According to statistics, sex workers have a 45-75% chance of experiencing sexual abuse during their work hours (“Sexual Violence Against Sex Workers”). These odds are staggering, and become even more unbelievable based on the fact that sex workers have limited access to receiving help and lawful punishment towards their abusers. The reason behind this is the fact that prostitution is still heavily criminalized in most areas around the world, negatively impacting the livelihood and safety of sex workers every day. Criminalization of prostitution is putting unfair, unsafe, and stigmatizing regulations around sex work. The solution to treatment like this is decriminalization and regulation, allowing sex workers to perform their jobs freely and safely without the restrictions of biased rules. Decriminalization grants access to resources in helping situations related to dangerous clients, discrimination, unsafe working conditions, healthcare, rights violations, police abuse, and stigmas surrounding sex work. Therefore, prostitution should be decriminalized to ensure the safety of people inside and outside of sex work.

Sex workers are often put into dangerous situations with clients, and a majority of them face abuse and theft from them. Clients recognize their ability to harm sex workers due to their discrimination in the law industry, and they take advantage of that. They’re able to threaten sex workers with arrest, using this to rob, assault, or even murder them with no consequences (“It’s Time to Decriminalize Sex Work”). To combat dangers from clients, sex workers would stick to sites such as Redbook to communicate with others in the profession. This site and many others were used by and for sex workers to warn people in the industry about abusers before a worker decided to meet with one. This was, however, until authorities shut the sites down, which caused a lax in safety and preparation, as a worker would then essentially be going into a client meeting blindly, with no way of knowing if the client was safe or not (“10 Reasons to Decriminalize Sex Work”). This especially affects those who work alone, as it reduces their ability to communicate with others who can warn them of potentially dangerous clients. The shut down of websites also affects workers who connect with clients online. Online sites allow sex workers to interact and plan meetings with clients with the added ability to perform background checks on them from the safety of their homes. Without the ability to do this, it heightens the risk of abuse each time they go out to find a client (“It’s Time to Decriminalize Sex Work”). Decriminalization would allow sex workers to be able to push for safer situations regarding clients, and would allow those who are more comfortable with working online to do so.

In relation to law enforcement, sex workers have to face a variety of difficulties ranging from abuse and harassment to being dismissed and silenced. A common argument used against sex workers when they report abuse is that, “prostitutes can’t be raped,” or that it’s a trick gone wrong instead of deliberate harm towards the worker (“Policing Sex Work”). Police can use these justifications to prevent stories of abusers from getting out, especially when the abuser lies within the police force itself. This avoidance or downplay of accounts shared by victims puts sex workers at a greater risk of being charged over those who should really be punished, leading to less punishment of genuine abusers. A potential solution to this is to charge clients for the crime of buying sex work rather than charging the workers themselves. This would ensure those who feed into the industry are the ones being punished, and that sex workers aren’t being arrested arbitrarily. Granted, it wouldn’t fix everything, but it would be a step in the right direction for ensuring rights and fair say to sex workers around the world. Another solution being instituted in Kisumu, Kenya showcases the idea of police and sex workers working together to identify abuse from members of the police department. After sex workers felt comfortable enough with disclosing information to the police, they would be able to remove a rapist and abuser from police forces (“Phoebe’s Story”). This shows that when police can work in tandem with victims to identify ways on improving protection, it benefits everyone by shaping a safer society.

In areas where solutions are not being put into place, however, harassment and abuse shown by police is often shaped by discrimination and stigmas surrounding the industry. Overall, stigmas make life more difficult for minorities in and outside of prostitution, especially for trans individuals and people of color. Minorities outside the industry are affected due to the leakage of said stigmas, meaning those same groups of people are regularly harassed and sexualized by police and civilians alike. Inside the industry, these groups are subjected to abuse, lack of healthcare, and unfair punishment within the justice system. If decriminalization were to be put in place, they would be able to have more say over the harassment they face, and it would likely decrease the amount of harmful and deprecatory ideas people have around these groups (“It’s Time to Decriminalize Sex Work”). Decriminalization of sex work would also promote the safety of trans people of color, and would prevent heightened profiling relating them to the industry. They would be able to live more freely with reduced stigmas and would have more power when it comes to making decisions about themselves. Discrimination sex workers generally limits them from financial proceedings from different online payment companies. This is due to many companies “identifying” sex work from payments made, giving them the incentive to disable accounts whilst lacking proof. Doing this can make it more difficult for sex workers to receive payment for their work, and discriminates against their ability to have access to their money, whether it was earned inside or outside of prostitution (“The Stigmatization Behind Sex Work”). This method of conviction is unfair and wouldn’t be able to be put into practice as easily if decriminalization was enacted.

Heightened criminalization also affects the lengths sex workers can go to to protect themselves. Risk factors forced upon them due to it include not carrying condoms, retreating to isolated spaces for work, and refusing to seek healthcare for their own safety in relation to the law. In many parts of the world, police can accuse and arrest people on the streets if they suspect that they are a sex worker. Not only can they do this, but they can also use the evidence of a person carrying condoms to further cement their accusations. In response to this, many sex workers reject the practice of carrying condoms, which puts them at higher risk of contracting STDs, especially in those working the streets (“10 Reasons to Decriminalize Sex Work”). They do this to protect their livelihood and reduce the possibility of arrest, and while the police may think they’re doing something to help minimize the industry, they’re merely placing workers at greater risk. Moreover, facts show that decriminalization helped increase the amount of condom use in the sex work industry, and adding that with the extra boost from law enforcement, workers felt better about pushing clients to use them, knowing that they could report them if refused. This is unfortunately only the case in some countries, however, and not putting it into place elsewhere can lead to a multitude of other problems. One of which being that in areas where prostitution is still heavily criminalized, sex workers who promote themselves on the streets are starting to move further into less patrolled areas. This lessens their quality of work and puts them at a higher risk of abuse due to the secluded environments they turn to. Many do this to keep out of the way of law enforcement officials, as being found out could lead to arrest or coercion into nonconsensual sex and sexual actions. It’s a lose-lose scenario. To showcase this, studies show that sex workers who branched out to areas with lower policing rates were three times more likely to be pressured into sex without a condom, which has been shown to lead to higher rates of sex workers contracting STDs (“The Evidence Is In: Decriminalizing Sex Work Is Critical to Public Health”). While it wouldn’t keep sex workers from retreating from the police, better access to healthcare could easily help workers in dealing with the more lasting effects of abuse. Providing it would also lower the mortality rate of sex workers, which is at an average of 12 times higher than the usual (“The Pros and Cons of Decriminalization”). Still, healthcare, in general, is an overall touchy subject for sex workers, as many view it as part of the bigger system that criminalizes them. Workers often fear or dislike healthcare workers due to either being afraid of their information being disclosed to the police, or because they feel discriminated against by them. As one can see, criminalization only creates problems in relation to safe and flexible healthcare for sex workers, while decriminalization would help give workers a safe place to turn, as well as drop mortality and STD transmission rates among them.

Many of the stigmas surrounding sex workers prevent them from living lives that correlate with basic human rights, some of the most notable being their right to stray from inhumane punishment, their right to non-discrimination before the law, and their right to privacy. When accusing sex workers of prostitution, police regularly conduct invasive strip searches, and often find other ways to humiliate the workers publically, especially in the case of transgender women workers. Many police disguise these actions as orders from anti-drug operations, but continue to threaten planting drugs on sex workers if they don’t comply (“‘The Police Are Our Real Pimps:’ Violence against sex workers in the Philippines”). Furthermore, sex workers undergo foul and inhumane treatment when taken to holding areas. Workers, specifically transgender women, face difficulties in prison, including further violations of their bodies and rights of treatment. Many report having their wigs burned or being forced to clean toilets caked in feces, unjust conditions and punishments that don’t have a right to be placed on these worker’s shoulders (“Sex Workers Stand Up Against Torture and Ill-Treatment By Police”). Throughout their work, sex workers rights are consistently violated due to criminalization of their profession, if decriminalization were to be set in place, they would be able to work more freely and without fear of these rights being consistently taken from them.

Decriminalization would generally give people a better idea of the crimes committed against sex workers both in and outside the law. Starting with the fact that stories of previous underrepresentation in court makes most sex workers hesitant to report an offense against them, especially when including the fear of further stigmatization because of their profession (“Why Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized”). This leads to abusers and rapists not being justly punished for their crimes, allowing them to be released to go on and cause further harm to others. Due to their status above sex workers, police are roped into this as well, and their advantages above sex workers are prominent, as shown from reports in the Dominican Republic which state that police are almost never punished for their ill-treatment of sex workers (“Sex Workers Stand Up Against Torture and Ill-Treatment By Police”). In fact, an overwhelming amount of reports that come from sex workers are brushed aside by law enforcement officials, not just when they have to do with police abuse. They use the stigmatization behind prostitution to further cement the idea that sex workers shouldn’t mind what’s happening to them (“Phoebe’s Story”). The legal system is pitted against sex workers, denying them safety and turning a blind eye to reports of abuse and harassment. Decriminalization would straighten things out and would designate laws to aid sex workers in taking their abusers to court.

Although prostitution itself is not an inherently violent career, many people bring up the fear of increased sex trafficking to try and debunk decriminalization. However, if definitions of sex work and sexual trafficking are looked at more closely, there are coherent differences. In the instance of sex trafficking, a victim is exploited for sexual purposes against their will, and is oftentimes illegally transported for it. On the other hand, prostitution is the practice of selling consensual sex, meaning that both parties would need to be present and would have to consent for it to fit the definition. Oftentimes laws put in place to regulate prostitution for the hope of aiding victims of sex trafficking simply push the worser parts of the industry further underground, separating victims from the help they need. It allows traffickers to hide and transport them more efficiently, growing the industry instead of snubbing it (“Prohibition of Prostitution Encourages Organized Crime”). This shows that decriminalization would ultimately be a better option in the hopes of eradicating sex trafficking. In fact, countries such as New Zealand, where sex work has already been decriminalized, report that they have had little to no reports of sex trafficking since making the decision (“What About Legalization?”). So in the interest of victims as well as voluntary sex workers, decriminalization really is the best option.

As one can see by the arguments presented, decriminalization of prostitution would help ease the comfort of people both in and outside of the industry, and should therefore be put into place. In doing so, decriminalization would give justice in the legal system, both by regulating the behavior of different positions of law enforcement, and by allowing victims within the system to seek justice towards their abusers. It would additionally work to eliminate stigmas and discrimination that are repeatedly pushed at workers based on their profession, gender identity, and ethnicity. Last but not least, decriminalization would fix violations towards the rights of sex workers, and would also raise their living and working standards exponentially. And while many people believe that decriminalization of prostitution would heighten the amount of global sex trafficking, it would actually help victims fight back against their traffickers in court, additionally pulling them out to be dealt with in the first place. The issues brushed under the rug in relation to prostitution can be called to attention through the spread of petitions, word of mouth, and protests. Sex workers have been speaking out about their rights and freedom for centuries, it’s time the rest of the world learned to listen.