The fatality rate of sex workers is more than twice the rate of the most fatal “legitimate” job on the books (logging), but from what I can find, the majority of fatalities are concentrated among street workers. A lot of the things that make street work dangerous are the same things that make it dangerous to be a taxi driver: working at night, working alone, handling cash, etc. But sex workers are murdered at a rate ten times higher than taxi drivers, and I think it’s because of criminalization. Street workers avoid arrest by getting off the street as quickly as possible. They have no time to screen, very little time to negotiate, and next to no control over their environment once they get into the car, and can’t even go to the police if anything happens. But the majority of sex workers are “indoor” workers, and their fatality rate is much lower than street workers. Part of it is that they’re not forced to work at night or in high crime areas, but I think it’s also important that they avoid arrest by screening and just being extremely cautious in general. Do you think that would change if sex work was legalized? Without the threat of arrest to keep escorts cautious, would escorting become a more dangerous profession?
The murder rate for street workers is not really as high as these studies claim; they’re based in the assumption that the sex worker population can be accurately estimated, which is a mighty stretch indeed. It is extremely likely that the total population is dramatically undercounted in these studies, but nobody cares because they want the sex work murder rate to come out much higher than it really is to provide a pretext for banning it.
That having been said, the murder rate for outdoor workers is still outrageously high, largely for the reasons you surmise but also for the fact that violent men purposefully seek out sex workers because, as Robert Pickton pointed out, nobody notices or cares when they vanish. That simply isn’t true for indoor workers, who tend to have better social networks; their death or disappearance would be noticed just as quickly as any other woman’s. While it’s true that escorts are forced to be even more careful because of criminalization, that vigilance all goes toward the organized predators who inflict the lion’s share of violence on sex workers: the police. So yes, removing criminalization might make escorts less careful…but they wouldn’t need to be so cautious because the most dangerous and numerous predators would also be gone. Under decriminalization, violence against sex workers is much lower than even in legalized regimes, and much lower than under criminalization, a system in which the foxes are set to guard the henhouse, and nobody notices or cares how many chickens they satisfy their appetites upon.
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Decrim will be safer everywhere. Even if it’s always safer indoor, criminalization still prevents them from using optimal security measures. The law forces workers to forgo some safety in order to get clients and avoid arrest. Many incalls work alone, with none of the security you get in brothels.
I also believe that working as an escort is safer than working as a street walker. I believe that screening is the primary reason it is safer. I never go to an appointment to meet a customer if I can’t screen the client first. That means that I always know whom I’m meeting. I also use the safe call system which means that I call my driver shortly after meet with my client to confirm everything is OK. At the end of the scheduled time my driver always calls me if I don’t call him first to confirm that everything is OK.
Since this procedure has been mentioned in several of my reviews I am sure that those who are looking for someone to victimize have bypassed my profile for other escorts who are not as professional.
Hi Maggie, I recently noticed that you were actively escorting again. Best wishes and stay safe.
Amy Tai
I am surprised no one has said this so I will. Not only does working outside, not being able to screen clients as well as well as a higher percentage of police arrests make street walker prostitution more dangerous than escort prostitution, but the overall fees make street walker prostitution more dangerous as well. Escort prostitutes get a better quality of customers on average who are less criminally inclined towards violence because people with more money on average have a tendency to have more impulse control behavior, more delayed gratification behavior, more future time orientation and more to lose than poorer people.
I forgot to say that street walker prostitutes have poorer clients on average than escort prostitutes.
One of the benefits for an escort who screens her clients well is that the client knows that we know who they are prior to meeting them. In my case I only book by email. If I was murdered during a “date” there would be a record that could be found on the computer or other internet device I use to schedule dates. Also since I always am driven to my dates by my driver he also knows this info which is another layer of protection. My clients already know this is the way I work from my reviews which is another layer of protection.
I am also not greedy so I never meet with someone whom I can’t verify. That means unless a client is a police informant I generally am not subject to arrest as a consequence.
I think we’re missing something here. Let’s imagine decriminalization happened tomorrow in the US, and nothing else changed. Does anyone think police forces would suddenly decide “gee, I guess we can’t victimize sex workers anymore”? I doubt it. It’ll just be one more thing that gets covered up, instead of being splashed all over the media. I don’t know what New Zealanders do differently, but I would guess decriminalization has worked out well there partly because their police forces must not be totally out of control.
Decriminalization in the US would have to accompanied by several drastic changes beyond the actual letter of the law, changes which the population at large is not currently willing to see.
If prostitution became legal tomorrow then sex workers would be taken advantage of by the State; there repersentives such as the taxman, county commissioners, zoning / code officals. In fact I expect the State would in fact become our pumps withe power of the law and regulations on their sides. I really don’t expect too much would really change, the charges would just be different.
Yes, I recognize that ‘legalization’ would open up various new problems (although it would still, in a very, VERY small way, be a step up from total criminalization), but I was referring to ‘decriminalization’ as differentiated several times here by Maggie. Even if there was no regulatory regime set up to replace criminalization, do we really expect police, in their current form, to abide by decriminalization?
I think for a contry to choose decriminalization instead of legalization they have to be willing and ready for it. If a government is forced to make something legal they will legalize it into impossibility.
Unfortunately, having equal rights under the law does not guaranty equal treatment from the police for any minorities. Decriminalization won’t do away with all the problems, but I think it would make it better for most without making it worse for anyone.
I believe in decriminalization too. However, it has always seemed to me that there are risks in escorts going to hotels or men’s flats. Isn’t the safest sex work when 2 or 3 women work together from a flat and so no woman is left alone in a flat with a man? If that was legal I think there would still be a lot of women who go to hotels and flats despite the risks.
I used to go to Tooting Bec Common in south London which is like a park. some of the sex workers there were on drugs and some not. They socialized with each other and kept an eye on each other. It was safe for them, especially in the daytime. Then, after years, the police put a stop to it all. Street girls know what to do to keep themselves safe but they’re not allowed to do that. They would much prefer to use part of a park on a sunny afternoon than get into men’s cars at 2 am.
There’s a big difference, surely, between a woman who is murdered and who is a sex worker, and a woman who is murdered because she is a sex worker.
This dichotomy was well illustrated years ago when the Yorkshire Ripper was at large, murdering women he identified as sex workers. The lead detective made a comment, about one woman, the latest victim, to the effect that it was really sad about her because she was a woman (implying that as the others were prostitutes they didn’t matter).
I have been living for more than a decade in a country where prostitution is legal, and I cannot remember ever reading that a street-worker was killed. Of course, street-work is limited to certain areas and streets and the these get extra police attention. I do remember a few cases where street-workers were raped or robbed and in most of these cases the perpetrators were caught pretty fast. Looks like they were mostly foreigners that seemed to think street-workers are easy marks.
I’m sure you’re right about the murder rates being inflated. The few studies that do exist that focus on that kind of data are almost always looking at small groups of street workers in a single area over a period of a few decades at most, and then extrapolating their conclusions to apply to, not just all other street workers, but all sex workers in general. The distinction between indoor and outdoor work is very recent, and it seems there’s little to no research on the safety of workers who meet clients on the internet.
It’s hard to see it as anything other than academic laziness. I’d appreciate any pointers as far as finding researchers with a sense of integrity about the subject.