On a mission to ‘Decriminalize. Decarcerate. Destigmatize.’ sex workers in New York City, Decrim NY fights on the front lines to help improve the lives of people across the spectrum of transactional sex work; from those who perform sexual labor consensually to those who are coerced into the trade by circumstance.

Decrim NY also fights for communities most impacted by criminalization of sex work, those who are often excluded from the mainstream economy through employment discrimination, shut out of housing options, and criminalized while accessing public spaces by laws like the #WalkingWhileTrans ban.

The Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act was introduced November 2019 with the help of Decrim NY and seeks to end violence, exploitation, and trafficking without harming people who rely on the sex trade for survival, by removing criminal penalties for buying and selling sex and repealing parts of the law criminalizing sex workers’ places of business.

The bottom line is that prohibition will never be decriminalization, and the current model of criminalizing sex work traps sex workers and trafficking survivors in cycles of violence. Join us as we join them in support.

The three pillars of the work are:

• Decriminalize sex trade related offenses in New York by passing legislation and enacting policy change that protects people in the sex trades from economic exploitation as well as interpersonal violence.  The level of these offenses often just perpetuate a stigma around the community and do more harm than good to those who perform sexual labor by choice or those who are forced into the work for survival. Advocacy spans from sex workers and people profiled as sex workers, to people who purchase sexual services.
• Decarcerate people who have been arrested on sex trade-related offenses so that people can move forward with their lives without lingering ties to the criminal legal system that are detrimental to a survivor’s livelihood post trade. Vacate criminal records related to prostitution and end the ongoing entanglement with the court system that the rescue industry produces.
• Destigmatize the sex trade so that workers have access to housing, education, employment, health care, and other basic needs without restriction. Not everyone trading sex wants to continue doing so and we support evidence-based, harm reduction-rooted policies and funding that supports people’s safety and empowers those seeking different work.