On May 6, councilmembers approved a proposal to update the city code that governs “chronic nuisance property”—buildings cited in repeat complaints related to criminalized activity like drug use and sex work. The proposal, from District 3 Councilor Steve Novick, is clear about what businesses it’s targeting: 82nd Avenue motels.

“Shutting down a venue doesn’t make [sex work] go away,” Koyama told Filter. “It displaces people to other areas, and it becomes more dangerous.”

Koyama testified against the ordinance in March. Though the city council argued that the changes were necessary to keep pace with “human trafficking,” Koyama does not believe that the motels on 82nd Avenue are facilitating or complicit in such activity.

“What you see is people engaging in underground economies,” she said, “and underground economies happen whenever there’s poverty.” 

The ordinance had initially proposed to change the definition of a chronic nuisance property to one cited for two or more “nuisance activities” in any 90-day period, when previously it was three or more in a 30-day period.

“Something that happens twice within a 90-day period is hardly a chronic thing,” Phillip Chachka of the nonprofit Portland Copwatch told Filter.

After significant pushback, the final version was amended to three or more nuisance activities in a 90-day period.

There are 25 designated nuisance activities, which in the original proposed version of the ordinance included “prostitution or related offenses” and “loitering to solicit prostitution.” Following pushback, these were replaced with “Human Trafficking or related offenses.”

“There’s become very little [legal] distinction between trafficking and voluntary sex work.”

Grant Hartley, Multnomah County director of Metropolitan Public Defenders, agreed that the ordinance is criminalizing poverty, and punishing businesses “for the failures of our society.” He also told Filter that he’s suspicious of the claims that this protects trafficking survivors. This sort of surveillance, he explained, has often been to find evidence of “promoting prostitution,” which could be interpreted as applying to almost anything—friends giving gas money to someone in the sex trade, for example. Such activities could be associated with human trafficking in the same way.

“There’s become very little [legal] distinction between trafficking and voluntary sex work, and that’s just dangerous for sex workers,” he said. “Sex workers are pulled over, and their phone is seized … you don’t seize the telephone of someone who is a victim.”

Lorren Snowwolf, deputy director at the community closet and food bank Mainspring Portland, told Filter he’s concerned this will “become a witch hunt.” Mainspring Portland is on 82nd Avenue and serves anyone in need, including sex workers.

Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Glen (JR) Ujifusa said that the ordinance is part of a “multi-faceted approach” to reduce trafficking, which also includes educating motel owners and employees on ways to make their properties safer. He said that the goal isn’t to shut down any businesses.

“What it’s trying to do is clean up and make business-owners responsible for the type of things they attract around them,” he told Filter. “We all know that the criminal justice system is slow and expensive, and so is law enforcement sometimes, so this [ordinance] is another way to maybe get at some of the same issues and deter it in a different way.” 

“It just seems like a power grab.”

Koyami would prefer if local law enforcement focused on improving basic safety for people on the margins, rather than punitive interventions. In addition to founding Coalition for Rights & Safety, she’s the co-founder of Aileen’s, a peer-led hospitality space for women in the sex trade. Aileen’s, founded in 2019, serves the notorious stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Washington state where in the 1980s and 1990s Gary Ridgeway killed at least 49 women, many of them sex workers.

“Having small organic communities being built up are something that we need to support and not destroy,” Koyami said.

Chachka echoed the sentiment, pointing out that business owners might prefer dealing with civilian city workers rather than armed law enforcement officers. He also finds law enforcement to be “a little disingenuous about their priorities” in this instance.

In 2025, Portland had directed its police bureau to put overtime dollars toward combatting human trafficking, among other issues like domestic and sexual violence. Only 4 percent of the requested funds actually went toward those issues, with the bureau instead putting some toward crowd control at anti-ICE protests.

“It just seems like a power grab on their part,” Chachka said of the new ordinance. “It kind of cuts way back on the due process for property owners and businesses to be able to handle things without city intervention.”

Image via City of Portland

The post Portland Changes “Nuisance Property” Code, a Crackdown on Motel Sex Work appeared first on Filter.

The event took place weeks after the host nation—where the government is pursuing reform—had achieved a significant international victory, with positive implications for future global drug policy.

In March—at the 68th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria—Colombia proposed a resolution calling for an independent, external review of drug treaties. The resolution passed with 30 affirmative votes, 18 abstentions and three rejections—from Argentina, Russia and the United States.

The resulting review will conclude with a series of policy recommendations made by 19 interdisciplinary experts evaluating the effectiveness of current UN drug policy, which underpins worldwide prohibition.

“This is a sign that the global debate on drugs has gone into a new phase. A phase that values accountability more than silence, and progress more than inertia,” said Laura Gil, ambassador-at-large for Colombia’s Global Drug Policy, in her plenary speech at HR25.

Gil’s work focuses on gender equity, environmental justice and human rights. Her work in Vienna was applauded throughout the conference as a step toward what delegates described as “evidence-based, people-centered drug policy reform”—and an example of strong leadership from the Global South.

“We have seen there is a crop of leaders who are coming from the Global South.”

“It is time for the people who use drugs to take leadership,” Ahmed Said told Filter at the conference. Said, from Kenya, represents the African Network of People who Use Drugs (AfricaNPUD) and identifies as a person who uses drugs himself.

“We have seen there is a crop of leaders who are coming from the Global South, and we also have a crop of leaders from the Global North who come from the community of people who use drugs and really complement the effort,” he said.

Yet at the same time, in many places, “exclusionary ideologies are gaining ground,” as Shaun Shelly, executive director of HR25 organizer Harm Reduction International, noted at the conference.

One element of the threat this poses, felt directly by many of those present, concerns funding for harm reduction work.

Large harm reduction projects in the Global South are often internationally funded. The Trump administration’s decimation of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has already impacted access to HIV services in countries like South Africa.

“We’ve been hit hard, and currently America and South Africa aren’t seeing eye-to-eye,” Klaas Melusi Mtshweni, of the South African Network for People who Use Drugs, told Filter. He expects the worst is yet to come, with ramifications far into the future when “research has been unfunded by the US in South Africa.”

“USAID was providing about 17 percent of the HIV response in South Africa and mostly covering rural areas, covering doctors and some facilities,” Mtshweni explained. Since the US cuts, “We’ve lost about 23,000 staff members that were seeing clients. Some clinics have closed. But the most hit are the NGOs, the organizations on the ground that are mobilizing communities, that are doing … testing, tracing. We have about 150 organizations that have closed.”

Funding often goes to larger organizations that do not “understand how that community operates, and are not able to meet that community’s needs in an effective way.”

Lack of financial support is a ubiquitous problem for community-led organizations, in particular—something that often reflects the choices made by those awarding scarce funding. 

Sex worker activist Claire Macon, who is the overdose prevention center manager for Project Weber/Renew in Rhode Island, told Filter that small organizations created and led by people with lived experience often struggle to access the same financial support as larger organizations. She spoke of small organizations being overlooked because funding “is going to a ‘rescue’ organization that is not from that community.”  

Claire Macon (right) with Julianna Brown, MD, of Decrim305 and Idea Exchange. The two presented collaboratively on sex worker-led harm reduction.

When funding is allocated to harm reduction, Macon continued, it often goes to larger organizations that are not created by the people most impacted, and which do not “understand how that community operates, and are not able to meet that community’s needs in an effective way.”

“We are not taken into account when public policies are being built.”

The need to support initiatives led by people with lived experience, with the awareness they bring to intersecting needs, was a central message throughout HR25—including centering Indigenous-led initiatives.

“We are not taken into account when public policies are being built,” said Luz Mery Panche Chocué, an Indigenous leader from Colombia’s Amazonian territory of Caquetá, in her plenary speech. Saying that Indigenous communities have begun to work their way into participating in policy spaces, she continued that, “if we are going to talk about experts, then really the experts in the care of the Amazon rainforest are the native peoples [translated from Spanish].”

Luz Mery Panche Chocué giving her speech at HR25

“When we talk about peace and justice in relation to drug policy,” said Dandara Rudsan of the Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy in Brazil (pictured top), in her plenary address, “we must directly face the truth that it will not be possible to achieve a state of peace and justice without guaranteeing the right to land, without agrarian reform, and without the direct participation of traditional communities and peoples in the development of policies [translated from Portuguese].”

“It’s time now [for people who use drugs] to be presented as partners in the field of harm reduction,” Said told Filter. “If you present us as partners, you attract possibility, you attract resources. If you represent us like a patient, you attract punishment and you attract vulnerability, and you attract the stereotyping part of it.”

“People who use drugs are no longer sick people,” he emphasized. “They are just partners. They are just equal leaders that can lead. They can lead the movement. They can work with other stakeholders with different expertise.”

All photographs by Anna Wilcox

The post Optimism But Severe Harm Reduction Challenges Reflected at HR25 appeared first on Filter.

On March 14, Rhode Island became the latest state to introduce a sex work decrim bill. S0810 would repeal large portions of state law criminalizing “commercial sexual activity.” But it also would add human trafficking as a racketeering activity, a category of criminalized activity that in Rhode Island currently comprises “any act or threat involving” murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, larceny, prostitution, felony drug distribution or child exploitation. The bill would remove “prostitution,” and swap in “human trafficking” in its stead.

Similarly, the legal parameters of child abuse would no longer include any actions by a caretaker that “allows, permits or encourages the child to engage in prostitution.” Instead, it would include anything that “[s]ubjects or allows the child to be subjected to any of the … human trafficking offenses.”

By March 18 the bill had already appeared stalled, as a Senate committee recommended it “be held for further study.”

No state has decriminalized both the purchase and provision of consensual sex.

Sex work is consensual. Sex trafficking, by contrast, involves force or coercion. But those lines are not always black and white, and it’s very easy for law enforcement to capitalize on that and arrest people doing survival sex work—often trans women of color—charge them with trafficking and make it sound like victims of actual trafficking had been rescued. Human trafficking is a real and serious problem, but many people being prosecuted for it are sex workers who are neither forced to do that work nor forcing anyone else to do it.

In Illinois, which previously downgraded sex work from a felony to a misdemeanor, multiple proposals related to criminal penalties around sex work have been sitting in the House since mid-February. One would repeal the statutes criminalizing “prostitution,” and create a pathway for record expungement. Another would create a Sex Workers’ Bill of Rights Act under which people in the sex trade would receive the same labor protections the state extends to other workers, including minimum wage and workers’ compensation.

But those aren’t the only ones. Another bill proposed in February would make people facing human trafficking charges ineligible for pretrial release, meaning they’d sit in jail for months or even years before going to court. Under another proposal, people facing charges involving human trafficking or grooming of a minor would be ineligible for plea deals—people facing those charges wouldn’t be allowed to serve time for anything less serious instead. Prosecutors wouldn’t even be allowed to offer them a deal. And another bill would introduce mandatory minimums for human trafficking, in some cases up to 60 years.

Most sex workers I’ve known would be best described as “self-employed entrepreneurs.”

Maine partially decriminalized sex work in 2023, and Nevada has exemptions for brothels, but no state has decriminalized both the purchase and provision of consensual sex.

When I was doing survival sex work in Baltimore as a minor, it’s true that I was in desperate circumstances but I was also capitalizing on my sexual appeal by choice. I didn’t have a pimp. I wasn’t being “groomed” at that time, nor were the girls I was working with. We were in the trade of our own volition. But the vast majority of my adult life so far has been spent behind bars because I was prosecuted not for sex work, but for sex trafficking—I was arrested at 19 working with another trans girl who was 17.

Most sex workers I’ve known would be best described as “self-employed entrepreneurs.” Some sex workers are in objectively desperate circumstances, but that isn’t the only reason people work in the trade. If someone can make, even charging on the low end, $250 or maybe $300 for 30 minutes of work—or $400 for one hour‚ that’s a couple of days’ worth of work at pretty much any other job. Painting all sex workers as victims erases the reality that people have good reason for choosing the work even when they had other options.

Anyone under 18 who engages in sex work of their own volition cannot legally consent and is automatically a “trafficking victim.” Yet many underage sex workers who enter the trade by choice—not all of them, but many of them—do so because of their circumstances, because the government has in some way failed to protect them and left them to fend for themselves.

Image (cropped) via Federal Bureau of Investigation

The post States Move to Decrim Sex Work, But Add On “Human Trafficking” Penalties appeared first on Filter.

“I’m really proud of the work that’s being done here in Rhode Island,” Ashley Perry, PWR’s deputy director and OPC co-director, told Filter.

“None of this would have been possible without our strong peer workforce,” she continued, referring to their role in the advocacy coalition behind the OPC legislation—“a lot of people who are running recovery centers, a lot of people who are in recovery, but also a lot of harm reductionists. A lot of people have shifted their very recovery-focused work to look at harm reduction. If it weren’t for these [advocacy] forums, I’m not sure that we would have an overdose prevention center.”

At the site, next to the Rhode Island Hospital, people can use the drugs they bring in, with overdose-prevention resources and trained staff on hand to ensure their safety. PWR also provides harm reduction supplies and education, a drug-checking service and basic needs like food and clothing. VICTA, an opioid treatment provider (OTP), performs some medical, nursing and behavioral health services there, and can make referrals to methadone and Suboxone programs at its separate location in the vicinity. Substance use treatment is available on demand, but not pushed on anyone.

“It’s very low-barrier. Somebody could just come in through the front door. They’d do an intake, and be able to do whatever they have to do.”

“We are the only OTP, I think, in Rhode Island that supports the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act, which would allow any board-certified addiction medicine provider to write a [methadone] prescription to be filled at a pharmacy,” VICTA Chief Operating Officer Lisa Peterson told Filter. “There’s a lot of backlash in the OTP community around that, but I think this is a lifesaving drug … And I think that we help perpetuate the discrimination that’s occurring by continuing to insist that we’re the only ones who should manage this.”

Even so soon after the OPC opened, PWR, VICTA and other advocates are working with lawmakers in hopes of removing a sunset clause in the Rhode Island legislation that authorized the sites—a ticking time bomb that could potentially end operations by March 2026.

“It’s going to take a lot of data and proof that it works,” Katelyn Berthiaume, prevention coordinator at Aids Care Ocean State, told Filter. “That’s one thing that I wish weren’t so strict because to see change takes time.”

Over 35 years of data already show how OPC save lives and bring other health benefits to people who use drugs and their communities; more research will focus on outcomes at the Rhode Island OPC and two sites that were sanctioned by New York City in 2021.

I visited the Rhode Island OPC and interviewed its co-director, Ashley Perry, in early February. You can see part of our interview in the video above. In the rest (which has been edited for length and clarity), we discussed the genesis of the site, its early operations and the needs of the people who use it.  

Marilena Marchetti: How was the opening?

Ashley Perry: It’s been a crazy two-and-a-half weeks, to say the least. It took us a very long time to get here. Already we’ve served close to 70 people. 

MM: What’s the process for people coming to use the OPC?

AP: There’s really not a process—it’s very low-barrier. Somebody could just come in through the front door and tell somebody they want to go up to the OPC [on the second floor]. They’d come up here, do an intake, and be able to do whatever they have to do.

Currently, we have six staffers that are dedicated to the overdose prevention center. Our hours are 9 to 5. We’re able to have up to 16 participants at a time. We have eight booths for any other method of use that’s not inhalation. And then we have two inhalation rooms, each one having four people at a time.

“It’s really a mix of demographics. We see a lot of sex workers here. We see a lot of the LGBTQ population.”

MM: Who does your new OPC serve? 

AP: It’s really a mix of demographics in terms of race, ethnicity and gender identity. Project Weber/RENEW started off as a small sex worker organization. We see a lot of sex workers here. We’re actually home to the only drop-in center specifically for male sex workers. So we see a lot of the LGBTQ population and a lot of trans individuals.

Right now, it’s still too early to tell [how many participants the OPC will ultimately have], but as a whole Project Weber/RENEW serves 6,000 people a year. Here in our Providence office, we serve about 3,000 people a year.  

MM: Your site is soon going to have a drug-checking machine for anyone to use. Is drug checking a priority for your participants? 

AP: With drug checking, a lot of harm reductionists feel like we missed the mark on that. We should have started drug checking for people when we started seeing fentanyl and xylazine coming on. Now people already have tolerance to these drugs, people are already addicted to them.

So for some people, no. For some people, yes. Some people will come in who are recreational users, who really want to test whatever they’re going to take to a party or take to a rave. Rhode Island has a big college scene, and we know that we have tons of college kids who come out for things like fentanyl test strips. And a lot of people are seeking out things like psilocybin test strips.

The population looking for drug checking is different from those we normally serve. The drug checking will be on the first floor to make it low-barrier for people. People going up to the OPC won’t be required to use it.

We’re partnering with COBRE; they’re going to provide us with a machine, and they’ve been training our staff on how to run it, so it’s very exciting and beneficial to us.

“What’s always in the highest demand is just safe spaces. A lot of our people are really struggling out on the streets. Homelessness in our state has nearly tripled.”

 

MM: Which service is in the highest demand, or has growing demand?

AP: What’s always in the highest demand is just safe spaces for people. Somewhere where people can come in and get something warm to eat. A lot of our people are really struggling out on the streets. Homelessness in our state has nearly tripled in the past few years. We have more shelter than ever, but it’s still not enough. And many times, the people that we serve, people who use drugs, are really left out of that.

When you go downstairs after this, you’ll probably see a bunch of people sleeping on our couches and cots, because they haven’t slept all night. We really see a war on homelessness in our city as a whole. People are going deeper and deeper into the woods so they won’t be kicked out of places. We see all the time: People get kicked out of encampments and then they die.

Even though we have this overdose prevention center it’s still about getting Narcan to the people who need it most, getting education to the people that need it most. Over the past few years it has gotten extremely challenging to be able to do that. In some of our neighboring cities, they just passed ordinances to be able to arrest people who are homeless on state or city property. And then here in Providence they’re allowing us to have an OPC. But our work in Pawtucket is constantly being attacked by law enforcement out there. Everywhere we go it’s something different.

MM: How is your relationship with the police here? 

AP: Our police chief here actually used to be on our board at one time. I will not say that the police here are perfect, because they’re not. But for the most part, they don’t want to arrest people for petty crimes of having a crack pipe in their pocket.

Our police in Providence have listened to us on these matters. Maybe not on some other matters. Yesterday, the police chief and the mayor were both here giving mayors from all across New England a tour. Some of the other police chiefs were asking our one how police feel about this. Our chief was like, “These people have a great reputation in the community … I’m proud that we’re able to support this work.” So I’m hoping that our relationship will continue to build in that way of them referring people to us, versus them bringing people to prison for things that we know people shouldn’t go to prison for.

I can’t believe that me as a person is saying this—I’ve been arrested by Providence police a number of times. But they’re trying to do things differently, and I appreciate them trying to have an open mind. As we know, what we’ve been doing for decades hasn’t been working.

“I would never anticipate opening an OPC and getting city council approval in almost any other city in Rhode Island right now.”

MM: Why is Rhode Island the first state to sanction OPC, and Providence the first Rhode Island city to open one?

AP: First of all, we have a mayor who is in recovery. We have a mayor who understands this work. Here we have city councilors who believe in the work that we do. They believe that we’re out here saving people’s lives. They see it when they’re visiting encampments.

We [PWR] have been here now for 13 years. Whether we were wearing backpacks [with harm reduction supplies] or had drop-In centers. So I think that here in Providence, we’ve really built a reputation for ourselves. We have good leadership here who believe in research and believe in real things. That’s critical for us.

We don’t have that same leadership in other places. I would never anticipate opening an overdose prevention center and getting city council approval in almost any other city in Rhode Island right now.

When the bill for this OPC passed, the mayor of Woonsocket floated a resolution to ban OPCs from ever opening in the city. Today they’re the number one overdose hotspot in Rhode Island. Bad leadership does not believe in science, does not believe in facts.

MM: Your site is part of a medical campus with Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University Health. What factors went into choosing this location?

AP: One of the biggest things is that we need actual City Council approval for any location that we have. We came across other locations that just maybe weren’t the best locations for the neighbors. We definitely wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to open up a space that people were going to be objecting to on day one.

The hospital is actually making a lot of referrals to us, so people are just coming straight from there, sometimes if they went to the emergency room for an overdose. Some referrals are for frequent fliers who go to the ER just to sleep.

The hospital will make a referral to us and discharge people in the morning when we open. It’s not necessarily just for the OPC, but also the wraparound services that we provide like basic case management, HIV testing, support groups and connections to care and housing. Most of the time when people who use drugs or even people who are just experiencing homelessness are sitting in emergency rooms, it’s just because they need somewhere safe to be.

Our original drop-in center that was just for male sex workers was just up the street before. So a lot of people think that there’s not a lot of foot traffic here, but that’s not the truth. A block away from here is actually where a lot of nightlife happens. It’s where a lot of our strip clubs are. It’s where the male strip is. So that’s where a lot of our male sex workers are working.

And then a block over, on the opposite side, is where we see a lot of female sex workers working. So we really are in the center of everything. But if you’re not familiar, you may not know that. I think people anticipate to see a lot of panhandling and things like that in the streets. Here in Rhode Island, I think it’s kind of discreet. We have a lot of hustlers who are actually engaging in sex work or other things and if you don’t know, you don’t know.

“I’m hoping down the line to have basic primary care, whatever that may look like. A lot of times our people are not connected to primary care.”  

MM: Your clinical partner, VICTA, is an opioid treatment provider that runs methadone clinics. What’s that partnership like?

AP: We don’t have a methadone clinic here, but VICTA does have an office space downstairs. There’s a behavioral clinician there who figures out a person’s overall health condition. There’s a full-time nurse there. We’re partnering with them to provide the medical services that we as a  team cannot provide including basic wound care and antibiotics. They’re an amazing OTP,  really doing a lot of cutting-edge work at their home methadone clinic on Elmwood Avenue. I’m extremely proud to be able to work with them.

We already know that there’s so many issues with methadone as it is, but we’re really trying to fill in those gaps. So if somebody comes in today and wants to get put on methadone, we can drive them to VICTA’s Elmwood location and they can be put on methadone the same day. They are being very flexible with us, and that is what health care and harm reduction needs to look like.

We’re not at a stage where we have to bill for services yet. We have this amazing grant through opioid settlement funds where we’re able to pay for our providers’ time, for at least this year, without having to bill. They can take the time to really build relationships with people in this community. I’m extremely proud of that because that’s what we need to do right now.

VICTA does hep C treatment here. It’s very new, so we haven’t enrolled anyone in the program yet. I’m hoping down the line to have basic primary care for people, whatever that may look like, whatever people need. A lot of times our people are not connected to primary care.  

MM: VICTA seems like an outlier among opioid treatment providers, with respect for harm reduction and the agency of people who use drugs.  

AP: There’s a long history of VICTA wanting to come in and do things differently. Their COO [Lisa Peterson] was actually one of the people to really push [the OPC] bill forward and really is a harm reductionist. She wants to see that harm reduction work is happening. They really focus on holistic care, not punishment. They’re not just trying to keep people on methadone their whole life.

We have a bunch of methadone clinics here, but two of them are overdose hotspots. What’s happening is that people are still using drugs and using methadone because we’re not giving people a high enough dose so they can stay off fentanyl. And the clinics are so uptight about split dosing.

Methadone is supposed to be the gold standard for harm reduction treatment, but the reality is it’s not patient-centered around what the person actually needs. I’ve seen it over and over again: People will come in and say, “Oh, I take the methadone, but by 2 in the afternoon I’m really all over the place.”

Give them a freaking split dose, you know! Give them two doses! People are still using right outside and dying outside of methadone clinics. That’s not just here, that’s nationwide. It’s time to say, why? Why is this happening? But it’s often not a thing that we talk about, because methadone clinics are the moneymaker for a lot of states.

“The thing I keep telling everybody is that harm reduction has always been hard. This fight was never easy, it’s not made for the week.”

MM: What’s next for Rhode Island? Could the state decriminalize drugs, like Oregon did? 

AP: Total drug decriminalization is what I and many other people on my team want. Maybe not in the next couple of years, but maybe down the line. I think that this is going to be an experiment for a lot of people, to see if it’s going to work—which we know it will. It’s really reassuring our lawmakers that this can happen here. And then it’s saying, “Okay, this is what we need to do not just for Providence, but for all of Rhode Island.”

So we’re making a lot of progress. It’s just about the timing, I believe, of when we’re trying to make that progress.

The thing I keep telling everybody is that harm reduction has always been hard. This fight was never easy, it’s not made for the week. And we gotta get through some way, somehow. This time we just need to hold each other up. We’re going to keep on keeping on.

The post Inside Rhode Island’s Pioneering Overdose Prevention Center appeared first on Filter.

Just about everyone who makes it out of Georgia’s prisons has to serve time on probation. The norm for felony convictions in the state is a “split sentence,” where the time you spend in prison is only the first phase of your punishment. Christy, for example, will complete her 14-year prison sentence in early 2025, upon which she’ll begin serving her 16 years on probation.

While parole is a form of early release from prison, probation—under more traditional sentencing practices, anyway—is ostensibly a jail-alternative that avoids incarcerating someone in the first place. During a probation sentence you’re still under correctional control, but serving it out in the community rather than in jail or prison. 

Nearly 200,000 people in Georgia are on felony probation. That’s a higher proportion than in any other state, and about three times higher than the national average. Elsewhere, felony probation usually lasts around two years; most states have caps that keep it under five years. Georgia has no caps.

You can spend up to four months in a Georgia county jail if you fall behind on your probation fines and fees, and up to two years in jail for any other technical violation—meaning you were arrested not for violating a law, but rather a condition of your probation. No matter how unjust the circumstances, most people end up signing a waiver stating that they’re guilty so they can take whatever deal is offered. Trying to fight it just drags out the time spent sitting in jail, and that time does not necessarily count toward your probation.

In some ways, the probation system is more insidious.

The clock stops the moment you’re arrested, and you only get it back if a judge or hearing officer decides to release you with credit for time served. For many, probation is such that every couple of years the state lengthens their sentence by a couple of months. Georgia keeps people on probation their whole lives this way.

For Christy, who’s currently sitting in jail on a technical violation of her parole—not probation—not signing the waiver makes sense. She has only a few months left on her sentence, and is safer staying where she is than being sent back into the prison system. But this situation is not common, and like thousands of others across the state she’ll be navigating the conditions of probation many times longer than for parole.

Probation is thought of as less serious than parole because it’s associated with jail rather than prison, but in some ways it’s the more insidious system of the two. It follows people into middle or old age, clawing away at their lives a few pieces at a time—four months in jail here, eight months there, and so on.

After their first year on probation some people are moved to unsupervised status, where they’re not assigned to a probation officer and more or less left alone unless they catch a new charge. And since 2021, people on felony probation in Georgia can petition for early termination after three years, provided they meet certain conditions. But any decrease in supervision is rarely considered for anyone on a sex offender registry, meaning these are unlikely for Christy and the many other trans women across the state being punished for survival sex work.

So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has Probation Detention Centers.

Because the sex offender registry adds special conditions to probation, for the next 16 years Christy can be thrown back in jail for entirely legal conduct like missing curfew, driving alone or renting a post-office box that her probation officer didn’t approve. 

Though the United States Constitution does not allow people to be punished more than once for the same conviction, under Georgia law that’s exactly what happens. Christy was 19 when she was arrested with another trans sex worker who was 17; had they been the same age this might have been a misdemeanor. After two years in county jail and then 11 years in the men’s prison system, she’s now in county jail again because under Georgia’s criminal-legal system she can be arrested for getting her tits out while inside her own home. Which will be just as true on probation as on parole.

Probation is not an alternative to incarceration. It’s a deferment, an extension, a way of ensuring that anyone under correctional control stays there. It’s a mechanism for keeping people in poverty; nationally, the majority of people on probation have incomes under $20,000 a year.

So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has seven Probation Detention Centers—”highly structured minimum-security facilit[ies] with regimented schedules that include supervised, unpaid work in surrounding communities.” They’re operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. People can be sent there because their probation was revoked, but they can also be sent there directly from sentencing. Remember, this is not incarceration. This is an alternative.

Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube

The post Georgia Probation Is an Alternative to Something, But Not Jail appeared first on Filter.

“So, here is the gig—I make porn videos. I pay a one-time flat rate of $100 to everyone who is willing to perform sex on camera … if you got hang-ups and issues, this thing ain’t for you. I don’t write scripts. But I will read one if you have an idea.”

One of the three men asks what kind of sex he’d be performing. P asks what kind of sex he’s into.

“Blowjobs,” the man responds. “Getting them, not giving.”

P addresses the others: “Anyone want to suck a dick?”

Hands go up.

Condoms and workplace safety aren’t exactly part of the discussion. Consent is barely part of the discussion.

After the shoot, P will edit the footage to the appropriate length and aesthetic, then upload it onto various websites. A look at just one of them shows more than 600,000 subscribers at $20 each.

Prison-themed porn is nothing new, but most of it is produced on a set rather than in actual cells, dorms, shower rooms. People pay for authenticity.

“Now, if I could get an officer to have sex on video in uniform, I would pay his or her bail and legal fees,” P told Filter. “Well, to an extent; I’d pay for a no-jail plea bargain. I mean, a clearly criminal act caught on video—that’s going to work out as a profit at the end of day.”  

GDC regulations, like those of corrections departments across the United States, “prohibit any form of sexual activity”; we’re not even allowed to masturbate. Nor are we allowed to incentivize anyone else to have sexual contact of any kind.

Also on the list of things we’re not allowed to do: have cell phones, use the internet, “conduct business activity” or look at sexually explicit materials—online or otherwise. You might assume that all of this means prisoners are not producing and distributing their own porn videos on the premises, but this is made possible by understaffing.

From a purely disciplinary standpoint, any of the above can get you sent to the hole. This is something of an occupational hazard for P, whose name has been changed for his protection. But hundreds of thousands of subscribers make the gig lucrative enough to be worth it.

For the actors themselves, the pay is finite and the risks are greater. In the same way that corrections departments like to pretend no one in prison uses drugs, they like to pretend no one in prison is having sex. So while porn shoots outside prison may discuss things like condoms and workplace safety, they aren’t exactly part of the discussion here. Consent is barely part of the discussion here.

Yet for many of the prisoners who end up starring in the vids, $100 is a better offer than they’d get for sex off-camera.

“Okay, I didn’t make them poor,” P retorted when I raise the issue of exploitation. “I did not go out, capture beautiful young men on the streets, enslave them in prisons, and feed them so little that they have to hustle at something to survive. All I have done is realize a marketable opportunity, and employ almost anyone willing to do the work.”

He described a list of gifted stars, and a different, longer list of people who want him to call them. “Some just get in once,” he said. “Some are so bad I just can’t use the vid. If I see a vid going bad, I just cut it off.”

What defines “going bad?”

“When someone has 8 inches of penis in their anus and wants to stop, but the other party doesn’t. Then it has become a different thing, and I walk away,” he answered.

Doesn’t he feel any responsibility for enabling rape?

“I send them the money and I walk away. I’m not giving either of them a second chance, though. People ease up on me every day wanting to work for me. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything.”

After our interview, P shot several more vids at this facility before he was transferred. While still in the hole at his new facility he’ll buy a new phone, line up new actors and contract with whichever gang is in power over there to provide security. A new vid will appear online, most likely shot in the shower of an open dorm while most residents are at chow, probably the first day he’s out of segregation.

Top photograph (cropped) via Hall County Department of Corrections. Inset image (cropped) via Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia/Facebook

The post “Ethical Porn” Probably Doesn’t Mean the Porn We’re Producing in Prison appeared first on Filter.

I found community on the street with other LGBTQ people, most of them with backgrounds like mine. I met witty, clever older trans women who could talk shit like sharp shooters from the Wild West. They taught me that there would always be people who’d try to control my body, try to reap the benefits for themselves regardless of what I wanted. That people would want to use my butthole, to put it succinctly, so I could charge entry or I could let them hang out for free.

It’s easy to assume I was being “groomed,” but that’s not what was happening. I learned that there was power in the marketing and sale of my own body, my own presence, my own company. It was cathartic in a way; it almost felt like reclaiming some control over my trauma from childhood abuse. Sex work wasn’t always voluntary, but much of the time it was.

Even at that very young age, we saw sex work as liberation. We saw sex work as survival. We saw sex work as power. And we saw sex work as a way to have a good time, because with all the things that a lot of us had been through, we understood that life was fleeting.

When I was arrested at 19, I was working with a white trans girl who happened to be 17—I didn’t know that, but I’d be lying if I said I’d have done anything differently. Had we been the same age, it would have been a misdemeanor. But the way media and law enforcement told it, all of a sudden I was a killer pimp drag queen, grooming America’s innocent youth. I was charged with multiple counts of human trafficking, ended up taking a plea deal for pimping and pandering of a minor and sexual exploitation of a minor, was sent into the men’s prison system, and paroled out at age 32 to begin navigating the hurdles of the sex offender registry.

The cops who arrested us had found a crack pipe, so the prosecutor also said I’d gotten my victim addicted to drugs to coerce her.

There were different factors that played a role. Back then I was an up-and-coming entertainer in the young gay Atlanta scene, which made the story more salacious and lurid. And a bunch of us were living in this big house with an older landlord, who had a lot of young boyfriends. We weren’t involved in each other’s business at all, other than him being my landlord, but legally our cases became linked under a part of Georgia hearsay law known as res gestae. Essentially, this makes evidence from one case admissible in another, if it involves similar conduct and occurred around the same place or time period. And of course, I’m Afro-Latina and the girl I was working with was white.

I’ll never forget the prosecutor during my plea hearing. She got up and told everyone how I wanted people to think I was a victim too, but in reality I was a very conniving and calculating predator who targeted vulnerable youth intending to turn them out as prostitutes. The cops who arrested us had found a crack pipe, so the prosecutor also said I’d gotten my victim addicted to drugs to coerce her and feed my own habit. They made it sound like I was keeping multiple 5-year-olds chained up in a basement, even though my charges only ever said I had one victim and we were only two years apart in age.

Arbitrary distinctions make people out as either victims who need help, or predators who target America’s children.

During the two years I sat in county jail fighting my case, no one ever cared that I’d once been trafficked myself. Reporters didn’t even get my name right, let alone ask for my side of my own story.

A decade and a half ago, the media portrayed human trafficking as something that happened in faraway countries. But today, the national narrative is that sex workers were all victims who’ve been abducted and are waiting to be saved by law enforcement.

When you read a headline that says multiple underage victims were rescued in a successful anti-human trafficking sting, resulting in multiple arrests, what actually happened is quite likely to be a story more like mine. It’s the same kind of narrative applied to illicit drugs, where arbitrary distinctions make people out as either victims who need help, or predators who target America’s children. When in reality, those people were often all doing the same thing, and just trying to get by rather than hurt anyone.

The idea that all sex work is born of sheer desperation, that all sex workers are trafficking victims, is a lie that exists to further attack and stigmatize disenfranchised communities of color. People who use sex work to survive, so many of whom are trans women of color, often find a lot of freedom in it. People who choose sex work also were rarely choosing from an endless list of other options. Those truths can exist at the same time.

Image via United States Customs and Border Protection

The post Sex Workers Are “Trafficking Victims” Until Cops Don’t Want Them to Be appeared first on Filter.

I have three degrees, and two jobs where they don’t matter. In the little time I have to myself I do freelance work, and still struggle to make ends meet. A struggle felt by many, but especially by those of us laboring under the restrictions of parole and the sex offender registry.

I earned my degrees in prison. I was arrested at 19 while doing survival sex work, and prosecutors used my trans identity and the fact that I was using drugs at that time to escalate the charges. I spent 13 years incarcerated before my release in 2023. The irony is that now, I think back on sex work as something that represents financial stability.

After spending essentially my whole adult life in prison, the very last thing I want is to do anything that risks being sent back. Sex work would certainly be a violation of my parole. But so would not being able to keep up with the hundreds of dollars per month it costs to be on the registry, on top of the usual expenses like rent and medical debt. Mandatory polygraphs and weekly rehabilitation classes are just a few of the expenses.

So there’s a Catch-22. In order to not break the law, I need income that’s sufficiently above minimum wage and that doesn’t involve background checks or 1,000-foot distance restrictions. But the options that fit that description are not legal.

They said I was perfect for the job and would be reaching out shortly about my start date—just as soon as they ran a standard background check.

I’ve applied, and interviewed for, dozens of jobs where my past ultimately outweighed my qualifications. For example, I did two interviews and passed a data specialist exam to work for a nonprofit where I’d focus my time and energy on increasing turnout among Black voters. I would have made $19 an hour with benefits and the potential to increase to $24 an hour. Eventually I was told that my record disqualified me for the position.

The hiring manager at a plastics company told me I seemed perfect for their bilingual area supervisor position. I’d have made $22 an hour with benefits and the potential for $28 an hour. They loved my enthusiasm, they’d be reaching out shortly about my start date, they just had to do some standard background check stuff first. Figuring it was best to be proactive, I explained my criminal-legal history and gave a little speech about how I’ve come a long way. They were polite and said hopefully it wouldn’t be a problem. After a week with no news, I called them to learn the legal department had put a hold on my hire and they’d ended up going with someone else. 

So Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 5:30 pm, I’m a quality control team leader for an auto parts manufacturer. I make $16 an hour through a contractor. I could make $20 an hour if the auto company brought me on as staff, which the contractor has implied won’t happen because of my record. On the weekends, I work anywhere between four and eight hours doing events for a window company, which is also $16 an hour, plus commission. That entire second job might go toward registry fees, if it’s one of the months when I’m required to take a polygraph.

If I was arrested for solicitation, I would be automatically held without bail because I’m on parole.

Even with just a handful of appointments per week, sex work would bring a dramatic increase to my financial stability. I could save for the future, rather than just survive. But the system is set up so that the same people pushed toward sex work are the people punished more severely for it than everyone else.

If I were arrested on misdemeanor solicitation charges, I would automatically be held without bail because I’m on parole through 2025. My parole officer would likely visit me in jail, once, after a few weeks or maybe months. Any contact with law enforcement is grounds for revocation of parole, but especially a new charge. So once the case was resolved, regardless of whether or not I was convicted, I’d be shipped back to the Georgia Department of Corrections to continue serving the sentence I got for doing sex work when I was 19. None of the time I saw in county jail would count.

Additionally, as someone on the sex offender registry, especially considering that my conviction was related to sex work, I would be classified as a recidivist under state law—like I’d “relapsed” into the illegal behavior as before.

I’m well aware of the physical and legal risks of sex work, and I have every intention of continuing to stay out of prison by legal means only. But it’s hard not to yearn for independence, and a little of my personal time being restored. As it is I can’t afford my freedom, let alone enjoy it.

Image via Court News Ohio

The post What Options Does the Sex Offender Registry Leave Us, If Not Sex Work? appeared first on Filter.

The lawsuit against the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) was filed in July 2023, by a former Memphis police officer under the name “John Doe.” He claimed that the department rescinded his job offer after learning his status, even after a medical provider attested to the fact that that Doe’s suppressed viral load meant he could not transmit the virus to others and therefore his HIV did not present any danger to the public. The MNPD paid out a $145,000 settlement for violating the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and updated its civil service policies accordingly. 

In October 2023, a different federal lawsuit filed against Tennessee alleged that the state’s “aggravated prostitution” statute violated the ADA by discriminating against people living with HIV. The statute imposes harsher criminal penalties on sex workers if they are known to be living with HIV, making their charge a felony rather than the misdemeanor it is for everyone else. On February 15, following an investigation, the Department of Justice also sued Tennessee for violating the ADA by enforcing the statute.

In the 1980s, many states began passing laws criminalizing people living with HIV. Tennessee, however, is the only state in which people with HIV convicted for engaging in sex work are required to register as “violent sex offenders.” The registry is lifelong. 

HIV today is considered a chronic illness, rather than a terminal one. Antiretroviral medications make someone’s viral load undetectable, which means it’s untransmittable to others. This has been widely publicized by the federal U=U campaign.

The fact that someone was taking antiretroviral medication would not have stopped Tennessee from convicting them of “aggravated prostitution.” These laws purport to be about the threat of HIV transmission, but really they criminalize HIV status itself. They don’t require any transmission or even physical contact to have occurred in order for someone to be prosecuted.

The MNPD lawsuit garnered a lot of attention because media is always quick to rush to the defense of cops, and John Doe was a former Memphis “Officer of the Year.”

“There are many concerning aspects of this discriminatory policy but a particular one is the racial aspect,” Jose Abrigo, HIV project director at Lambda Legal, the firm representing John Doe, stated in 2023. “The MNPD’s discriminatory policy clearly has a disproportionate impact on Black people and people of color. Discriminating on the basis of HIV status brings up other potential intersectional issues of race, gender, sexual orientation and, of course, stigma.”

HIV criminalization laws have always disproportionately been wielded against Black people; Brown people; queer people; trans people. Sex offender registries bar people from housing and employment opportunities for the rest of their lives. Nashville has been the site of most of the enforcement of Tennessee’s “aggravated prostitution” statute. There certainly are many concerning aspects of MNPD discriminatory practices, but cops aren’t the ones suffering the most harm.

Top photograph via City of Minneapolis. Inset graphic via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The post HIV Rights Advance for Cops, Ahead of the Sex Workers They Criminalize appeared first on Filter.

There are countless ways this might happen. Someone who is doing sex work circumstantially could get connected with friends in the industry who support their professional development, thereby increasing their profit, safety and contentment with their work and moving them closer to “Choice” on the continuum.

Alternatively, sex work can help someone survive until they get a job that is a better fit for them, moving them off the continuum altogether. The lack of resources and access to resources inherent in circumstantial sex work mean that a person in this situation has increased exposure to infectious disease, violence, exploitation and arrest.

For example, while unprotected sex is nearly unheard of among higher-paid escorts, someone engaging in circumstantial sex work who has greater unmet needs, and therefore a necessity to take more clients and do more per session, may choose to take the risk.

This dynamic could also play out when negotiating sexual services with someone who isn’t willing to provide screening information—someone with fewer financial options might be willing to take this risk as well because of the pressing need for immediate income, putting them at infinitely higher risk of sexual assault, most often without recourse.

As laws pass across the United States that limit people’s ability to work anonymously online, many formerly choice-based sex workers are left with few options but to hit the streets, increasing their  chances of getting arrested or assaulted. These policies, often masked as anti-trafficking measures, actually increase these workers’ vulnerability to sex trafficking by making them targets.

In 2018, one study of 260 sex workers following the seizure of Backpage.com, a global adult advertising site, showed that 60 percent of sex workers reported an increase in advances and threats by someone looking to manage and potentially exploit or hurt them. By limiting the autonomy of sex workers, these laws create an environment ripe for exploitation and coercion.

Coercion and Trafficking

In the 3 Cs model, coercion refers to points and periods of time where someone has little to no autonomy over the work they do, and a third party is controlling their movements and resources. The presence of coercion does not automatically mean that trafficking is occurring, as coercion is much broader.

Trafficking is a legal definition for an experience of exploitation through force, fraud or coercion by a third party, which has multiple elements required for its proof. Similar to other issues of harm and injustice, trafficking is a legal limit that exists within a broader sphere, like the legal definition of rape exists within the broader scope of sexual assault or harm.

It is also important to note that coercion does not necessarily mean that the person being coerced does not have access to resources, as evidenced by Jasmine, a self-described sex trafficking survivor and advocate I spoke to who publicly shares her story of being pimped out from a mansion and driving a Mercedes that her pimp bought her. In many cases, despite being exploitative, a coercive situation meets a worker’s resource needs, and might be the best option out of a range of terrible options.

Original content by Kate D’Adamo, 2017; now part of Reframe Health and Justice’s trainings on sex work and harm reduction, 2018.

Choice, Circumstance and Coercion

The graphic above is a tool to help ascertain what constitutes coercion. The upper right quadrant represents a circumstance where someone can find, screen and see clients in the way they choose. They are in control of their circumstances, even if they have a manager or coworker. 

Exploitation includes everything below the horizontal line. Exploitation does not, however, automatically mean coercion. In her article, “Five Faces of Oppression,” Iris Young states:

Exploitation uses capitalism to oppress. The economic theory of capitalism states that people are free to exchange goods freely. Yet, whenever this has happened throughout history, it has created different classes of people: wealthy and poor … Therefore, exploitation creates a system that perpetuates class differences, keeping the rich richer and the poor poorer. 

The lower right quadrant represents a circumstance where another person is in full control of the worker’s situation, circumstances and how much money they make from trading sex. This might be a manager, partner or friend. This quadrant helps explain that not all third-party management is exploitative. 

Most forms of sex work that are currently legal in the United States put power in the hand of third-party management, as well as faith in these companies and managers to honor and protect workers’ bodies (though it’s worth noting that sometimes this doesn’t happen). Once legality is removed, there is an almost automatic assumption that underground third-party management is coercive or violent, but both these things can be true or not. 

The upper left quadrant of the graphic represents those workers with high autonomy, but low resources. An example of someone in this situation might include a single mom and exotic dancer struggling to make ends meet. She is worried that she might not make rent this month but has control over her schedule and a good club to work at. 

The lower left quadrant represents trafficking. Lack of resources is the primary trafficking vulnerability factor. Someone who doesn’t desperately need money is harder to trick or threaten into doing what you want.

After leaving an exploitative situation, someone might come back to the sex trade to work independently.

During my time working for an anti-trafficking agency between 2011-2014, I worked with many young adults who went in and out of homelessness. At some point, handfuls of them met someone who provided them housing (often this was a family member). 

For example, instead of paying rent, one of my participants, Nick, provided sex acts to clients that the person he was living with found for him. The person offering housing did all the negotiation, so Nick didn’t have much control over those interactions. After Nick made rent, he could keep everything else he made, but it wasn’t much. Nick had the option to leave, but then he would be living on the street again. 

Sometimes, someone’s entry into the sex trade is through coercive means, but after leaving the exploitative situation, that person comes back to the sex trade to work independently. Returning to the idea of the continuum of sex work as “set” in sex work, set, setting: The 3 Cs can be applied to someone’s entry into the sex trade, where they are at economically on the continuum generally, and where they are economically during a specific day or interaction within the sex trade. 

When considered as “set,” and combined with type of work and setting, it is easier to understand an individual or type of person’s needs—knowledge that is particularly helpful for professionals who are working directly with people in the sex trade or creating policies that impact people in the sex trade. 

This article is an adapted excerpt from the anthology Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work and Drug Use, which will be released by Synergetic Press on May 14, 2024.

Image courtesy of Synergetic Press

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