Arrest, Divert, Retrain: The Implicit Health Biases in the New War on Sex Workers

Public health has been a powerful force in the fight for sex workers’ rights across the globe.  Yet, we are now witnessing the rise of a more insidious health discourse.  Much like the 19th century moral reforms, which sanctioned indefinite detention to cure “whores and thieves of the worst kind” from vice, new prostitution policies have usurped public health language in the interest of “treating” sex workers.  While “treatment not punishment” has been a powerful rallying cry for drug policy reformers, we must be cautious before celebrating its application to sex work.  What is the “disease” being diagnosed?  What does successful “treatment” look like?

Through a careful analysis of criminal justice practices in New York and New Orleans, I argue that even seemingly innovative strategies like New York City’s special court for prostitution “victims” implicitly rest on an antiquated moral medicalization model, in which sex work is a disease to be cured.  Two trends have influenced its resurgence:  First, a carceral turn in feminist advocacy, whereby a crime frame is increasingly being deployed to “save” women in the street-based economies; and Second, a gendered turn in criminalization policies, whereby the laws criminalizing drug users are increasingly being adapted and used against sex workers.  Taken together, these trends have birthed an “Arrest, Divert, Retrain” approach, which is clearly at odds with best practices for promoting the health of vulnerable populations like sex workers.  In conclusion, two innovative community-based strategies for unveiling and challenging such punitive forms of rescue will be discussed.