Female homicide rate in U.S. dropped after Craigslist launched its erotic services platform

on October 21, 2017October 23, 2017 By mgd777

ThinkProgress. Noah Berlatsky

(CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES) A new study provides strong evidence that when law enforcement closes down sites like Craigslist or Redbook, women die. The September 2017 study, authored by West Virginia University and Baylor University economics and information systems experts, analyzes rates of female homicides in various cities before and after Craigslist opened an erotic services section on its website. The authors found a shocking 17 percent decrease in homicides with female victims after Craigslist erotic services were introduced.

The data does not provide a single clear explanation as to why female homicide rates drop so steeply, Scott Cunningham, one of the paper’s authors, told ThinkProgress. It’s possible, for example, that when Craigslist opens erotic services ads, some women in abusive domestic situations decide to become sex workers, move out, and so escape violent homicide at the hands of their spouses or boyfriends. The most likely explanation, though, Cunningham says, is that sex workers simply make up a huge percentage of female homicide victims. When sex workers are safer, female homicide rates drop significantly. Cunningham and the paper’s other authors, Gregory DeAngelo and John Tripp, analyzed online escort review sites in order to try document the movement of sex workers to indoor locations. They found that after Craigslist introduced erotic services pages, client reviewers mentioned lower prices and lower satisfaction — a sign that lower-priced street workers were moving indoors and receiving reviews for the first time. Once sex workers move indoors, they are much safer for a number of reasons, Cunningham said. When you’re indoors, “you can screen your clients more efficiently. When you’re soliciting a client on the street, there is no real screening opportunity. The sex worker just has to make the split second decision. She relies on very limited and complete information about the client’s identity and purposes. Whereas when a sex worker solicits indoors through digital means, she has Google, she has a lot of correspondence, she can ask a lot of questions. It’s not perfect screening, but it’s better.” There’s some evidence that other crimes are decreased by online advertising as well.

Kristen DiAngelo, executive director of the peer sex worker advocacy organization Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) Sacramento, pointed to a study conducted by the organization in 2015. Researchers interviewed 44 sex workers on the street and, of those workers, 18 percent said they had moved outdoors following the closing of SFRedbook. “Of that 18 percent, almost every one of them had been raped since they’d been out there,” DiAngelo told ThinkProgress. “We had been asking them ‘have you been raped?’ but there was a point where I wanted to say, ‘Have you been raped yet?’ because it was just that prevalent.” DiAngelo also believes that easy access to online ads makes trafficking less likely, rather than more likely. On the street, women are visible; it’s easy for pimps and traffickers to find them. Online, DiAngelo says, “women can run their own business and predators don’t have immediate access to them.”

Maxine Doogan, founder of the California-based Erotic Service Providers Union, added that online ad providers like Craigslist and Backpage also improve safety because they provide access to steadier work and more affluent clients. Shutting down the sites “makes people desperate for money,” she told ThinkProgress. One worker she knew had been forced to give up her apartment, and had to rely on a man for housing. “Restricting access to free advertising, it makes you have to rely on these unscrupulous people,” Doogan said. In theory, closing down advertising is supposed to reduce exploitation of women. In practice, when resources are taken away from people living on the edge of poverty, they have fewer options and are less able to protect themselves. For all these reasons access to the Internet can transform the experience of sex work.

Young women who have been able to screen clients using sites like Craigslist, “almost feel like this is a safe job because they have these tools,” DiAngelo said. Sex workers report that free online advertising makes them safer. There is now data showing that erotic services ads significantly decrease female homicide rates. So, will law enforcement back down and allow these sites to operate again?

Cunningham is not optimistic. “I don’t see a lot of policy change. Based on 10 years of research on my part, I think that the constraint on policy is that a significant majority of Americans simply find prostitution so repugnant that they don’t want to think about it,” he said.

Monroe is no longer working on the street. While the police were more interested in arresting her than helping her, she connected with SWOP Sacramento. The organization helped her leave her pimp. She has two daughters and is currently working at the post office. But she still vividly remembers how much less safe she became when Redbook shut down. The approach to sex work, Monroe argued, should be more like the approach to heroin addiction. “They tried everything they could to stop the heroin epidemic, but they couldn’t,” she said. “So why not pass out clean needles?”

Female homicide rate dropped after Craigslist launched its erotic services platform – ThinkProgress

https://thinkprogress.org/craigslist-erotic-services-platform-3eab46092717/amp/

2023 Community Support Line

2022 Jayne Swift Article:

Research shows that sex workers are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual violence at work. Globally, sex workers have a 45- 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job. Individual studies of sex work in the US confirm high rates of violence, often from law enforcement. Street workers (who are more likely to be of color, trans, and housing precarious), are especially vulnerable. One New York City-based study of street workers found that 80% had experienced violence and 30% reported violence or threats of violence from law enforcement. A similar study of indoor workers found that 46% had been victims of violence and 14% had experienced police violence. Migrants and LGBTQ sex workers are also more likely to encounter violence.

2023 December 17th

2023 Pre Covid Sx Work Stats

Fact Sheet: It should be noted that the Sex Worker community is largely unrecognized as a population. This is an injustice and impacts our ability to gather statistics about both our losses and our resiliency. Sex Workers as a demographic need to be recognized and supported and funded so that data can be accurately reflected.

2023 Letter from Dr. Annie

When Ridgeway was finally caught, I felt a need to memorialize my whore sisters that had died so horribly and needlessly. I cared, and I knew other people cared too. So I got together with Robyn Few, Founder of the Sex Worker Outreach Project, and SWOP members Stacey Swimme and Michael Fowley, and we claimed Dec. 17th as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. We invited people to do memorials, vigils, and their chosen kind of events in their countries and cities. We produced a vigil at San Francisco’s City Hall. To date, hundreds of people around the world have done dozens of memorials, actions, and events of all kinds, and the participation is growing. Won’t you join us?

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