Women’s rights groups launched a campaign Monday to stop New York from legalizing prostitution, an idea that is being seriously discussed for the first time in the state capital.
They argue fully decriminalizing sex work would let pimps and traffickers off the hook.
“There is nothing safe about the sex trade. It is violent . . . and you cannot regulate violence,” the Rev. Dr. Que English, founder of Not On My Watch Inc., said at an Albany press conference.
“I want to speak to my black and brown legislators because it will be in your communities — not Fifth Avenue, and not Park Avenue — that we will see these legal brothels run by pimps.”
About 90 percent of woman in prostitution are trafficked, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2017 alone, the NYPD worked on 265 sex-trafficking cases, arresting 228 pimps.
But freshman Brooklyn state Sen. Julia Salazar said legalization is long overdue. “The decriminalization of sex work is desperately needed . . . Sex work is work and we need to start treating it as such,” she said.