AUGUSTA—Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill into law last week that partially decriminalizes sex work in the U.S. state of Maine. Local news media reports suggest that the decriminalization effort is reflective of the controversial “Nordic model” of prostitution regulations utilized by three out of the five Scandinavian countries. The new law eliminates criminal charges for sex workers while keeping those in place for customers paying for commercial sex services or supposedly engaging in the trafficking of sex workers.
The bill, LD 1435, was introduced by state Rep. Lois Galgay Reckitt, D-South Portland. Reckitt served as the prime sponsor for the legislation throughout the process of it becoming law. “We are long overdue to better protect and decriminalize sellers engaged in prostitution without legalizing pimping and sex buying, acts that would expand the market in Maine,” said Rep. Reckitt, via the Portland Press Herald.
Other proponents of LD 1435 point to how other countries have adopted a similar model as a means to protect the rights of sex workers and potential victims. However, there are many in the commercial sex industry that oppose the partial decriminalization of sex work, arguing that this public safety approach is a potentially damaging scenario for otherwise consenting, legal-aged adults transacting a sexual rendevous.
A press advisory released by Gov. Mills’ office indicated that LD 1435 was adopted with dozens of other bills passed by the legislature during its most recent session in Augusta. According to the language in the bill, LD 1435 will enter force 90 days after the adjournment of the Maine Legislature. Penalties for those who are searching for sexual services are additionally elevated. For instance, the bill elevates the criminal charge of solicitation of a child for commercial sexual exploitation from a Class D to a Class C felony. The law additionally alters the state code to expand the definition of the term “sexual exploitation” to include solicitation of sex from not only minors but individuals with mental disabilities.
The term “mental disabilities” is broad, according to the final language of the legislation. There is very little language specifying what constitutes a mental disability that negates an individual from being able to consensually engage in a transactional sexual encounter. This is of note because there are intersectional sex worker communities that include individuals with particular disabilities or conditions who otherwise meet the standard of consenting adults at or above the legal age, per statutes. Despite the language in the immediate bill, the issue at hand is the implementation of the Nordic model in a U.S. jurisdiction. Sex workers’ rights groups and major human rights organizations have criticized the so-called Nordic model on the grounds that it doesn’t adequately protect consenting sex workers from abuse and sanctions.
“Sex worker discrimination and criminalization remains a massive problem throughout the majority of the 50 states and I hope that this law sets a tone that other states will follow,” notes adult industry attorney Corey Silverstein. While Silverstein concedes that this is a step in the right direction, concern in legal and academic circles still focuses on the fact that the superior solution, in the long run, should be the decriminalization and eventual legalization of sex work, covering actual laborers and those purchasing the services.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, the award-winning senior editor for Reason, while reporting on the bill herself, noted that Nordic model policies keep in place “many of the harms of total criminalization” and that the sex industries must continue to operate underground. Brown builds on this assessment of the Nordic model by referring her readers to a study recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Law and Economics which found that rates of rape and sexual assault go down when countries legalize sex work and rates climb when sex work is prohibited. “Most sex worker rights advocates want full decriminalization of prostitution between consenting adults,” Brown added in her report on LD 1435’s passage.
Amnesty International published a policy statement in the summer of 2016 calling for countries all over the world to adopt legislation that reframes sex work. Tawanda Mutasah, Amnesty’s senior director for law and policy at the time, noted that the human rights organization wants “laws to be refocused on making sex workers' lives safer and improving the relationship they have with the police while addressing the very real issue of exploitation. We want governments to make sure no one is coerced to sell sex, or is unable to leave sex work if they choose to.”
Echoing these sentiments, researcher Niina Vuolajärvi of the London School of Economics and Political Science warned legislators all over the world to look for other public policy remedies to address sex work issues instead of the Nordic model. Dr. Vuolajärvi, an assistant professor in international migration at the school’s European Institute, studied the impacts of Nordic model-style policies on sex workers in European jurisdictions—particularly among migrants who are people of color emigrating to Sweden, Norway and Finland. Even though these nations have laws that don’t criminalize the sale of sexual services in a format that is similar to Maine’s new law, the study found that sex workers were “de facto penalized” due to the enforcement of other laws and rules that happen to intersect on the issue at hand. These laws include immigration regulations and fiscal laws. Vuolajärvi conducted 210 interviews with sex workers, social workers, policymakers and police officers in all three countries. The findings of the interviews were that 96 percent of respondents opposed laws that criminalized “sex buyers.”
“I could just say generally in relation to the partial criminalization that of course, it is positive that the sale of sexual services is decriminalized, however everywhere where this approach (Nordic countries, France, Canada, Ireland) has been adopted it has increased the policing of sex workers and made their conditions more dangerous and insecure,” notes Dr. Vuolajärvi in an email to AVN, adding that “full decriminalization is the only solution that recognizes the existence of consensual sex work between adults and removes the detrimental presence of the police from the lives of sex workers. It gives tools for sex workers to organize their work in a safe manner and has not been shown to increase the sex trade.”
“When you criminalize any part of a consenting adult's sexual interactions, commercial or otherwise, the interaction becomes inherently more dangerous,” Blair Hopkins, the executive director of SWOP Behind Bars, told AVN. SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project) Behind Bars is a national grassroots group that advocates for basic human rights for sex workers, trafficking victims and those communities. It places a particular emphasis on individuals who are currently incarcerated or seeking re-entry. Hopkins added: “It's also worth noting that the Nordic model as it's employed in the [United States] is founded in the idea that the sex trade is inherently coercive, so the laborers are all victims, and those who patronize them are all victimizers. This strips people performing sexual labor of their agency and forces them to become objects of pity, which is only barely better than being an object of ire.”
Other organizations are just as concerned. Bella Cummins of the Onesta Foundation, a Nevada-based group advocating for regulated prostitution and the legalization of licensed sex work, said in a phone call with AVN that the law in Maine sets a concerning precedent by only partially reforming sex work.
“I am never in favor of partial decriminalization,” said Cummins, also the madame and proprietor of the licensed brothel Bella’s Hacienda in Wells, NV. “Decriminalization is at least a parallel direction, in the essence, to legalization. Of course, I am an expert in legalization because it has been the model of Nevada for over 50 years, and I’ve been involved for 37 years. And, I understand that when buyers and sellers can work legally, it works the best.” She explained that the so-called “Nevada model”—licensed brothels—are environments that provide control, safety and healthy interactions between sex workers and their buyers.
Nevada is the only U.S. state with laws permitting legal prostitution in some form. Brothels are licensed, taxpaying outfits that provide companions with the opportunity to operate as independent contractors. Regarding her views on the new Maine law, Cummins asserted that Gov. Mills lacks the understanding of sex worker protection that she has as an owner of a legal brothel. “It can look good on paper, but it’s going to ruin people’s lives,” Cummins lamented.
AVN also spoke with Alice Little, a legal courtesan at the Chicken Ranch Brothel in Pahrump, Nev., who provided remarks similar to Cummins', expressing that what’s happening in Maine is a positive step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. “As a legal sex worker in Nevada, I have had the privilege of working under the protection of the law for pretty much my whole career,” Little explained. “However, the reality is that the Nordic model is something that sex workers themselves have never actually asked for or advocated for.”
To that point, the website NoNordicModel.com, launched by a collective of sex workers’ rights activists, explains in great detail how sex workers are looking for full recognition of their bodily autonomy, which includes the right to engage in consensual sex work. The site argues that “the solution is to decriminalize sex work for both clients and workers.”
“Sex workers seek true and complete decriminalization which removes penalties for both the purchase of sex and the sale of sex,” Little went on to say. “While I applaud Maine for taking a small step in the right direction, the legislative language shows me, instead of actually listening to sex workers who are the ones most directly impacted by such legislation, the lawmakers instead listened to anti-trafficking organizations that tend to have their opinions based on morality and religious views rather than any lived experience in the industry.”
