Arresting folks "for their own good" - Social Workers Speak Out Against Project ROSE
As most folks know Project ROSE 5 roundup just completed again in Phoenix at Bethany Bible Church. While advertised as for street work we know many well known private escorts have been picked up from ads etc. One well known for years who teaches Tantra massage classes for years etc, as well as regular private companions that have never been on the streets.
THIS TYPE OF REPORTING NEEDS TO GET REPORTED BY PHOENIX MEDIA!
QUESTIONABLE PRACTICES: ARRESTING PEOPLE “FOR THEIR OWN GOOD” VIOLATES SOCIAL WORK ETHICS This is one of the best articles I've read - a succinct analysis of the ethical considerations associated with diversion programs that arrest people in the sex trade in order to force them to accept services.
Highlights of much longer article:
The example that sparked the writing of the AFFILIA editorial is Project ROSE, a program in which social workers from Arizona State University School of Social Work and some service providers collaborate with city wide raids orchestrated by the Phoenix Police Department. AFFILIA is a peer reviewed social work journal addressing the concerns of social workers and their clients
Project ROSE is found to violate ethical standards described in the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics, the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, and the International Federation of Social Work Ethical Principles.
Informed consent–an essential element of social work practice and the standard in many other professions–is violated because the services provided rely on recruitment via ”massive police (in this case 125 officers) sting operations. If targeted sex workers (and people profiled as sex workers) reject the ‘offer’ to enter the diversion program and/or if they fail to successfully complete a diversion program… they face criminal prosecution.”
On one side of the debate are sex workers and feminists who emphasize the importance of sex workers’ rights and understand sex work as potentially liberating and empowering. On the other side are those who believe sex work is exploitive, casting sex workers as coerced victims.
It is time to seriously grapple with the ethical considerations involved with social work practice focused on people in the sex industry.
Schools of Social Work and social work in general should not be in the business of arresting people for their own good.
Many legal scholars have questioned and critiqued diversion programs on the basis of equity and procedural concern (Orr et al., 2009), efficacy (Bolt, 2010), and constitutional concerns such as double jeopardy (i.e., when prosecution on the original prostitution charge is enacted and a conviction with punishment occurs as a result of an individual being unable to meet the program requirements) and lack of authority (Brown vs. State of Maryland, 2009).
Specific critiques and problems with prostitution diversion programs argue that they tend to ‘‘encourage special interest control of criminal courts, foster undesirable police and judicial practices, and fail to meaningfully address societal problems, specifically the criminalization or prostitution’’ (Quinn, 2006, p. 145).
Special interest control of prostitution diversion programs include, but are not limited to, politicians, police officers, business people, district attorneys, and social workers interested in suppressing sex work for religious, moral, social, and political reasons. These particular stakeholders stand to benefit from prostitution diversion programs, as they may be viewed as resolving a social problem, ‘‘tough on crime’’ and/or saviors of those incapable of helping or saving themselves. Social workers and social service organization stand to benefit from such programs through jobs, grants, funding, and yes. ... publications.
While prostitution diversion programs with social work involvement are not unique to Phoenix (Wahab, 2005, 2006), this is the first highly publicized instance, we are aware of, where social workers and a School of Social Work advocated for targeting sex workers through law enforcement (City of Phoenix, 2013: KTVK, 2013a; 2013b).
We now turn to the heart of our outrage. Programs like Project ROSE cause harm ‘‘under the cover of kindness’’ (Margolin, 1997). Despite claims made in 2012 after a similar sting that ‘‘clients received options for safe housing, crisis mental health counseling, medical services, options for detox and drug treatment, food, clothes and their initial interview for the Diversion Program provided by Catholic Charities, and most significantly, the opportunity to change their life’’ (
http://phoenix.gov/police/R.O.S.E.ii.html), targeting people for arrest in order to offer services is a grave form of coercion that violates numerous social work ethical standards (long list of social work ethical standards discussed)
In Arizona, Marcia Powell, a woman serving a 27-month sentence in Arizona for solicitation of prostitution, died in May 2009 after being left in a prison holding cage in the blazing sun without water. Not only would Marcia have been ineligible to receive services through Project ROSE had she been targeted by the sting, but she would have likely faced a prison sentence due to several prior arrests for prostitution. Ultimately, however, Marcia died in the ‘‘safety’’ of the Arizona prison system because she was a sex worker incarcerated for her own good. Furthermore, we argue that social work participation in the creation and facilitation of police
Furthermore, we argue that social work participation in the creation and facilitation of police sting operations, including those designed from a stance of innocence (Rossiter, 2001), to ‘‘offer services’’ violates (long list again of various social work organizations ethics.)
This is especially problematic as there is no body of rigorous empirical evidence that indicates that prostitution diversion programs facilitate social justice for those enrolled in the programs. If an apprehended sex worker rejects the offer of diversion, or is denied entry into the diversion program, how is the project ‘‘ensuring that all people have equal access to the resource’’ (National Association of Social Workers, 2008)?
Finally, if we accept that many people who work in sex work do so because they are poor and/or have limited options for alternative employment (though this is certainly not the case for all those engaged in trading sexual services), how are social workers ‘‘[d]istributing resources equitably’’ or ‘‘[c]hallenging unjust policies and practices’’ (International Federation of Social Work, 2012) when they are advocating for and assisting in the arrest of sex workers who are mostly poor, people of color, and often identify as transgender? For some of the sex workers caught up in these sweeps, Project ROSE with its additional 125 officers hastens the path toward a felony charge.
ASU’s School of Social Work and the Phoenix Police Department, despite proclamations of good intentions, perpetuate racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia; all forms of social injustice and human rights violations that social workers are bound to by numerous ethical standards to work against.
It is no wonder that some sex workers fear social workers as much if not more than the police, as we are legitimately seen as the service gatekeepers as well as the ones who take their children away (Weiner, 1996). Social work has a long history of engagement and practice with sex workers, which reinforces notions of social workers as agents of social and moral control (Wahab, 2002). While many social workers have worked hard through policy and practice arenas over the years to repair and reconfigure social work’s relationship (characterized by mistrust, disempowerment, social, and moral control) to the sex industry, social work efforts geared toward arresting sex workers ‘‘for their own good’’ violate the ethical codes while enacting structural violence in the name of helping.
Whether you believe that sex work = sex trafficking or whether you believe that there is no universal sex work experience and that sex workers can make their own decisions about what they need and when they need it, Schools of Social Work and social work in general should not be in the business of arresting people for their own good. If we believe that arresting people in order to coerce them into ‘‘treatment’’ and services is our only option for engagement, then we need to critically examine our relationships with sex workers and sex worker groups.
Long list of references included.
Author Biographies
Stephanie Wahab is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University.
Meg Panichelli is a doctoral student in the School of Social Work at Portland State University. Her research
focuses on sex work, privilege, oppression, and the intersections of feminisms, sexualities, and social work.
Full article at
http://aff.sagepub.com/content/28/4/344
Arresting folks "for their own good" - Social Workers Speak Out Against Project ROSE
