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Miyashita Ochoa on Decriminalization of Sex Work

Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, adjunct assistant professor of social welfare, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the repeal of a provision of California law that had banned loitering with the intent to sell sex. In signing State Bill 357, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the measure aims to end the disproportionate harassment of women and transgender adults but does not legalize prostitution. The legislation sparked a debate touching on transgender rights, human trafficking and the decriminalization of sex work. Miyashita Ochoa said criminalization pushes sex workers into “isolated and unsafe spaces,” leads to increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases and creates distrust in law enforcement. “What we’re talking about here is moral legislation. And what we should be talking about is labor protections,” Miyashita Ochoa said. “And if we can’t give women and other folks engaged in sex trades that dignity as a worker, then we are just as bad as the people that are taking advantage.”


 

Shah Outlines Consequences of Prohibiting Sex Work

Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah joined the Then & Now podcast to discuss the long history of policy approaches to sex work, including prohibition and regulation. “For many years, prostitution was a part of normal life, which is why we call it the oldest profession,” she said on the podcast, which is hosted by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. With the appearance of syphilis in the 1500s in Europe, prostitution became associated with sexually transmitted diseases. “Today, prohibition is the norm,” said Shah, who directs the Global Lab for Research in Action. Sex work is prohibited in all U.S. states, with the exception of a few counties in Nevada that allow regulated sex work. Shah explained that a growing body of research highlights the negative impacts of prohibition, including increased spread of sexually transmitted infections, increased violence against women, less trust of police and less empowerment of female sex workers.


Shah Predicts Long-Term Impact of COVID on Sex Work Industry

Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah spoke to the Chicago Tribune about how the COVID pandemic has impacted the sex work industry. The lockdown has forced many sex workers to switch to offering online services, including phone encounters, texting and video streaming. Many sex workers are ineligible for jobless benefits and have found the transition to online services to be considerably less lucrative than their normal gigs. While the economy is starting to reopen, Shah predicted that the sex work industry will likely trail the pack. “I don’t think sex work will go back to its pre-pandemic state even when stay-at-home orders ease as potential clients will still feel wary of in-person meetings,” Shah said. “It will likely take longer, perhaps even until a vaccine, before people feel comfortable interacting in person for sex services.” 

Shah on Benefits of Decriminalizing Sex Work

Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah was featured in a Vox “Consider It” episode discussing the issue of sex work in the United States. “For the most part, sex workers are women who are making the choice to do [sex work] as a source of livelihood. We can argue about how good or bad of a source of livelihood this is, but ultimately, sex work is work,” Shah said. “The sex market is often characterized as one of moral repugnance because of moral beliefs that we shouldn’t put a price on sex.” Nevertheless, public policy experts have found numerous benefits associated with the decriminalization of sex work. Shah explained that during the six years that indoor prostitution was decriminalized in Rhode Island, there was a decrease in gonorrhea incidents and reported rape offenses. “Based on current research, decriminalization of sex work is overall better for women,” Shah concluded.


Shah on Decriminalization of Sex Work

Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah stressed the importance of data-backed claims in a GQ article describing the controversial New York movement to decriminalize sex work in order to make workers safer. “Many people see sex work as morally repugnant, so public policy around it is very rarely based on the actual evidence,” explained Shah, whose 2014 research findings supported decriminalization of the sex work industry. According to Shah, “A lot of people make very big assertions about this topic, but most of the time there just isn’t any data to back them up, or the methodological constraints mean they’re not able to make causal claims.” Shah’s research linked decriminalization to reductions in both rape offenses and female gonorrhea cases. Shah concluded, “Except for the growth of the market, everything else that we worry about from a policy perspective — like public health and violence against women — gets better when sex work is decriminalized.”


Shining New Light on a ‘Red Light’ Profession Oxford handbook co-edited by UCLA Luskin researcher compiles latest economic research on prostitution

By Stan Paul

Although prostitution has been examined by various social scientists, the “world’s oldest profession” has received less attention from an economic standpoint. But that’s changing.

Thanks to the increasing availability of existing data sets on the internet, as well as new surveys that are being implemented, researchers have been able to gather valuable economic data that could help government officials in setting policy guidelines concerning prostitution.

A number of factors, including the proliferation of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV/AIDS, especially in developing nations, have created the need to look at prostitution through an economic lens.

These subjects and other topics dealing with the sex trade are part of the newly published “Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution,” co-edited by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs researcher Manisha Shah and Scott Cunningham, associate professor of economics at Baylor University. A development economist and associate professor in the Department of Public Policy, Shah’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of applied microeconomics, health and development.

Researchers in fields from anthropology to sociology have looked at various facets of prostitution both qualitatively and quantitatively. The book’s co-editors cite the nature of economics as looking at problems in mostly quantitative terms, and the new data is yielding a wealth of useful — and often counterintuitive — information on this resilient underground economy.

“I think one of the things that always surprises me is how often the sex market looks like any other market that economists study,” said Shah, who has written on the topic in order to learn how more-effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

“Most of the time, the predictions of economic theory play out in the sex market as well,” Shah said. “There are so many chapters that highlight this and illustrate that sex workers respond to incentives and prices in the same way that other market participants do.”

More than 40 researchers from around the world contributed to the book, divided into six parts: Supply and Demand, Sex Workers in Developing Countries, Men Who Have Sex With Men, Law and Policy, History of Prostitution Law, and Externalities: Sexually Transmitted Infections and Sexual Exploitation. Chapters include Economics of Sex Work in Bangladesh, Violence and Entry in Prostitution Markets and A Method for Determining the Size of the Underground Economy in in Seven U.S. Cities.

“We know that prostitution has important policy implications because of the effect that prostitution has on STI rates, risky behaviors, as well as its responsiveness to poverty,” Shah said. “But we don’t know as much about optimal policy design.” In addition, she said, most governments have not experimented with different strategies, so prohibition has been the most common policy.

The book also contains chapters that explain and use information collected directly from the web because prostitution continues to shift from the street to indoor sex work. Shah points out that the internet facilitates the functioning of illicit markets through free classified advertising, lower search costs and even client reviews of sex workers.

“Reviews create reputations for sex workers, much like eBay and Airbnb reviews create reputations for vendors,” said Shah, explaining that these “reputation mechanisms” are allowing illegal markets to function more like legal businesses. Shah said this is an important point because, in the illegal sector, providers and clients cannot access legal courts to enforce contracts.

“Reputation, in other words, is the mechanism by which contracts are enforced in illegal sex markets,” Shah said.

Policy makers need to understand the distinction between voluntary prostitution and sex trafficking, Shah said. “Too often these two get conflated. The social costs of sex trafficking are very high, whereas arguably the social costs of voluntary prostitution are lower.”

Pointing to recent government experiments in Sweden and New Zealand, for example, Shah said that policy makers should have a working understanding of how these markets function, as well as understanding theories of policies that can regulate these markets optimally.

“Policy makers can use this information to better design policies that can reduce sex trafficking as well as accompanying externalities,” Shah said, citing a detailed analysis of the Nevada brothel system, which, she said, “can help policy makers understand if there are elements of the Nevada policy that could be applied elsewhere.”

Shah said that with a better understanding of how these markets operate, optimal policies can be designed to reduce the harm associated with prostitution markets and lower the overall social costs.

“The book has explicit models to guide the design of prostitution laws,” Shah said. “We think these are one of the highlights of the handbook in general.”