San Francisco Seeks To Curb Street Walkers by Decriminalizing Prostitution

A San Francisco supervisor, Hillary Ronen, on Tuesday plans to introduce a resolution to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors to decriminalize prostitution in the city.According to Ms. Ronen, a different approach is needed to finally solve the problems associated with sex work, which has been prevalent on Capp Street at the Central Mission Neighborhood for decades. “Instead of repeating the same cycle that we’ve repeated for decades, it’s time to try something new,” she told Los Angeles Times.“What’s happening right now on Capp Street is it’s become more brazen, and bigger than we’ve ever seen it before,” Ms. Ronen added.If the measure is successful, San Fancisco would become the only area outside Nevada to have legal or decriminalized prostitution. “Generally the board is concerned with the safety of the community as well as the workers themselves, so if we craft it in a way that would prioritize those two things were hopeful we can find traction,” a spokesman for Ms. Ronen’s office, Santiago Lerma, told the Sun.He added that the office is trying to put the morality of sex work to the side and address the situation as it is now and as it has been for decades.“It ebbs and flows, it has been a decades-long problem,” Mr. Lerma said. “This most recent uptick started in the summer of last year, in 2022, after two years of being almost completely dormant because of the pandemic.”The proposal that the Board of Supervisors will hear Tuesday would not be a change in the law but rather an official statement of position and request for the state legislature to begin exploring the topic.The proposal is the latest of a number of recent efforts that the city has taken to bring order to what has become the city’s de facto red light district.The San Francisco police department has in recent weeks erected barriers restricting access to the street and keeping traffic out of what Ms. Ronen has characterized as a “cruising zone.”Police have also said that that they are working to combat criminal activity on the street while working to identify the victims of human trafficking associated with sex work.According to residents, however, the barriers aren’t a suitable permanent solution.“This feels a little bit like a band-aid,” a Capp Street resident, Carina Kahane, told ABC 7. “Here is a stick in the middle of the street. Also, cars have been moving this and driving through. So, it seems like we are really not getting to the root of anything. They will probably just move over a street.”Although the proposal from Ms. Ronen doesn’t seem to have a lot of initial public support among elected officials, the Central Mission Neighborhood Organization appears open to it. The neighborhood organization takes no position on sex work in general, but does say that the burden placed on the neighborhood by the current situation is “unacceptable.”“This is a trade by and for people from outside our neighborhood, and since a sudden increase in street prostitution in early 2012, we have been aggressively addressing it,” the organization’s official position states.While most residents say that the area has been a hub for sex work in the Bay Areas for decades, some critics blame the recent increase on California’s recent law eliminating “loitering for the purpose of prostitution” as a crime.The law, which was enacted last summer, did not decriminalize soliciting or engaging in prostitution, but was meant to eliminate the “harmful treatment of people for simply ‘appearing’ to be a sex worker,” according to the bill’s sponsor, Scott Wiener, a state senator.At the time, Governor Newsom said he would be monitoring the implementation of the law closely, saying, “we must be cautious.”“My Administration will monitor crime and prosecution trends for any possible unintended consequences and will act to mitigate any such impacts,” Mr. Newsom wrote in a letter concerning the law.Mr. Lerma, on the other hand, is skeptical that the changes to the legal code precipitated the recent rise in activity on Capp Street, attributing the most recent uptick to a post-pandemic surge in demand.“There are still plenty of tools that police officers have to enforce the laws,” Mr. Lerma told the Sun. “I don’t know if there’s any correlation.”

San Francisco Seeks To Curb Street Walkers by Decriminalizing Prostitution

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