By Aaron Miller-
A new bill aimed at decriminalizing the act of selling sex in New York was introduced in state Senate Monday.
New York Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter announced the introduction of the Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act on Monday, which was created with the help of sex trade survivors and advocates.
The bill will repeal the crime of selling sex, the act of buying sex, sex trafficking, while maintaining the continued legality of brothel ownership .
Aspects of the bill involves extending the legal protections and services given to minors arrested for prostitution under New York’s Safe Harbor law to cover people up to age 24.
This partial decriminalisation of sex work is based on the ‘equality model’ – a more limited approach to regulating sex work compared to full decriminalisation, which some claim would make it harder to prevent sex trafficking.
Another bill advocating for full decriminalisation of the sex work industry was introduced to the State Senate in 2019. The new bill seeks to decriminalize people in sex work while still keeping buying sex, sex trafficking and brothel owning illegal.
The bill aims to achieve help sex workers help, instead of jail sentences, in part by preventing the ‘unlicensed practice of a profession’ arrests of people working in illicit massage parlors when there’s evidence of exploitation.
It also prevents people working in the sex trade from being charged with ‘Promoting Prostitution’ when they’re helping others in the trade and aren’t profiting from it.
Part of the bill involves extending the legal protections and services given to minors arrested for prostitution under New York’s Safe Harbor law to cover people up to age 24.
It also calls for aligning New York’s definition of human trafficking with the federal definition, which would broaden the pool of people allowed to access social services from organizations combating gender violence, as well as creating a regionally, racially, and sexually diverse State task force that would ensure access and administration of social services to people in prostitution across the state.