BPPP is looking for a volunteer to help us gather information about the impact of anti-trafficking initiatives on people in the sex trade in the United States and to help us create a submission to the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report (“TIP Report”, see more information here from our 2013 submission done in partnership with other organizations). This volunteering would require about 3 hours a week January to early March 2014. BPPP can provide support for childcare, any transportation, phone/communication and other similar expenses relating to the tasks. If interested please send a short email to bestpracticespolicyproject @ gmail.com. This volunteer search is open only until we find the right person. Ability to communicate in Spanish a plus but not required.
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BPPP is looking for a volunteer to help us get the word out to our US sex worker rights and other networks about the July 2014 international AIDS Conference that will be held in Melbourne Australia. The volunteer will create a series of short community friendly announcements about key conference deadlines coming up between December 2013 and early March 2014 and get the message out to folks in the US about how they can participate in the conference. The volunteer will also be involved reaching out to our sister organizations in Australia to make sure that our community outreach is in line with what they are organizing. This volunteering would require about one hour a week December to early March. BPPP can provide support for childcare, local transportation, phone/communication and other similar expenses relating to the tasks. If interested please send a short email to bestpracticespolicyproject @ gmail.com. This volunteer search is open only until we find the right person. Ability to write in Spanish a plus but not required.
Stephanie Wahab and Meg Panichelli provide a succinct analysis of the ethical considerations associated with diversion programs that arrest people in the sex trade in order to force them to accept services. Their commentary which appears in a 2013 edition of AFFILIA, a peer reviewed social work journal addressing the concerns of social workers and their clients from a feminist point of view, challenges the “assumption that arresting (or participating in the arrest of) people ‘for their own good’ constitutes good or ethical social work practice.” The authors conclude that, “targeting people for arrest under the guise of helping them violates numerous ethical standards as well as the humanity of people engaged in the sex industry” and express concerns that such an approach “constitutes an act of structural violence against individuals who already frequently report negative, discriminatory, and often violent encounters with law enforcement including people with precarious migratory or citizenship status, poor, youth, transgender, and people of color.”
The example that sparked the writing of the AFFILIA editorial is Project ROSE, a program in which social workers from Arizona State University School of Social Work and some service providers collaborate with city wide raids orchestrated by the Phoenix Police Department.
PHOENIX, AZ – Sex workers and allies protested yesterday October 17, 2013 outside Bethany Bible Church, the site of the Project ROSE Prostitution Diversion Initiative. Twice a year the Phoenix Police and the ASU School of Social Work team up to arrest people working in the sex trade. People who are arrested and found to be “eligible” for services are forced to choose between a 6-month diversion program and criminal charges. Many arrested during the stings are not eligible for the diversion process at all and face incarceration under Arizona’s mandatory minimum statutes.
“Project ROSE coordinators claim this program offers voluntary diversion,” Jaclyn Moskal-Dairman of Phoenix SWOP, an organization of sex workers and allies fighting for the rights of sex workers, explained. “But when our own members are arrested and taken to court, we know better. This program doesn’t make people safer, it creates fear and trauma. The raids rely on coercion, and result in more people behind bars for working.”