to
index 
to Freedom
USAto
index to Freedom
USA
What is COYOTE?Margo St. James, Director
Priscilla Alexander, Education Coordinator
COYOTE was founded in 1973 to work for the repeal of the prostitution laws and an end to the stigma associated with sexual work. In addition to engaging in public education regarding a wide range of issues related to prostitution, COYOTE has provided crisis counseling, support groups, and referrals to legal and other service providers to thousands of prostitutes, mostly women. COYOTE members have also testified at government hearings, served as expert witnesses in trials, helped police with investigations of crimes against prostitutes, and provided sensitivity training to government and private non-profit agencies that provide services to prostitutes.
The laws prohibiting the soliciting or engaging in an act of prostitution, or patronizing a prostitute, should be repealed.
The laws against pimping (living off the earnings of a prostitute) and pandering (encouraging someone to work as a prostitute) should also be repealed, to be replaced with labor laws dealing with working conditions in third-party owned and managed prostitution businesses.
Commissions, a majority of whose members should be prostitutes or ex-prostitutes, including individuals who have worked on the street, in massage parlors and brothels, and for escort services, should develop guidelines for the operation of third-party owned and managed businesses, including but not limited to health and safety issues, commissions, and employer/employee relationships.
In 1973, the year COYOTE was founded, according to the Source book of Criminal Justice Statistics, 35,000 people were arrested in the United States on prostitution related charges, 75 percent of them women. In 1981, 106,600 people were arrested, 73 percent of them women. Consistently, about 54 percent of the people arrested have been Black. Of the men arrested for prostitution, about 40 percent are customers (10 percent of the total number of arrests) and about 60 percent are male prostitutes, mostly Black and/or transvestites (15 percent of the total).
An overwhelming majority of the women arrested for soliciting are street prostitutes (est. 85-90 percent), and virtually all of the customers are looking for street prostitutes. Since street prostitutes are estimated by COYOTE to be only about 10 percent of prostitutes, it is clear that the weight of the enforcement rests on the poorest of the prostitutes, those who work on the street.
In the last two years, there have been major.crackdowns in many cities on the West Coast, particularly before major events such as the Olympics in Los Angeles and the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. These crackdowns have been followed by an increase in street prostitution in other West Coast cities, as women moved to get away from the police harassment (which included driving women to remote areas of San Francisco and telling them to walk home, no arrests, no written record of the incidents). Interestingly enough, the pre-Olympics crackdown in Los Angeles, which resulted in a marked decrease in the number of street prostitutes for some months, was followed by a marked increase in the amount of business transacted in mostly male owned massage parlors and escort services.
Problems
Because prostitution is illegal, women and men who work in third party run prostitution businesses have no legal status as workers. Therefore, they are unlikely to have their income and social security taxes withheld, or to be provided with health, disability, and workers' compensation insurance, sick leave, vacation pay, etc.
Also due to the illegality of prostitution, and particularly the laws making pimping and pandering felonies, prostitution businesses, such as massage parlors and escort services, have to pretend that they are not involved in prostitution. Therefore, help wanted ads do not indicate the actual nature of the work, allowing for the possibility that some women may apply for and be hired to work for parlors and escort services without being fully aware of what the jobs entail. Moreover, many prostitution businesses require their employees to sign statements that they will not engage in prostitution, in order to protect management from pimping and pandering charges, even though prostitution is exactly what they are expected and required to do.
Solutions
The [criminal] laws regarding pimping and pandering, related statutes regarding "disorderly houses" and "red light abatement" acts should be repealed and replaced with already existing [civil] labor laws relating to working conditions, collective bargaining agreements dealing with commissions, salaries, benefits, etc.
The laws regarding the withholding of state and federal income taxes and social security taxes should be enforced in all third-party managed prostitution businesses, as well as the laws regarding contract as opposed to salaried workers. In addition, prostitution businesses should be able to provide workers' compensation and disability insurance for all employees, with disability and workers' compensation being granted to individuals who contract sexually transmitted diseases as a result of their employment, as well as those injured on the job.
Help wanted ads for jobs in sex-related businesses, including both prostitution and pornography, should be required to state that sexual activity is required or expected.
Disputes between management and employees should be referred to dispute resolution boards or prostitution commissions, as described above.
Problems
In this country, the most serious and pressing problem [street] prostitutes have is violence, including: rape, battery, and murder by customers; verbal and physical assault, and sometimes rape and murder, by police officers; and rape, battery, and sometimes murder by pimps.
We do not wish to imply that all customers, police, and pimps commit violence against prostitutes. However, the incidence appears to be directly related to the legal status of prostitution. The enactment of the prohibition in this country was followed by an immediate increase in the incidence of violence against prostitutes, as well as an increase in prostitutes' dependence on male pimps. A similar pattern was evident in Japan, which prohibited prostitution for the first time in 1952. On the other hand, countries that have decriminalized at least some aspects of prostitution have seen an immediate decrease in the amount of violence against prostitutes.
We believe that the prohibition of prostitution enshrines into law the view that prostitutes are bad women, and thus legitimate targets for abuse. In addition, when the primary role of police vis a vis prostitutes is to entrap them into soliciting an act of prostitution and then arrest them, their role as enforcers of the laws against rape and other violence is undermined. As a result, police tend to deal with violence against prostitutes less rigorously than other violence, and prostitutes are reluctant to go to police for help when they are assaulted.
One study of 200 street prostitutes in San Francisco found that 70 percent had been raped by clients, with an average of 31 rapes per prostitutes. In addition, at least one police officer in San Francisco, who has been on the vice squad for more than 10 years, has a street reputation for demanding fellatio before he arrests women for prostitution. Every city's prostitutes know at least one similar officer. Although there are usually avenues provided to file complaints against police who violate the law, prostitutes are loathe to file such complaints because to do so would mean they could never work in that city again. One prostitute who did file a corruption report against a police officer in San Diego was murdered shortly after the report. [Donna Gentile]
Serial murder of prostitutes has become a major problem in this country. In the last three years, more than 100 women have been murdered on the West Coast by no more than three men, none of whom have been caught. Most of the victims have been Black. In Seattle, a special task force set up to find the Green River Killer has been unable to find the killer after more than two years of work, at least in part because prostitutes and pimps are unwilling to provide information. One reason for the non-cooperation is that the Seattle Police Department has intensified crackdowns on street prostitutes, set up a sting operation to recruit and arrest women willing to work for massage parlors, and cooperated in a short-lived offer of a bounty for information leading to a prostitution conviction. Although there is reason to believe that the Green River Killer has killed one or more women in Portland, Oregon, the FBI has not yet entered the case.
Several years ago, in Los Angeles, the Hillside Strangler killed 10 women, nine of them prostitutes, before the police informed the public of the danger. There is now a second serial murderer of prostitutes in Los Angeles who, in the last year and a half, has killed 10 prostitutes, eight of them Black. However, the police only informed the public, including prostitutes, of this menace last month.
Violence by pimps, while not as common as popularly assumed, does exist, and must be looked at in the context of domestic violence, a serious problem in the United States. Unfortunately, when prostitutes try to get help from the police because of battery and other violence done by pimps, who they often love, the police often press charges instead on pimping and pandering charges. Because the women are often unwilling to testify on those charges, police often arrest the women on prostitution charges in order to pressure them to testify against their pimps. If it was proposed that wives who are abused by their spouses should be arrested to force them to testify against their husbands, the ludicrousness of such an argument would be exposed for what it is.
Solutions
The laws against rape, sexual assault, battery, and murder should be enforced against the perpetrators of those offenses against prostitutes on the same basis as if the victims were nuns, housewives, secretaries, movie stars, etc. The crime is the violence, not the lifestyle of the victim.
Police departments should be very clear in their policies opposing the use of force in the course of arrest. When certain police officers develop a reputation for brutality, regardless of whether the women press charges, the officer should be required to get some sort of counseling. When certain officers receive a large number of complaints through the Internal Affairs Bureau or other departmental investigation agency, even if the complaints are determined to be "unfounded," the officers should be required to get counseling. A certain number of complaints, regardless of the outcome, should be an indication of a problem, and if the problem does not stop, grounds for removal from the vice squad or the department, depending on the nature of the complaints.
The laws regarding pimping and pandering should be replaced with laws that deal only with the use of fraud, deceit, force, or the threat of force to coerce someone into working as a prostitute or pornography performer, and such abuse should be considered to be a form of sexual assault. Other violence by pimps, lovers, and husbands of prostitutes should be prosecuted as violence, not as "living off the earnings of a prostitute" or "encouraging someone to work as a prostitute."
Problems
Numerous public opinion polls have found majority support for the decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. However, there is widespread concern about street prostitution in residential communities. Prostitution most naturally occurs where clients are likely to be found. Thus, if left alone, street prostitution develops in hotel and entertainment districts and near major transportation depots. Periodically, police threaten hotels that allow prostitutes to rent rooms for work with closure under "red light abatement" acts. Such action is virtually always followed by a shift of prostitution into other districts, often residential communities. Without access to hotels, prostitutes and clients are then more likely to transact their business in cars, in alleys, and in shop doorways. Community residents become upset by customers who fail to distinguish between prostitutes and non-prostitute residents, including children, and by other evidence of prostitution, such as used condoms not properly disposed of.
Solutions
Allow [street] prostitutes to transact their business in commercial districts of the city where there are adequate numbers of hotel rooms. Warehouse districts are not appropriate, unless empty warehouses are converted into prostitution hotels. Setting up specific prostitution districts can be a problem because the work is still heavily stigmatized. Some sort of mixed zone is better. Any creation of zones, however, should be flexible and if a large number of prostitutes work outside of the districts, should be re-evaluated. Police presence in the area should focus on preventing crimes against the prostitutes.
Health/ Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Problems
Most studies of prostitutes and sexually transmitted diseases suggest that prostitutes are implicated in about five percent of the VD in this country. Some studies of specific groups of prostitutes (i.e., arrested- prostitutes, prostitutes who go to public health clinics to be tested) suggest that approximately 20 percent of these women come down with one sexually transmitted disease or another over the course of a year or two. Our work with prostitutes, which includes thousands of hours of crisis intervention, problem solving, interviews, and meetings per year with a wide range of women in the sex industry, suggests that the overall rate of sexually transmitted diseases is very low.
The reason for the relatively low incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among prostitutes, in spite of the high number of sexual contacts, has to do with the use of prophylactic measures. Most prostitutes use condoms for at least some of their transactions. Condom use was greatest among street prostitutes, who use them to provide privacy as well as to prevent disease, but is common as well in massage parlors and brothels. It used to be less common with prostitutes who see a small number of regular clients, although that changed as a result of publicity about the AIDS epidemic. Evidence of condom use is clear in newspaper accounts of community complaints about street prostitution where a major complaint is the number of used condoms found in alleys or parks. Police often confiscate condoms during an arrest, using them as evidence that the woman is a prostitute, often puncturing them before giving them back so that they are useless. Notwithstanding this evidence of condom usage, doctors and others commonly assume that if a straight man diagnosed with AIDS has had contact with one or more prostitutes during the past five years that a prostitute was the source of the AIDS virus.
Solutions
Third-party managed prostitution businesses should be required to provide condoms, spermicides, and other prophylactic materials to all employees engaged in sexual work, and to provide training in sexually transmitted disease prevention. In addition, third-party managed prostitution businesses should provide employees with health insurance that covers examination and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
Public health departments could offer workshops on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases for prostitutes and other sexually active women and men. Condoms should be offered for sale in vending machines in all public restrooms, including restrooms in restaurants, bars, department stores, and other businesses. Condoms should be available in both men's and women's restrooms.
Television and radio stations should be allowed to carry advertising and /or public service messages on the efficacy of condoms in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Sex education programs in public schools should be required to include information on the use of condoms, diaphragms and spermicides in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.
Public health departments should open clinics for sexually active women designed to make them feel comfortable. The staffs of such clinics should include ex-prostitutes with extensive knowledge of working conditions.
Problems
The use of intravenous drugs, such as heroin and amphetamines, is most common among street prostitutes, many of whom were addicted to drugs before they began working as prostitutes. Jennifer James, in Seattle, found that approximately 40 percent of the street prostitutes in her sample used heroin, about 60 percent of them were addicted before entry into prostitution. Other studies have found higher and lower incidences.
The biggest problems related to drug use have to do with 1) the higher incidence of hepatitis and now the AIDS virus among IV users, and 2) the incidence of robbery to obtain money for the drugs which, because of their illegality are very expensive. One aspect of the robberies associated with prostitution is that it is assumed that prostitutes are doing the robberies. In fact, in many cases, the women who "roll" their clients do not actually engage in prostitution, they only pretend to be prostitutes.
Solutions
The health problem could be dealt with by providing free or affordably priced disposable needles to addict on a regular basis, exchanging them on a one for one basis, to prevent the sharing of dirty needles.
The problem of robberies will only be solved when the cost of drugs is reduced, which will only happen if the drug laws are changed and drugs are sold through some kind of legal market, such as clinics. Women who engage in prostitution to earn money for drugs are the most likely to hate the work, and therefore would be unlikely to either engage in prostitution or pretend to be prostitutes in order to rob customers if drugs were legalized.
In the meantime, robbers who masquerade as prostitutes should be prosecuted for theft, on the basis of civilian complaints, not for prostitution on the basis of an undercover officer's entrapping them.
Problems
Every major urban center has at least some juvenile prostitutes. Most juveniles who become involved in prostitution and pornography have a history of child sexual abuse, primarily by family members, and have run away from home to get away from the abuse. A small number may have been kidnapped, but this is probably only a tiny minority. Entry into prostitution is often out of desperation due to the inability to find or pay for food and lodging. Some juveniles are actively recruited by pimps who hang out at bus stations, for example, looking for isolated young people arriving in a strange city. But some researchers have found that the juveniles have actively sought out pimps to help them get into prostitution. It is difficult to know how many juveniles are involved in prostitution and pornography. The common assumption is that there are more than a million. However, 1981 arrest figures include approximately 2,500 persons under the age of 18 arrested for prostitution (up from 900 in 1972), and 121,800 runaway arrests (down from 164,000 in 1972).
Solutions
There is a desperate need for long-term shelters and other programs for runaways, the overwhelming majority of whom are running away from incest and/or physical abuse. These programs should provide not only shelter, but education leading to a high school diploma, and counseling to deal with the long-term effects of child sexual abuse, including incest and prostitution.
Sex education should be mandatory in all public elementary and secondary schools, and should include positive information on birth control, the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), the responsibility of both partners in any sexual encounter, and non-judgmental information about the full range of consensual sexual relationships. Sex education should also include information about sexual violence, including incest, rape, and other sexual assault, and how to get help if you are victimized. In addition, accurate information should be given about prostitution--preferably by ex-prostitutes--so that juveniles are not misled into thinking that all prostitution(particularly street prostitution) is easy and glamorous, or better than an abusive situation at home.
to Index
to Freedom USA