Trans woman, student, and sex work activist Monica Jones was found guilty Friday of “manifesting prostitution” by a Phoenix, Arizona judge after she accepted a ride with two undercover police officers in May 2013. Jones pled not guilty to the charge and challenged the law’s constitutionality. She now faces time in a men’s prison.
Phoenix Municipal Code 23-52 defines behavior that “manifests an intent to commit or solicit an act of prostitution” illegal, although the broad language of the law allows authorities to decide which behaviors qualify as criminal action. If a police officer in Phoenix suspects someone of sex work, that person can be arrested for engaging in conversation with motorists, beckoning to cars, or stopping passersby.
Jones and other advocates, including members of the Arizona ACLU and Sex Workers Outreach Project, have asserted that Jones is guilty of simply “walking while trans,” and that the Phoenix law allows for discriminatory profiling of women of color, trans* women, and women in poverty by the authorities. “I have been harassed by police four times since my initial arrest,” she told Chase Strangio, an ACLU Staff Attorney. “The police have stopped me for no real reason when I have been walking to the grocery store, to the local bar, or visiting with a friend on the sidewalk.”
Jones also believes she was targeted by authorities for speaking out against Project ROSE, an anti-prostitution collaboration between Arizona State University’s School of Social Work, which Jones currently attends, the Phoenix Police Department, and various Catholic charities. The diversion program detains community members suspected of sex work and pressures them to participate in a Catholic “re-education” program, often threatening them with criminal charges if they refuse to participate.
Jones will appeal her case. “I am saddened by the injustice that took place at my trial,” she said, “but we are not giving up the fight. It’s time that we end the stigma and the criminalization of sex work, the profiling of trans women of color, and the racist police system that harms so many of us.”
Media Resources: PolicyMic, 4/15/2014; ACLU Blog, 4/2/2014; Jezebel, 4/13/2014; The Guardian, 4/15/2014
