web analytics

Sex workers arrested because they carry condoms: New York law

26 November 2009 by laura agustin | 9 comments | print print

How do you know someone is selling sex? It’s an old problem. In New York, police can detain you as a prostitute just because they find you carrying ‘too many’ condoms. This is an old technique used by police officers looking for an easy way to fulfill arrest quotas and keep their jobs. Here are main points posted by Katherine Franke on her Gender and Sexuality Law Blog on 20 November 2009.

  • Under current law, police and prosecutors can and do use condoms to prove prostitution and related offenses, such as patronizing a prostitute, promoting prostitution, and maintaining a premises for prostitution.
  • A proposed bill in committee in the Senate and on the floor of the Assembly would prohibit the use of those and other condoms in seven enumerated prostitution-related crimes.
  • New York’s police and prosecutors should not be permitted to introduce condoms as evidence of prostitution and prostitution-related offenses, according to the students who work in Columbia’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic.
  • The bill is important for protecting public health in New York and deterring police officers from using condoms as pretextual justification for arbitrary search and seizure. Criminalization of condom possession directly conflicts with New York’s longstanding public policy of encouraging condom use.

The Sex Workers Project (SWP) at the Urban Justice Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights have written legislative memos supporting the bill. There is an online petition to gather signatures to legislators.

Whole story at Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic Supports “No-Condoms-as-Evidence-of–Prostitution” Bill.

Tags: , ,

9 comments

Comments feed for this article

30 November 2009 at 19:22

Chris R

I don’t see the problem. If a woman is carrying 50 condoms, she’s probably a prostitute. There are also no “arrest quotas”, just like there are no “ticket quotas”.

And what a single issue activist group thinks can and cannot be used as evidence in a criminal trial is irrelevant.

1 December 2009 at 02:41

Lolita Wolf

I better not grab a handful of those free condoms that NYC distributes for fear of getting arrested!

8 December 2009 at 06:20

RLD Info

More sad irony in the government’s attempts to interfere with the private sexual lives of others, and of their inadvertent harming of public health.

Carrying condoms should not be a crime.

9 May 2010 at 10:32

poledancing lessons

Don’t believe this. Surely carrying them is a good thing.