Manhattan DA Hopeful Eliza Orlins: I Won’t Prosecute Sex Workers

NEW YORK—In a field of 10 candidates seeking the top prosecutor’s job in New York County, also known as Manhattan, one has pledged to halt prosecutions involving consensual sex work. On Thursday, candidate Eliza Orlins, a Manhattan public defender and Legal Aid lawyer, released her policy calling for full decriminalization of sex work in New York City’s most populous borough. In a report for The Daily Beast, Michael Ellsberg, author of the book Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace, called Orlins' policy “one of the most detailed policy positions on the full decriminalization of sex work ever put forward by a major candidate at any level of U.S. politics.” Ellsberg also noted that Orlins’ policy was “formulated in consultation with many sex workers and sex worker-advocacy organizations.” Orlins is perhaps best-known outside of New York City as a 2004 contestant on the seminal reality TV series Survivor. In her official biography, Orlins says that her celebrity from the show “netted her a national following, which she uses to advocate on behalf of criminal justice reform and other social justice issues.” Orlins released her sex work decriminalization policy on the same day that a Manhattan Democratic state senator, Liz Krueger, proposed a statewide sex work decriminalization bill titled “The Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act,” which would employ the so-called “Nordic Model” of decriminalization. Under the “Nordic” plan, and Krueger’s bill, law enforcement would end prosecutions of sex workers—but not their customers. Paying for sexual services would remain a criminal offense. Orlins’ proposal goes considerably further, calling for “the full decriminalization of consensual sex work. This will begin with declining to prosecute all cases of consensual sex work.” Orlins also says in her policy that her plan will make it easier to catch and convict criminal sex traffickers. “Some people use the need to fight sex trafficking as a justification for the prohibition of sex work. However, evidence suggests that the opposite is true: the criminalization of consensual sex work makes it more difficult to detect and prosecute sex traffickers,” she wrote in the policy document. “People engaged in consensual sex work may know about evidence of sex trafficking that they are unable to share, for fear of facing criminal charges themselves. Decriminalization allows people to report abuse and exploitation that they or others face, without fear of arrest or prosecution.” Orlins says that if elected, the D.A.’s office “will never prosecute criminal charges based solely on the consensual exchange of sex for money or another thing of value, or solicitation of such an exchange.” Cases of violence arising out of sex work interactions will be prosecuted, she said, adding, “sex workers who experience violence in the course of their work can expect the full protection of the law from my office.” Orlins also said that she will advocate for full decriminalization at the statewide level. In addition to Krueger’s “Nordic” bill, a group of progressive lawmakers in the New York state legislature said in December that they will introduce a decriminalization measure—for the third consecutive year—that would remove most criminal penalties from consensual sex work, as well as ban police from making “loitering” arrests that are often used to round up sex workers, particularly those of color, and LGBTQIA+ sex workers as well. Photo By Dustin Senger / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain