Arrested for simply walking on the street
By Jamison Liang
Advocacy, Freedom United
| We need your support to get a crucial bill across the finish line to help trafficking survivors in California. Join us in urging Governor Newsom to protect trafficking survivors from criminalization. Today, trafficking survivors and sex workers face arrest and criminalization under an archaic state anti-loitering law that actively harms survivors and does nothing to stop trafficking. But there is a path to stopping this harm: supporting the Safer Streets for All Act. The bill has already passed out of the California State Senate and Assembly with their support, but we need to encourage California Governor Newsom to sign it into law as soon as possible. |
| Take action |
The Safer Streets for All Act will stop survivors of trafficking and sex workers from facing a criminal record simply for walking on the street. It will repeal Section 653.22 of California’s penal code — a law that criminalizes loitering for the intent to engage in prostitution but in practice targets survivors of trafficking and cis and trans women of color, often working in the sex industry.
Section 653.22 has the effect of making traffickers’ crimes easier to commit through the threat of arrest, incarceration, and a criminal record for the person being trafficked.
Trafficking survivors report that criminal records pose barriers to securing employment, obtaining stable immigration status, or accessing housing, which leads to poverty and homelessness — both key drivers of vulnerability to trafficking.
Crucially, the Safer Streets for All Act addresses this by giving survivors of trafficking and sex workers the power to clear their names.
Non-punitive responses to sex work are critical to empower survivors of trafficking to seek support, secure in the knowledge that they will not be criminalized and punished for surviving trafficking.
Add your name to call on Governor Newsom to sign the Safer Streets for All Act into law today.
In solidarity,
Jamison and the team that supports the Freedom United community
