of defelonization and specialized prostitution courts. This paper examines this discontinuity with a particular focus on abolitionist feminist reforms on prostitution laws and the ways in which they both resist and resonate with broader trends in neo-liberal penality. In interrogating the success of reforminist agendas, I argue that their persuasiveness can be attributed to the construction of sex workers as “victim-survivors.” This figure promised the ultimate eradication of prostitution through a regime of court-mandated counseling, which is a typical feature of specialized courts. However, just as central is peer support, particularly the mentoring of defendants by others who have exited prostitution. These relations rely on shared experiences of structural oppression to become meaningful. This analysis examines the use of sisterhood in regimes of prostitution governance and the various ways in which essentialism, originally associated with progressive politics devised to resist state power, is ultimately invoked to bolster it.

Author

• Rashmee Singh, University of Waterloo