I’m a few days late in getting to this, but I still think that it deserves comment. Police have taken to prosecuting prostitutes who advertise on Craigslist.
Nassau County has made more than 70 arrests since it began focusing on Craigslist last year, one of numerous crackdowns by vice squads from Hawaii to New Hampshire that have lately been monitoring the Web site closely, sometimes placing decoy ads to catch would-be customers.
“Craigslist has become the high-tech 42nd Street, where much of the solicitation takes place now,” said Richard McGuire, Nassau’s assistant chief of detectives. “Technology has worked its way into every profession, including the oldest.”
Augmenting traditional surveillance of street walkers, massage parlors, brothels and escort services, investigators are now hunching over computer screens to scroll through provocative cyber-ads in search of solicitors.
In July raids, the sheriff of Cook County, Ill., rounded up 43 women working on the streets — and 60 who advertised on Craigslist. In Seattle, a covert police ad on Craigslist in November resulted in the arrests of 71 men, including a bank officer, a construction worker and a surgeon.
And in Jacksonville, Fla., a single ad the police posted for three days in August netted 33 men, among them a teacher and a firefighter. “We got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hits” in phone calls and e-mail messages, said John P. Hartley, the assistant chief sheriff there.
Sex and the Internet have been intertwined almost since the first Web site, but the authorities say that prostitution is flourishing online as never before. And while prostitutes also advertise on other sites, the police here and across the country say Craigslist is by far the favorite. On one recent day, for example, some 9,000 listings were added to the site’s “Erotic Services” category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage and escorts, often hinting at more.
I have not exactly made my extreme discomfort with the prostitution industry a secret. And yet, I have also openly supported decriminalization of prostitution. Firstly, I find ethical reprehensibility to lay almost entirely with the men purchasing sex, not with the women selling it. Secondly, while I think that there are serious moral dilemmas regarding prostitution, I do not think that legal system is the best way to resolve them. And thirdly, my primary desire is to help sex workers. I believe that the absolute worst way to do that is to throw them in jail.
So onto the issue at hand. It’s good to see that Johns are being arrested along with sex workers– usually, you only see the women being shamed and thrown in jail. It’s also good to see law enforcement taking a break from harassing street prostitutes.
That’s pretty much where the positive aspect ends, though.
The fact of the matter is that, whether we like it or not, online prostitution has the potential to make sex work a lot safer. Those who work from home have the automatic advantage of being on their own turf and have much stronger positions to set rules and boundaries. Even those who travel, like those cited in this article, have the advantages of not meeting men on the street and being able to make advance arrangements. These women also have the opportunity, which many (if not most) employ, to ask for referrals. Seeing only peer-approved Johns, though limiting, is an excellent and innovative way to increase one’s safety and one that we should be actively encouraging.
Though these things are all possible at a brothel level, the internet makes it a lot easier and accessible to women who prefer to work independently and gives them much greater autonomy and flexibility. They’re the ones calling the shots– not Madames or pimps.
So targeting Craigslist makes me more than a little bit queasy. Don’t police have more important things to do? Like, oh, I don’t know, shutting down prostitution rings that consist of trafficked and enslaved women? [Yes, I am aware that trafficked women can also be advertised online. But from the evidence I've seen, trafficked women seem to exist in much higher quantities in brothels and at the street level. Trafficking industries should definitely be brought down, but that does not seem to be what law enforcement is dealing with at all in this instance.]
And as advocates for women’s rights, I definitely think that we have cause to be concerned. We can dream of ending prostitution all we like, but until we reach that day, there are actual women out there for whom all of our theoretic posturing isn’t doing a damn bit of good. They need rights and protection now, while we (and hopefully they, as I strongly believe that sex workers should be included in the conversation) sort out the rest. If it is our goal to make sex workers safer– and I should certainly hope that it is– we ought to be pissed off and alarmed. How long until women working off of Craigslist realize that the danger of being arrested outweighs the danger of being attacked on the streets and goes back? Thinking that cracking down on Craigslist is going to cause swarms of sex workers to find a new profession is incredibly naive. They’re just going to find new and quite possibly less safe ways to do it.
But of course, the women aren’t exactly what police are concerned about, now is it?
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