By Erica C. Barnett
As the city council prepares to reinstate an old law against “prostitution loitering” and establish off-limits zones for people accused of being sex workers, advocates say the proposed laws will not only harm the people they purport to protect but won’t accomplish their primary goal: “Cleaning up” areas like Aurora Avenue, where the sex trade has persisted for decades.
The legislation, along with a similar law reinstating the crime of “drug loitering” and establishing new Stay Out Drug Areas zones for people accused of violating laws like the recently adopted ban on public drug use and possession, will be heard in the City Council’s Public Safety Committee at 9:30am today, Tuesday, August 13.
North Seattle Councilmember Cathy Moore announced her proposal to crack down on sex work, which she’d been working on since last spring, earlier this month. The first part of Moore’s legislation would reinstate a law against misdemeanor prostitution “loitering,” or street sex work, that was overturned after an official city task force recommended getting rid of it in 2017. Under this law, police would again be empowered to arrest anyone who “remains in a public place and intentionally solicits, induces, entices, or procures another to commit an act of prostitution.”
The second half of the legislation would create an official Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zone encompassing hundreds of square blocks around Aurora Ave. N. and empower police to banish anyone suspected of engaging in sex work from the area. Police could then charge suspected sex workers with a gross misdemeanor for violating their SOAP order, whether or not they’re ever convicted of the underlying misdemeanor offense. The law would also give police the power to stop and frisk anyone they believe is a sex worker and charge them for additional offenses, such as drug possession, if they find anything incriminating during their search.
People who “promote prostitution loitering,” which police are supposed to decide based on ill-defined “particular circumstances of each case,” could be charged with a gross misdemeanor, but would not—unlike sex workers—be subject to banishment.
Emi Koyama, an advocate with the Coalition for Rights and Safety for People in the Sex Trade, said repealing the prostitution and drug loitering laws was one of the few concrete victories to come out of the Black Lives Matter movement in Seattle. “We never actually tried defunding and investing in community the way the movement wanted. … On the other hand, we tried exclusion zones in the past, and it wasn’t working, it was causing harm, and it was racist —that’s why they got rid of it.”
Jenna Robert, who worked as an assistant city attorney under Pete Holmes, said Holmes stopped prosecuting most prostitution loitering cases and issuing SOAP orders before the Reentry Work Group—voted into existence by then-Councilmember Bruce Harrell’s public safety committee— finalized its recommendations because Holmes was convinced that the laws made it harder for sex workers to access services, which are concentrated on Aurora, and did nothing to reduce sex work or address trafficking.
“I think the Reentry Work group did a really good job of bringing up the harms that [the loitering law] caused,” Robert said. “We stopped charging even before it came off the books… so I thought, ‘I can’t imagine that anyone would ever put this this back on the books,’ because it’s so harmful to the people it’s supposed to protect.”
In its final report, issued in 2018, the Reentry Work Group concluded that the prostitution loitering law, adopted in 1973, “targets individuals in the commercial sex industry, a group already at high risk for trafficking, abuse, and other exploitation”—particularly Black women and other cis and trans women of color, who were disproportionately targeted under the law. “Bringing them into the criminal legal system will only exacerbate any underlying unmet needs and exposes them to further physical and sexual harm caused by incarceration.”
Jazmyn Clark, the ACLU of Washington’s Smart Justice Policy program director, told PubliCola that the proposed new penalties for drug users and sex workers “expand police power to harass our vulnerable neighbors and continue the failed war on drugs. Rather than provide support and resources, these zones push people to the margins of society and further stigmatize individuals struggling with substance use disorder or engaging in sex work.”
In a letter to City Attorney Ann Davison and the city council, Clark wrote that the laws also raise constitutional concerns because they deprive people who have never been convicted of a prostitution or drug-related crime of their right to free travel and association. The diversion group Purpose Dignity Action has described this aspect of the SOAP and SODA laws as a prohibition on “future otherwise-lawful conduct–just being present in a place, and doing nothing wrong.”
Proponents of the legislation, including business owners and homeowners near Aurora, have said their primary goal is to reduce gun violence and sex trafficking in the area— claiming, for instance, that a number of recent shootings were caused by “turf wars” between pimps in the area. Moore recently said this was one of her reasons for proposing the law, citing SPD as the source for her information.
But advocates for sex workers question that claim. “If it’s actually a turf war, we would see a drastic decline in the number of people who are [on Aurora], Koyama said. “The women won’t feel safe … and the buyers won’t come either if they realize there’s a huge risk.”
Koyama notes that supporter of the law who see women as an “access point” to fight against felony crimes, like murder and assault, are treating sex workers as people “outside the community”—saying, in effect, “‘We are just a peaceful neighborhood; it’s other people who are completely different from us who cause these problems.” During the press announcement, Moore, Kettle, and Davison repeatedly cited overwhelming support from “the community,” referring to the overwhelmingly white property and business owners who showed up to support the legislation.
Sex workers, as a demographic group, are disproportionately Black and brown women.
Madison Zack-Wu, an organizer with Strippers Are Workers, said that while the legislation includes a lot of references to sex trafficking and gun violence, the policy language “really just focuses on criminalizing and policing sex workers and people in the sex trade.”
“When it comes to being at risk for trafficking, the main cause of vulnerability for trafficking is financial instability and poverty,” Zack-Wu said. “This bill focuses on pushing people away from community and into more marginalized areas. And that also increases trafficking,” because they have less access to communities that help keep them safe.
When Backpage, an online marketplace for sex workers and buyers, was shut down in 2018, many sex workers went from working online to more dangerous street work, and “even people that disagree with us acknowledge that it was really bad,” Koyoma said. “When conditions get worse, people have less bargaining power. More people get banished to more dangerous areas and more dangerous acts—people have to say yes to things they wouldn’t otherwise.”
Advocates also note that arresting and charging people for prostitution upends their lives and makes it harder to get jobs, access services, and find stable housing. Amarinthia Torres, director of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, said, “I think, honestly, that sometimes we underestimate the scope and reach of the criminal legal system—that one arrest can really follow a person for a long time, and it can follow them into all aspects of their life for the long term. People who have had that happen to them understand the way it can hang over your life and the choices you have access to.”
Historically, banishment zones and loitering laws have not been effective at reducing exploitation of sex workers, decreasing violent crime, or even “improving” the areas that are off-limits to sex workers or drug users, according to the 2010 book Banished, by Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, a sweeping study of exclusion zones in Seattle. One major reason, the scholars wrote, is that people simply returned to the places where they knew people and feel safest, ignoring off-limits orders even when it meant going to jail repeatedly and racking up thousands of dollars in fines.
“Most people do return to the neighborhoods that they’ve been banned from,” Beckett told PubliCola. “[The vast majority] said it didn’t change where they went; they just accepted that they could be picked up on those charges and then lived with that. It didn’t accomplish what anyone was hoping to accomplish.”
Yet the city council, and Moore in particular, seem convinced that this time, everything will turn out different. During the press conference earlier this month, counncil public safety committee chair Bob Kettle said “the focus needs to be on those carrying out the sex trafficking and profiting off the abuse of women. For those caught up in this sad situation, we need to find diversion and support options. The goal here is not to punish those who are also victims, but instead to offer an opportunity to walk away and get help.”
Yet the legislation proposes no new diversion programs or funding, nor does it lay out a process by which arrested sex workers would “walk away and get help.” And if the goal is for police to become a conduit for sex workers to “escape” their current jobs (a dubious prospect, but one the council and city attorney have embraced), there is nothing whatsoever stopping cops from approaching and speaking to people they believe are sex workers now, without arresting them.
Beckett says people have a tendency to forget past failures and grab for easy-seeming solutions, even those that have failed in the recent past. “Our memories are fairly short-term. We forget that we’ve already tried all this,” Beckett said. “It’s also what we want to think is true. We want to believe there are cheap, easy fixes to structural problems that require actual investments.”
“The desire for communities to have a neighborhood free of violence, drug dealing and prostitution is race neutral.”
For one thing, “a neighborhood free of violence, drug dealing and prostitution” is a head in the clouds utopia that your little group doesn’t deserve to waste city resources over. The real crime is a council wanting to do so, especially when we face a $250 million budget deficit.
For another, if is “race neutral” then why bring up the racist trope “most of the participants in prostitution and street dealing on Aurora are people of color?”
This was meant as a response to the post below from Iskra Johnson.
“During the press announcement, Moore, Kettle, and Davison repeatedly cited overwhelming support from “the community,” referring to the overwhelmingly white property and business owners who showed up to support the legislation.”
How convenient that you completely left out any mention of Council Members Hollingsworth and Saka—both people of color—and their assessment of the proposal. Hollingsworth specifically denounced the cries that the SOAP legislation were akin to Jim Crow or apartheid.
This isn’t journalism; this is “white-washing”.
They weren’t there. Those were the three officials who were.
I’d be interested in learning why, on Aurora at N. 145th going north, you suddenly no longer see streetwalkers. Opponents of the proposed bill say, “We’ve tried anti-loitering laws. That failed.” CM Moore says Shoreline implemented a SOAP zone and it has worked. If they did implement a SOAP zone there, and enforce it, it apparently works.
I am struck by this observation at the very end of the piece…
It’s not clear from the comments that anyone agrees on the problem. Is it property values in our libertarian city or is it people at risk of violence from the work they do in the location they are forced to do it?
So many of the problems that beset Seattle are rooted in inequality, the housing affordability and homelessness “crises” (a multi-year crisis with no progress is now the status quo) and this iteration of Seattle’s long history of prostitution as an occupation. To reiterate “We want to believe there are cheap, easy fixes to structural problems that require actual investments.”
The law targets pimps.
I’m so tired of this complacency wrapped in high-minded rhetoric. Here’s what you’re saying: As long we call something a structural problem, we can put the substantial costs of those problems on to every citizen of the city, while government looks away
I’m so tired of listening to people blather on about “solutions” that have been tried since time immemorial that have never worked. It is a structural problem and we already know arresting more people won’t make it go away. Just because you have some weird fetish for arresting people does not mean passing stricter laws and arresting more people solves any problems other than satisfying your morbid desire to punish.
Where in the world did the notion that this is about property values come from.
In our new decriminalized reality, people at risk of violence includes the neighbors caught in the crossfire. To think they are just concerned about the value of their property is probably contributing to this disconnect – why we are not “agreeing on the problem.” They are afraid of being shot, but somehow that does not qualify as an equally important problem?
Because it really is only about property value. People like you love to write hundreds of words dismissing everything said by those who disagree with you, but then whine about not being able to “agree to the problem.” That’s because you want everyone to only agree to your “solution” to the problem, even if we already know your “solution” is anything but.
The software isn’t presenting a ‘reply’ button to the reply that Samm offers to my post. So I’ll reply to my own post… just for you Samm:
“People like you…” Yeah? Who am I, you closed minded little troll?
I want to see reduction to the gun violence on Aurora, which is new and unprecedented.
I want the city government to step up to its responsibility to the sex workers with well thought out and implemented practices. Arrests should lead to services. If it doesn’t, fix it.
I believe the prior council and prosecutor’s decriminalization, however well intended, had the opposite result to achieving those two goals.
Legalization was not followed by provision of services. Legalization only meant more women working and exploited, not less. More women meant more money. More money meant more pimps fighting for that money. More pimps fighting means more bullets and threats to neighbors. This is reality, not ‘my opinion’. See video, and tell me this is the same old thing:
https://komonews.com/news/local/security-video-surveillance-aurora-avenue-north-seattle-king-county-one-person-injured-community-safety-gun-violence-30-shell-casings-fragments
I believe supporters of the prior regime will never accept that they caused additional harm, because they meant well. So what? We are where we are. Let it go.
The new administration has proposed doing something. The prior administration says nothing tried before has ever worked (excluding their own approach of course), and dissolves into Trumpian name calling. “Don’t believe them, they are lying to you, they’re screaming horrible people, they’re ruining our city/country, they want everyone to only agree them.” Sound familiar, Samm I am?
We all failed to implement services for the women after decriminalization. Are we so prideful that we’ll let that happen again, because we don’t trust each other’s motives?
Roll up your sleeves and help or get out of the way.
Sorry Samm, too many words?
Greater Ballard:
Yes, too many words.
And yes, people like you. The morons who thing traveling back through time to a more carceral state will make the city safer. That’s nonsense, people like you understand only violence when faced with “the other” and because of it that is exactly what you invite.
No, a police state will not solve our problems. If harsh laws and police brutality has never worked to make whining reactionaries like you more safe then they won’t now. That is a fact and never will cease to be so.
I think you are a liar, a cheat, and an awful little monster, and so is your little northend clique of police state rabble rousers. I see it as a moral obligation to stand in your way because your reactionary push will only lead to more violence and ultimately ruin, not some “crime free” utopia you seem to worship with blind faith.
So you want me to go away? Too bad you sad and pathetic a-hole. Expect a fight every step towards your monstrous goal, and to have any steps you succeed in making to be rolled back every time you lose at the polls. Increasing state violence isn’t a solution for Seattle, you’d better get used to the idea because it is not going away.
Samm,
You didn’t really respond to anything I said.
Easy to castigate others if you just make up stuff about them or things they didn’t say, then call them names for what must be the evil thinking behind… what you made up.
GB
I would strongly suggest that you read what is being proposed and why, versus being told what to think about it.
https://mailchi.mp/seattle.gov/aurora-avenue-public-safety-community-safety-investments-downtown-office-conversion-summer-food-service-bitter-lake-meadowbrook-lake-city-8483125?e=48b16c3878
“Holmes stopped prosecuting most prostitution loitering cases and issuing SOAP orders before the Reentry Work Group…” Meaning the ‘movement’s’ experiment to decriminalize actually started years before the laws were changed. Yet, after decriminalization being, by any objective measure, a complete an utter failure, those trying to clean up their mess are accused of implementing the ‘failed policies of the past.’ Your policies ARE the failed policies of the past.
“We never actually tried defunding and investing in community the way the movement wanted. … On the other hand, we tried exclusion zones in the past, and it wasn’t working, it was causing harm, and it was racist —that’s why they got rid of it.” Meaning they were intellectually superior and more enlightened, but unfortunately also world class incompetent at actually doing anything. Real world consequences don’t matter, it’s the thought that counts. “We never actually tried.” Yeah, we know.
“If it’s actually a turf war, we would see a drastic decline in the number of people who are [on Aurora], Koyama said. “The women won’t feel safe … and the buyers won’t come either if they realize there’s a huge risk.” The bullets aren’t being sprayed at the women and buyers. They are being sprayed down the surrounding residential streets as the pimps shoot at each other, usually after prostitution ‘business hours.’ It’s on video over and over again. But again, the ‘movement’ refuses to take responsibility for the impacts they have caused to neighborhoods, or that it’s even happening. “If it’s actually a turf war…” Wow. Go talk to the neighbors.
“Yet the legislation proposes no new diversion programs or funding, nor does it lay out a process by which … sex workers would “walk away and get help.” First of all, that’s a lie. And second, isn’t that exactly the problem with decriminalization? A grand gesture was made, and then nothing effective was done to actually realize all the Pollyanna envisioned benefits – FOR YEARS. And now they say that’s the new guys failing – that THEIR proposal isn’t specific enough on implementation? The unbelievable clueless hubris.
“The overwhelmingly white property and business owners who showed up to support the legislation.” That’s a definition of racism, you know that, right? To look at the color of someone’s skin and immediately determine their lesser worth; or just dismiss their ideas without listening…
None of the ‘Advocates, scholars, and legal experts’ are acknowledging the new levels of gun violence and it’s impacts on neighborhoods. They are solely focused on the industry participants and practices of the past. When they say it won’t ‘clean up’ neighborhoods, they are thinking only in terms of the existence of prostitution in it’s old form. That it won’t abolish prostitution. That is not what this is about!
“The bullets aren’t being sprayed at the women and buyers. They are being sprayed down the surrounding residential streets as the pimps shoot at each other, usually after prostitution ‘business hours.’”
Well gee maybe police officer time should be directed toward deterring or arresting pimps who shoot guns rather than citing sex workers for loitering…
Guess you didn’t read. The law targets pimps and creates a new law directed toward pimps.
If you don’t like being “told what to think about it” then perhaps you shouldn’t circulate little missives like that which tell everyone “what to think about it.”
You’re all about political slogans, but you seem too stupid to realize they apply to yourself as well.
Publicola continues to support human trafficking.
Publicola continues to support the subjugation of women.
Publicola continues to support child rape.
Publicola continues to support exploitation.
Publicola continues to ignore the very real data on the extraordinary increase in gun violence taking place on North Aurora.
Publicola continues to dismiss the danger to North Aurora’s immediate neighbors, the vast majority of which are renters.
Publicola continues to only pay attention to individuals who confirm Publicola’s bias.
“Publicola continues to support human trafficking.”
This bill runs 100% counter for best practices for taking down sex traffickers – from DOJ guide to sex trafficking task forces:
“Trauma affects how victims see themselves, their worldview, and relationships. These beliefs affect how victims respond to services and the criminal justice system and underscore the importance of task forces taking a trauma-informed approach, not only through service delivery but also throughout the investigation and prosecution process.
Both the criminal justice and victim services systems can inadvertently re-traumatize. Taskforce member responses that can lead to re-traumatization include–
Not having time to consider options; arrests, lack of choice in housing or service provision can create a feeling of a lack of control for victims.
Enforcing power dynamics; not allowing victims to make their own choices related to services, engaging with law enforcement and/or prosecution. This can cause victims to feel threatened or even attacked.”
It’s like Moore read the guidance and then thought hard about how she could do the real bad guys a solid.
You still rule, BK!
She’s not proposing any of that.
She’s proposing that we implement humane processes. Yes, we should be watching to ensure that happens. If what is presented to people in reality is needlessly traumatic, then let’s fix it. Demand that they become humane. Don’t just give up!
We have to do something. It’s impossible to support decriminalization any longer when bullets are coming through kitchen windows.
Thank you for posting this, it makes sense to me. We live near Cathy and have had protestors on the street. Last night they were yelling at my six year old, calling him a racist. I do actually care about the issue and am curious to learn more Seattle specific information. I used to work with victims of sexual violence, including adult and juvenile sex workers, but not in Seattle. I was having difficulty getting information from the protestors in terms of specific policies or proposals that WOULD be helpful. I was also told that DOJ or other stats from law enforcement agencies are not reputable. I assume sex workers who do work on Aurora also don’t want to be shot near/around. Are there any reputable sources, policy proposals, etc that accurately reflect what would be helpful to sex workers who work on Aurora?
How stupid. You people can’t even make a good faith argument.
The desire for communities to have a neighborhood free of violence, drug dealing and prostitution is race neutral. Why racialize the situation by mentioning that most of the people in the community and in support of the anti-loitering laws are white? Or that most of the participants in prostitution and street dealing on Aurora are people of color? If we extend the logic that enforcing the law is racist because it targets disproportionate numbers of people of one race it should work the other way as well: most wage theft, embezzlement and insider trading is done by white men. Therefore we should stop enforcing those laws. If most immigration trafficking is done by Mexican and Chinese then that too should be suspended— perhaps we should only go after the white traffickers? This argument that anti prostitution laws are racist is ludicrous— and it simply enables more exploitation of women.
You would think if getting rid of the laws encouraged women to access all those essential recovery services on Highway 99, that prostitution would have fallen. What improvements have been made in getting people off the streets, out of addiction and sexual servitude in the 8 years since the loitering laws were reversed? If the last city council actually did succeed in making policies that improved prostitutes’ lives I would love to see some evidence.
I fail to see any tipping point that might finally allow neighborhoods being victimized by crime to gain sympathy from the advocates of decriminalization. Would five children have to be shot? 10? Would an entire block have to be burned down? (Oh wait, this has already happened. . . See Lake City fire and the looting that followed.) How drastic does it have to get? Here you’ve got businesses and homes with bullets in their walls, and homicides, though not yet of children. Why should this terrified community be expected to prioritize, above all, the well-being of the people who are breaking the law and making the neighborhood unlivable? Why are the only victims here the prostitutes, dealers and pimps?
I strongly suggest reading this article from a Black-owned news source in Washington DC, where the community is primarily Black and they are dealing with the exact same situation. https://www.washingtoninformer.com/dc-anti-loitering-act-now/