Roundtable: New Directions in Prostitution Policy: Examining Decriminalization Debates in Local and Global Contexts

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This roundtable brings together local advocates, scholar-activists, and researchers to explore debates regarding prostitution decriminalization. Examining the un/intended consequences of criminal justice approaches to prostitution and exploitation in the sex trade, participants debate the many colors of injustice characterizing prostitution policy as it is implemented in practice – contributing to marginalization of sex trade-involved people, heightening risks of violence, and undermining efforts to promote their dignity, health, and human rights. Amnesty International’s 2015 vote to adopt a policy “that seeks attainment of the highest possible protection of the human rights of sex workers, through measures that include the decriminalization of sex work” sparked debates between prostitution “abolitionists” and sex workers’ rights advocates regarding the symbolic and practical effects of decriminalization. While sex worker rights’ activists promote the full decriminalization of adults involved in consensual sex work, many antitrafficking advocates and prostitution abolitionists promote the “Swedish model” of partial decriminalization that decriminalizes the sale of sex but criminalizes those who buy sex in an attempt to “end demand” for prostitution. Roundtable participants draw on their work with sex workers and empirical research regarding the lived impacts of prostitution- and trafficking-policies to examine the decriminalization debates and new directions in prostitution policy.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Chair

• Edith Kinney, San Jose State University

Discussants

• Deon Haywood, Women With A Vision

• Edith Kinney, San Jose State University

• Samantha Majic, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

• Alexandra Lutnick, RTI International

• May-Len Skilbrei, University of Oslo

• Melinda Chateauvert, Front Porch Research Strategy

• Rashmee Singh, University of Waterloo

• Ronald Weitzer, George Washington University