LOS ANGELES—A group of New York state legislators who proposed measures to decriminalize sex work in 2019, and again in 2020 have not given up. As part of their 2021 “Justice Roadmap Agenda,” the coalition of progressive lawmakers, led by Brooklyn State Senator Jessica Salazar, will try again to ease legal burdens on sex workers.
Saying that sex work arrests too often end with “immigration and housing consequences for New Yorkers,” the group will propose a package of legislation that will not only remove most criminal penalties related to consensual sex work, but will also ban police from making “loitering” arrests, which are often used against sex workers who have committed no other offense, and prohibit the sharing of information by police with immigration authorities.
Salazar and Queens State Senator Jessica Ramos demanded that the New York Police Department terminate its vice squad, after a stunning report by ProPublica documenting numerous arrests of sex workers, mostly people of color, by officer with no evidence to support the arrests at all.
The progressive coalition’s previous attempts to introduce sex work legislation fell short, however, and some New York legislators say that the expect the latest attempt to meet a similar, frustrating fate.
“The state budget deficit is in the billions of dollars and a lot of our local municipalities have budget deficits now,” upstate Democratic legislator Billy Jones said. “We should be focused on that. As far as legalizing prostitution, I am against that. Let’s work on the things that will help make our society better.”
“If they want to have an agenda that betters New York state, they could come up with ways to get small businesses back on track during this COVID crisis,” another legislator from upstate New York, Republican Chris Tague, said.
In addition to the sex work decriminalization measures, the progressive legislators “Justice Roadmap” also includes legislation to legalize and regulate commercial sale of recreational marijuana, as well as to decriminalize possession and sale of syringes. Possession of syringes has often been the basis for arrests, on the grounds of “possession of drug paraphernalia.”
Photo By Beyond My Ken / Wikimedia Commons
