In 2017, the collaborative efforts of sex worker and anti-trafficking organisations and activists resulted in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (SFDA) and the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) issuing complimentary versions of the ‘Prioritizing Safety for Sex Workers Policy’. The policies state that if someone engaged in sex work, be it by choice, circumstances, or coercion, reports that they are the victim or witness of a violent crime, they will not be arrested or prosecuted for their involvement in the criminalised act of prostitution or any misdemeanour drug offenses. The policy broadly defines a violent crime to include acts like sexual assault, human trafficking, stalking, robbery, assault, kidnapping, threats, blackmail, extortion, and burglary.
Sex workers’ rights in San Francisco
San Francisco has a robust history of sex workers being involved in local politics. Indeed, the term ‘sex work’ was coined by Carol Leigh in San Francisco. The city is also the birthplace of COYOTE, the first sex worker rights organisation in the US, and the St. James Infirmary, the first peer-run clinic for sex workers in the US. The US PROStitutes Collective and the Exotic Dancers’ Alliance were also founded there. Some of the United States’ most well-known prostitution abolitionist efforts also originated in San Francisco. The now defunct Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, for example, was rooted in the beliefs that prostitution is exploitation, that no one would ever choose to engage in prostitution, and that the only way to respond to that exploitation was to try to eradicate the commercial sex industry. The still running ‘First Offender Prostitution Program’, created by SAGE, seeks to end demand by arresting men who are trying to solicit sex and sending them to a daylong educational programme. The programme has been replicated throughout the United States despite its well-documented problems.
The safety policy is a result of a collaborative effort that started in San Francisco in 2014. It began with a protest over an ‘end demand’ event held at the San Francisco Public Library. Organised by members of the Sex Worker Outreach Project and Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network, sex workers gathered to protest their exclusion from the event and to demand that they be included in all future conversations about the sex industry in the city. They argued that exclusion can lead to severe consequences for people who are selling sex, regardless of whether it is by choice, circumstances, or coercion. As a result of that protest, the Department on the Status of Women (DOSW) recognised the need to have sex workers and sex worker organisations at the table and began to meet with these groups.
