The New Orleans Times-Picayune falsely raised a lot of sex workers’ hopes last week by publishing a headline stating that “New Orleans council has decriminalized sex work for crime victims“. This of course is not true:
The New Orleans City Council on [May 8th] passed a city ordinance that will make it easier for sex workers to report crimes without fear of prosecution for prostitution…[the usual suspects claim]ed it would exacerbate instances of prostitution in certain neighborhoods…
In other words, it’s a fairly typical non-prosecution bone of the sort politicians regularly throw at sex workers so they can pretend to care, which are always riddled with exceptions and workarounds and are generally repealed as soon as a prohibitionist gang complains loudly enough. New Orleans has enacted similar halfway measures before, such as a December 2010 law which made prostitution a municipal offense so cops could just write tickets instead of subjecting sex workers to violence. Unfortunately, politicians and other prohibitionists have learned in the past 15 years that decriminalization is viewed by all experts as the best framework, so now they’re all lying by calling whatever modified criminalization scam they’re selling “decriminalization”, so as to trick ordinary voters into believing they actually support human rights. And lazy graduates of the stenographic school of journalism simply parrot whatever they’re told, without further investigation.
Hey reporters: here’s a simple rule of thumb. If you need to include a preposition like “for” or “if” after the word “decriminalized” when writing about sex work law, what you’re writing about isn’t “decriminalization”, so don’t pretend it is.
“Sex work is decriminalized for the seller…” Swedish model, not decriminalization.
“Sex work is decriminalized if the seller…” Toothless rule to placate activists, not decriminalization.
Only decriminalization is decriminalization; don’t let prohibitionists pretend otherwise.