Sex Workers & Formerly Incarcerated People
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TO PROTECTION, JUSTICE, COMPENSATION
YES, WE DO HAVE RIGHTS! Changes in California policies and law have been won by grassroots sex worker led campaigns over decades. These changes provide crucial protections for sex workers, formerly incarcerated people, and others impacted by poverty. But few know about them as government officials are not publicizing them as they should.
This booklet spells out what our movement has won and what we have a right to. It aims to strengthen our power to demand that the state implement what it has agreed to do. We hope it will also inform and empower people in other states who have been pressing or might want to press for similar laws and policies.
This booklet comes out of the experience of sex workers, starting with Black women and other women of color, including trans women, who work on the street and are up against sexism, racism and transphobia, and who along with immigrant women are particular targets of police violence and abuse.
HIGHLIGHTS OF PROTECTIONS WON Law and policy giving sex workers immunity from arrest and prosecution when we report violence to the police. Victim
compensation
for
sex
workers
and
formerly
incarcerated people who have suffered violence. Protection from sterilization as a form of birth control commonly
imposed
on
female
prisoners,
covering
jails,
state prisons and other detention centers.
We’ve come together with women’s groups fighting for justice and compensation for the survivors of forced sterilization in prisons and institutions in California.
Knowing our rights to compensation, justice and protection is urgent considering the harms caused by criminalization, and that more people, especially single mothers, are going into sex work because of a lack of economic options.
We hope that this campaign will strengthen efforts to win decriminalization so that no one is criminalized for refusing poverty.
MORE ON PROTECTIONS WE WON 1) IMMUNITY FROM ARREST (SB233) You have the right to: ►
Protection from arrest for sex work and misdemeanor
drug offenses when reporting violence you’ve experienced or witnessed to the police in California.
►
Carry as many condoms as you need without fear that
the police will use them as evidence of prostitution. The law states that “possession of condoms in any amount does not provide a basis for probable cause for arrest for specified sex work crimes.”
PUTTING OUR RIGHTS INTO PRACTICE: If you are a victim of violence and want to get help but fear contacting the police because you’ve previously faced police racism, harassment, rape, illegal arrest, and/or other abuses, or you have tried to report violence and got bad treatment, please get in touch with us.
2) PRIORITIZING SAFETY FOR SEX WORKERS: DA & SFPD POLICIES IN SAN FRANCISCO You have the right to: ►
Protection from arrest and/or prosecution of sex work
and misdemeanor drug offenses when reporting violence, you’ve experienced or witnessed, to the police and district attorney in San Francisco.
►
Hold law enforcement officers in San Francisco
accountable for committing rape and/or other violent crimes and misconduct against sex workers. The policy states: “misconduct against sex workers, including retaliation, coercion or coercive intimate acts, is subject to disciplinary and/or criminal action.”
“I was raped by a cop but I didn’t feel safe to report it because the cops know me and those of us who work the streets. We are constantly harassed and targeted by them. As a Black trans woman, I and other sex workers need and should have protection from retaliation and abuse so we can safely report cops for violence.”
PUTTING OUR RIGHTS INTO PRACTICE: If you want to report violence and/or make a complaint in San Francisco or have tried to and got nowhere, please get in touch with us.
PROTECTIONS WE WON 3) COMPENSATION FOR RAPE AND OTHER VIOLENCE You have the right to: ►
Apply for and receive compensation from the California
Victims Compensation program if you’re a sex worker and/or formerly incarcerated person (FIP) who has experienced rape and/or other violence. Due to criminalization of survival many sex workers are also FIPs and vice versa.
►
Refuse to agree to prosecute your attacker in order to
claim compensation.
►
Refuse to cooperate with a police investigation/
prosecution, as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or human trafficking, in recognition of the ways that this could put victims in danger.
PROBLEMS WITH: COMPENSATION PROGRAM ►
You are
not
eligible for compensation: if you are a victim
of violence while in prison or if you are on probation or parole for a violent felony.
►
You
have
to cooperate with law enforcement
investigations and prosecutions if you are a victim of crimes other than those listed above.
►
The Victim’s Compensation Program is funded by the
restitution dollars paid by prisoners and their families, which is unjust and continues the criminalization of poor people.
COMPENSATION & JUSTICE FOR FORCED STERILIZATION Between 1909 and 1979, California sterilized at least 20,000 people under State law — accounting for one third of eugenics sterilizations nationwide. People with disabilities, women, and poor people were disproportionately targeted for sterilization. Although the State repealed its eugenics law in 1979, coerced and forced sterilizations continued in State prisons into the 2010’s.
Between 2006 and 2010, a State audit revealed that at least 144 people, the majority of whom identify as Black and Latinx, were illegally sterilized during labor and delivery, and other abdominal surgeries,
while in custody in women’s
prisons without consent and often without knowledge. A campaign led by prisoners and legal advocates won legislation in 2014 (CA Senate Bill 1135) to prohibit sterilization for the purpose of birth control in prison.
This was a hard-won victory, the state has yet to be held accountable for these irreparable harms and many people sterilized while imprisoned are unaware that they have been harmed in this way at all.
WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN! Survivors of forced sterilization have the right to know what has happened to them and the state must acknowledge and make reparations.
Proposed legislation AB 1007 (introduced by Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo and co-sponsored by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners) would provide these reparations. In addition to the legislative bill, there is also a $7.5 million budget request and trailer bill. The budget request seeks to also compensate survivors of state sponsored forced sterilizations and is currently awaiting the Governor’s signature as this booklet goes into print.
People's Press-Offset, Circa 1974
Rachel Romero, 1979
For more information please email: aminah@womenprisoners.org
CAMPAIGNS STILL TO WIN
ABOLISH OR AMEND HARMFUL AND RACIST ANTI-TRAFFICKING LAWS Over 68% of people arrested under the prostitution and anti-trafficking laws are women of color. Racist and discriminatory implementation of the laws was a main reason that NY’s loitering law was repealed. Antitrafficking laws are primarily used to target immigrant sex workers for arrest and deportation.
bit.ly/sexworkisnottrafficking
FULL DECRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK Decriminalization would: increase safety, undermine police abuse and corruption, provide legal recognition for sex workers, end criminal records which bar access to other jobs, enhance health and enable access to healthcare and other services.
Sign US PROS pledge: bit.ly/PledgeForDecrim
ADDRESSING WOMEN'S POVERTY & CRIMINALIZATION Campaigns to support include: ► Care Income Now
– for all, regardless of gender, who care for
people and the planet on which we all depend. Most sex workers are mothers. A care income would make sex workers' caregiving contributions to family and communities visible, and transform what we feel able to demand.
Globalwomenstrike.net/careincomenow ► Child Tax Credit Campaign –
an expanded program paying
millions of families $3600 a year per child under 6 and $3000 for children 6-17 years old. The program must be made permanent and paid to the mother or other primary caregiver.
bit.ly/ChildTaxCreditInfo ► Support Not Separation
– campaigning to stop child welfare
taking children from their mothers and put into foster care or adoption because of poverty, sex work, incarceration and more.
EveryMotherNetwork.net ► Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders –
organizing for
justice for the over 200 Black women missing or murdered by serial killers in South LA, many of them sex workers.
BlackCoalitionFightingBackSerialMurders.net; RoseSouthLA.org ► Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival – a mass movement against systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and the war economy.
Poorpeoplescampaign.org ► Anti-deportation –
campaigning to end hostile environments
against immigrants which prevent people accessing protection and safety.
Laresistencianw.org ► Fight for 15
– campaigning for the federal minimum wage to be
increased to $15 an hour.
Fightfor15.org
The US PROStitutes Collective is a multiracial network of women who work or have worked in the sex industry. It grew out of Black and Brown sex workers organizing in New York City as NY PROS and went national as US PROS in the early 1980s. US PROS campaigns for the decriminalization of sex work, against poverty, and for justice, protection and resources, so that no one is forced into prostitution as a result of poverty or violence.
JOIN THE MOVEMENT www.uspros.net uspros@prostitutescollective.net (415) 626-4114 @USPROSCollective @Pros_Collective www.facebook.com/USProsCo Produced by a working group convened by US PROStitutes Collective (US PROS) which includes:
California Coalition for
Women Prisoners; HIPS DC; In Defense of Prostitute Women's Safety Project; Legal Action for Women; Women of Color in the Global Women's Strike.