April 25, 2025.
We are writing to urgently ask you to oppose AB 379, the Survivor Support and Demand Reduction Act introduced by Assemblymember Maggy Krell. The language of this bill is based on misinformation and is vague and confusing. Most importantly, it wrongly equates prostitution with trafficking. In addition, the bill sets up a new, complicated and unwieldy bureaucracy which will squander money at a time when California is already facing a $68 billion budget deficit.
This bill is out of touch with public opinion. By creating a new crime of loitering with intent to purchase commercial sex, Assemblymember Krell is attempting to bring back and rebrand the unpopular loitering for prostitution offense in order to mislead the public into supporting it.
The criminalization of loitering was so unpopular that it was soundly rejected by the public and the offense was repealed by the legislature in 2022 because it was proven to be enforced in a racist and discriminatory way. The law disproportionately targeted women of color, including trans and immigrant women. In Los Angeles, Black people accounted for over 56% of loitering charges between 2017-2019 despite only making up less than 10% of the city’s population. In 2024, three bills attempted to recriminalize loitering for prostitution, but because of public pressure none made it out of committee.
In her Fact Sheet on the bill, Assemblymember Krell misleads people by using human trafficking as the rationale for the bill saying that it “seeks a new path for attacking human trafficking by providing law enforcement with stronger tools and penalties to deter, arrest and prosecute commercial sex buyers”. It is disingenuous and dishonest to imply that criminalizing buyers will reduce trafficking. In Sweden, Norway, Finland and elsewhere, where this “Nordic Model” of criminalizing the client has been used for decades, it has never been shown to decrease prostitution or trafficking.[i] Criminalizing the purchase of sex increases the policing of both clients and sex workers. Research shows that this harms sex workers by forcing them to work in more isolated and remote areas and making them more unsafe and more vulnerable to violence and exploitation.
Shockingly, the bill does nothing to improve protections for victims of actual trafficking. It’s a cover up for what the bill is really about – more crackdowns on prostitution under the false premise of going after trafficking.
In addition, AB 379 proposes a $1000 fine for the new loitering offense to purchase commercial sex. Given the history of racist enforcement of loitering laws, men of color would more likely be the ones targeted in street sweeps for enforcement of this proposed law, exacerbating the racial disparity that already exists in the criminal justice system. The National Institute of Justice found that in the First Offender Prostitution Program in San Francisco, which targeted buyers of sex, 60% of men arrested were Latinx. The bill would also violate the 2020 Racial Justice Act, [ii] which makes it illegal to pass legislation that is biased.
Diversion programs for sex workers as proposed by AB 379 have been widely used and already discredited. National research has shown that prostitution “diversion” programs are ineffective, judgmental and punitive. Sex workers are seen not as workers, but as offenders in need of rehabilitation. Diversion programs fail to address the harms associated with the criminalization of sex work. They lead to increased surveillance and control by the police and judicial system. Diversion programs are inherently coercive as they force sex workers to accept “services” under duress. [iii]
We question what will happen to sex workers if we refuse the diversion programs? Will we be arrested and then be at risk of losing our children to social welfare?
This bill clearly constitutes a conflict of interest because three main supporters of the bill are non-profits that would stand to benefit from the money collected from the $1000 fines and from money appropriated by the legislature. This gives these non-profits a vested interest in the continued criminalization of prostitution and encourages corruption. This sector of non-profits are key opponents of the sex worker led movement for justice and rights and have been hostile to decriminalization of sex work. In contrast, a majority of people in the US as well as prestigious national and international human rights organizations all support the decriminalization of sex work. [iv]
New Zealand successfully decriminalized prostitution in 2003 and a government review has shown great improvements, such as no rise in prostitution, women are able to report violence without fear of arrest, sex workers are more able to leave prostitution as criminal convictions are cleared from their records, and sex workers have access to health care and other benefits as well as employment rights.
As noted above, legislation like AB 379 is out of sync with how the public views prostitution. Just look at how the Oscar winning film, Anora, which features a spirited sex worker as the main character, has resonated with audiences around the world. The director of the film and the actress who played her have both spoken out for sex work to be decriminalized. Calls for more criminalization of sex work, as this bill proposes, will only increase stigmatization and discrimination, making sex workers more at risk for violence. Historically serial murderers have targeted the most vulnerable and impoverished women among us. It took decades of campaigning by the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders to get any action and accountability for the murder and disappearance of over 200 Black women in South Los Angeles. Many of the women were dismissed as sex workers and the police labelled their murders “No Human Involved.”
If the legislature actually wants to help, it should decriminalize sex work and reinvest the monies allocated to criminalization and diversion programs into real help for sex workers and our families, including housing and financial resources. Poverty is increasing at an enormous rate in California: 73% of impoverished people are women and children, disproportionately women and children of color. Nearly 70% of sex workers are mothers trying to feed ourselves and our children. Instead of criminalizing sex workers and clients, urgent action to tackle women’s poverty should be the focus. Guaranteed income and other direct cash programs have been successful in helping to alleviate the poverty that leads to sex work in the first place. For example, when the expanded and refundable Child Tax Credit program was enacted in 2021, child poverty fell to 46%, the lowest rate on record. We urge you to strongly oppose this harmful bill that does nothing to support victims and instead ask that you to campaign for resources to end women and children’s poverty.
Sincerely,
Rachel West, US PROStitutes Collective
[i] https://www.lse.ac.uk/women-peace-security/assets/documents/2022/W922-0152-WPS-Policy-Paper-6-singles.pdf
[ii] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB2542
[iii]https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/ghjp/documents/diversion_from_justice_pdp_report_ghjp_2018rev.pdf
[iv] American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, Human Rights Campaign, UNAIDS, and World Health Organization and many others.
US PROS Collective 