By Lisa Cameron, Jennifer Seager, Manisha Shah

We examine the impact of criminalizing sex work, exploiting an event in which local officials unexpectedly criminalized sex work in one district in East Java, Indonesia, but not in neighboring districts. We collect data from female sex workers and their clients before and after the change. We find that criminalization increases sexually transmitted infections among female sex workers by 58 percent, measured by biological tests. This is driven by decreased condom access and use. We also find evidence that criminalization decreases earnings among women who left sex work due to criminalization, and decreases their ability to meet their children's school expenses while increasing the likelihood that children begin working to supplement household income. While criminalization has the potential to improve population STI outcomes if the market shrinks permanently, we show that five years post-criminalization the market has rebounded and the probability of STI transmission within the general population is likely to have increased.

Working Paper 27846

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 52p.

By Southern Poverty Law Center

Access to safe, stable housing is a human right. In the United States, however, the deprivation of this right leads to inequitable housing access. As a result, in addition to people with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color — especially Black people — are more likely to experience homelessness or be at risk of homelessness. Compounding this issue, people of color and people with disabilities are also overrepresented in the criminal legal system because of mass incarceration. This intersection of housing inaccessibility and criminalization has resulted in the pernicious practice of the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness, a pressing issue across the country — including in the Deep South. In 2023, for example, Georgia enacted a law that forces cities and other localities to enforce bans on public camping, putting thousands of Georgians living unsheltered at risk of arrest for performing basic survival activities like rest, eating and asking for help.

Montgomery, AL Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024

By The YWCA

Police killings of Black people and the ensuing nation-wide protests that swept across the United States during the spring and summer months of 2020 are certain to be recorded as defining elements of an unprecedented year. Like Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and so many others before them, the names of the people of color killed by police in 2020 are now seared into our national consciousness: George Floyd. Rayshard Brooks. Tony McDade. Breonna Taylor. Their deaths unleashed a national fury and ignited a long overdue reckoning with racial violence by police against people of color.

But as so often happens, women and girls of color are again being left out of the story. Their experiences? Overlooked and erased by a media and policy narrative that overwhelmingly focuses on men and boys of color.

Washington, DC: YWCA, 2020. 49p.