The prostitution bill before the Senate, 5044A (which already passed the House), would penalize and criminalize women who are struggling to survive. This legislation, designed to address prostitution in Rhode Island, and purportedly to help women, would do just the opposite by incarcerating and imposing fines upon prostitutes. Because of this, the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization of Women (RINOW) is strongly opposing it.

This legislation will place more women in our already full state prisons and make it harder for women to return to work, thus forcing them back into prostitution and perpetuating the cycle of prostitution and poverty. According to the Family Life Center, the state could save $440,000 a year by not incarcerating prostitutes. If, as has been portrayed, the purpose of this bill is to help get these women “off the streets” then legislators could better achieve this by taking this money saved and putting it toward social-service and police-education programs.

This bill also creates a narrow definition for human trafficking that does nothing for victims of human trafficking and could harm efforts under way to pass good legislation designed to protect these victims. If Rhode Island is serious about protecting victims of human trafficking, then we believe the state ought to focus its efforts on passing the trafficking bills currently in both the House and the Senate.

RINOW supports efforts to eliminate the practice of forcing women to prostitute against their will. However, we do not support increasing punishments for the individual prostitutes.

RINOW sees prostitution as a complex social and political issue that cannot be solved by increasing rates of incarceration for the prostitutes. RINOW opposes any legislation related to prostitution that has unintended consequences for prostitutes. We wish to reduce the unnecessary incarceration of sex workers that this bill proposes, because we believe that this actually increases the likelihood that they will return to prostitution.

Furthermore, if the prostitutes have a criminal record, they will have a much harder time after they are released from prison in finding a job, which would increase the likelihood that they will be forced to return to prostitution to survive.

This makes prostitution their only option and that does not help women.

JOSEPHINE MARTELL

Cranston

The writer is legislative chairwoman of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women.