Bali Promotion Center: What does AIDS2014 mean to you ?

Bali Promotion Center: What does AIDS2014 mean to you ?: Global Village Connect What does AIDS2014 mean to you ? The theme of #AIDS2014 is ending AIDS. You can't end HIV without #sexworkers

With heightened risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections,
sex workers face substantial barriers in accessing prevention,
treatment, and care services, largely because of stigma, discrimination,
and criminalisation in the societies in which they live. These social,
legal, and economic injustices contribute to their high risk of
acquiring HIV. Often driven underground by fear, sex workers encounter
or face the direct risk of violence and abuse daily. Sex workers remain
underserved by the global HIV response. This Series of seven papers aims
to investigate the complex issues faced by sex workers worldwide, and
calls for the decriminilisation of sex work, in the global effort to
tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  

What happened when Rhode Island decriminalized indoor prostitution?

"Indoor" prostitution refers to sex work that takes place through massage parlors, escort agencies, and most of the online market, compared to outdoor street-based prostitution.

The authors found evidence that, after decriminaliztion, the size of the indoor sex market increased — as expected — and prices commensurately fell.

More surprising was the finding that forcible rape offenses fell by 31 percent in Rhode Island from 2004 to 2009, as decriminalized indoor sex work scaled up in the state. This translates to 824 fewer reported rapes. The majority of the reduction in rapes came from Providence, where the state's sex work is concentrated.

The chart below depicts reported rape offenses (per 100,000 people) in Rhode Island (the black line) compared to similar control states. The red line demarcates 2003, when decriminalization took place — and only Rhode Island's offenses drop off steeply after that.

 

 Researchers: Decriminalized Prostitution in Rhode Island Led to Fewer Rape, Gonorrhea Cases
http://t.co/zHB17Qyc2F #sexworker #sexwork

   One of the main arguments of those who oppose any attempt to
criminalise prostitution is that it simply drives the industry
underground, putting the sex workers in a more vulnerable position.

Pye
Jakobsson a spokeswoman for the Rose Alliance, representing Swedish sex
workers, says: "You can't talk about protecting sex workers as well as
saying the law is good, because it's driving prostitution and
trafficking underground, which reduces social services' access to
victims."

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