In Massachusetts, Sex Workers Get Charged and Clients Get Set Free

This flies in the face of one popular narrative.

It's fashionable for anti-prostitution activists to frame all sex workers as victims and to say it's really the people—generally men—paying for sex who should be punished. But in practice, sex workers still bear the brunt of punishment, according to an analysis by WBUR.

The Boston public radio station analyzed Massachusetts court data on prostitution hearings from 2020 through 2022. It found "disparities are common in how courts handle prostitution cases in Massachusetts, with justice often meted out more harshly for sellers than buyers."

Women Nearly Twice as Likely To Be Charged

In more than 200 closed-door hearings in Massachusetts criminal courts, men's cases were nearly twice as likely as women's cases to be dismissed, WBUR reports. Courts were also more likely to dismiss cases when those arrested had hired a lawyer. "People who hired a lawyer—mostly men—were also twice as likely to avoid charges," WBUR reports.

The hearings were "show cause" hearings, in which a clerk or magistrate decides whether there's sufficient evidence or need to bring charges against someone suspected of a minor crime. "Suspects are typically entitled to these hearings if they have been accused of a misdemeanor but were not arrested for the crime," WBUR explains. "Clerks are supposed to dismiss cases if police cannot produce enough evidence to show there is probable cause to charge someone with violating the law. They also have discretion to dismiss a case if they can facilitate an alternative resolution."

Of the 90 women on which WBUR found data, 63 were charged and just 27 escaped charges. Of the 129 men, 54 were charged and 75 saw their cases dismissed. In other words, just 30 percent of the women in question saw their charges dismissed, while around 58 percent of the men in question did.

The vast majority of the cases WBUR analyzed did not involve a lawyer. (The state is not obliged to provide counsel for show-cause hearings.) In the 213 cases with no lawyer, 121 led to charges and 92 did not.

In the cases where a lawyer was present, however, charges were more likely than not to be dismissed, with charges dismissed in 82 percent of such cases where a defendants' lawyer was present.

The Bigger Picture

The data presents a strange picture of prostitution cases in Massachusetts, with men seemingly more likely to be the targets of enforcement but less likely to actually face charges. This is interesting because, in recent years, police have been much more likely to publicize high-profile "john stings" than busts of people selling sex.

If other locales are anything like Massachusetts, the high-profile hubbub around sex-buyer busts could be masking a situation in which sex workers are still the main locus of prostitution punishment.

It's a subject ripe for reporters or researchers outside Massachusetts to explore, and something I definitely want to look into more in the future. To the extent that I thought about it at all, I've always assumed that the people being busted in prostitution stings roughly corresponded to the people being arrested or charged. WBUR's analysis suggests this may not be the case.

Just today, perusing news about prostitution stings turned up this story from last week: "A traffic stop on Hilton Head Island last week led to a rare arrest for prostitution. 'Officer discretion' landed the woman in jail while her client was able to drive away freely."

A spokesperson for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office told The Island Packet that the man wasn't arrested because he was very cooperative. But "the incident report shows multiple instances of the woman being forthcoming with police, answering questions about the details of the arrangement and advising deputies she had fentanyl in her pockets," the paper reports. "Despite this, [the spokesperson] says the woman was not cooperative with the investigation."

---

Follow-Up

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments today in several cases brought against a federal law targeting TikTok.

"The hearing consolidates three separate suits—one filed by TikTok and ByteDance, another by a group of eight content creators and the last on behalf of the media nonprofit BASED Politics," reports Politico. "All are asking the court to declare the legislation unconstitutional and to prevent Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing it."

I interviewed the BASEDPolitics defendants for this newsletter back in June. "Anyone who thinks TikTok is all just frivolous content is probably not a user," BASEDPolitics' Brad Polumbo told me. "There's substantive conversation happening on there on every issue under the sun, from religion to dating to politics." The suit filed by him and colleague Hannah Cox aims to highlight how policies banning TikTok would chill political speech.

More Sex & Tech News

• Must-read of the day: "Kamala Harris helped shut down Backpage.com. Sex workers are still feeling the fallout."

• "A judge vacated North Dakota's abortion ban in a [September 12] ruling, finding the law unconstitutionally vague and an infringement on medical freedom," The 19th reports.

• With Operation Underground Railroad—an anti–sex trafficking group on which the hit movie Sound of Freedom was loosely based—"Tim Ballard had fashioned himself into a made-for-Hollywood hero," notes The New York Times. "But while the world knew him as a champion of the vulnerable, many of the women he worked with now tell a much darker story: that Mr. Ballard himself was grooming, manipulating, harassing and sexually assaulting women."

• A peek inside Google's years-long mission to embody artificial intelligence showcases the difficulties inherent in creating humanoid robots.

• An ode to the Notes app.

Today's Image

Bushwick | 2013 (ENB/Reason)