Queens D.A. Wants to Dismiss 700 Cases Against Sex Workers

LOS ANGELES—The district attorney of Queens, New York — the second-largest of New York City’s five boroughs — asked a judge on Tuesday to throw out 700 cases of people arrested on charges of “loitering for the purpose of prostitution,” and other charges realted to sex work activities, according to an Associated Press report.  The request by D.A. Melinda Katz comes about a month after the state’s legislature repealed a 45-year-old law against loitering, which had been designed to make arrests for prostitution easier — but ended up resulting in widespread racial and gender discrimination by law enforcement. The law became widely known as the “walking while trans” ban. The state of California is now taking up legislation to do away with “loitering” laws there as well, as AVN reported last week. “Instead of prosecuting these defendants, we need to provide a helping hand by connecting them with meaningful services, support options and the necessary tools that will assist them to safely exit the sex trade if that is what they choose to do,” Katz said in a statement, quoted by WPIX TV News in New York City. Katz’s request to dismiss hundreds of sex work-related charges, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city was initiating measure to decriminalize sex work entirely. “We need to end the criminalization of sex workers and put all the focus on those who subjugate them,” de Blasio said in his announcement. He also called on the state government to “change the laws, to end criminal penalties for sex workers, to put the focus where it should be, on the traffickers and those who profit.” Last week Darcel Clark, the D.A. in another New York Borough, the Bronx, said that a judge had granted her motion to throw out 800 “loitering” cases against arrested sex workers.  The District Attorney for Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr., has said that he will not seek reelection to a fourth term, and a leading candidate in the race to replace him — public defender Eliza Orlins — has made a pledge to end prosecutions of sex workers a key plank in het platform. And at the state level, a group of legislators has introduced a bill to decriminalize sex work statewide.  One legislator, Manhattan Democrat Liz Kruger, has introduced a bill based on the “Nordic model” of decriminalization, under which sex work itself would carry no criminal penalties, but teh act of paying for sex would remain criminal.  But Orlins proposal is far more expansive, calling for “the full decriminalization of consensual sex work. This will begin with declining to prosecute all cases of consensual sex work.” Photo By Carlos Oliva / Pexels