Female street sex workers,sexual violence,and protection strategies

Abstract

This paper reviews empirical findings on physical and sexual violence against female street working sex workers, drawing on the findings from the researcher's own study. Thirty-two female street sex workers were interviewed in a city in the South West of England during 1998. The ethical issues of researching female prostitution are discussed in relation to this specific research project. The main findings from the current literature and this original study highlight the possible connections between childhood sexual abuse, entrance into the sex industry at an early age, and continual experience of violence. This paper explores violence from pimps and clients as well as how the street environment exposes sex workers to risk. Concluding discussion explores the self protection strategies of individual sex workers and the female sex work community as a means of maintaining a survivor identity and not a victim identity.     

Gender as social threat: A study of offender sex,situational factors,gender dynamics and social control

Purpose

Adopting a social threat perspective, the assessment explores how gender and social gender dynamics affect the labeling of convicted felons using a unique sentencing outcome - adjudication withheld.

Methods

This research investigates the direct effect of gender, and interactive impact of offender sex/crime type, on adjudication withheld for a sample of probationers (N = 110,419) sentenced in Florida between 2000 and 2002 using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling. The study also explores how social gender dynamics moderate these relationships.

Results

Female offenders are significantly more likely than men to receive adjudication withheld. Women convicted of atypical crimes, such as assault, auto theft and drug sale/manufacturing have better odds of avoiding the felon label than females convicted of other crimes. Finally, measures of gendered threat do not increase the use of social control for female offenders.

Conclusions

Women have significantly better chances of avoiding a felon label; however, this varies by crime type. Criminal justice actors may be reluctant to penalize female offenders with a felon label and the stigma of violent crime convictions. Finally, gendered threat measures did not weaken the leniency shown to female probationers in Florida, possible due to the increased resources available to women in the study areas.     

“Sociologically speaking”: Law,sexuality and social change

Historically, legal discourse affirms the apparent naturalness of the heterosexual family, contributing to the invisibility of social processes which privilege heterosexuality. In this paper, Herman examines ways in which this naturalization and invisibility are the result of the delegitimation of knowledges which challenge the ‘Truth’ of law. Exploring the role of the sociologist as expert witness in the recent Mossop decisions, but also aspects of other recent lesbian and gay litigation, Herman raises a number of questions about the relationship between meaning and truth in law, and the constitution of sexual identity through the legal process. In so doing, she raises questions central to feminist theory.     

Chickenheads, agents, mommies, and jockeys: the social organization of transnational commercial sex

In the sex trafficking literature, the term ??trafficker?? is often used to refer to all the various actors who are involved in the business of transnational sex work. It thus includes those who recruit women in the source countries; those who transport victims across international borders; and those who manage and exploit the women in the various commercial sex venues in the destination countries. In this paper, we will look at some of the people who fall into these categories of being ??traffickers.?? Our goal is to better understand the many people who are facilitating transnational commercial sex. We will explore their background characteristics, the reasons for their involvement in sex trafficking, their roles and functions in the business, and the nature of their relationships with the women who sell sex. We will also discuss the issue of whether, and to what extent, organized crime groups are involved as traffickers in the transnational sex trade. Our discussion is drawn from face-to-face interviews with commercial sex workers, and with sex ring operators and a variety of government officials.     

Social junk,social dynamite and the rabble: Persons with AIDS in jail

The issues surrounding AIDS in corrections have forced administrators to develop policy which accurately reflects the realities of the AIDS crisis. Moreover, administrators must base their policy decisions on available research findings, much of which is generated by government agencies and research policy groups. Whereas this research does serve the proper function of guiding policy, it is somewhat removed from the theoretical implications that AIDS has to societal reaction and social class. This article introduces a theoretical framework comprised of Irwin’s (1985) concept of the rabble and Spitzer’s (1975) notes on social junk and social dynamite. In addition to discussing this framework as it relates to social metaphors and social control, the implications to correctional policy are also be presented. The author gratefully acknowledges Marie Mark for her assistance in preparing the final version of this article.     

Coping,confidence, and change within the academy: a longitudinal look at police recruits

This study is based on surveys of police recruits representing four agencies across the United States. The recruits were surveyed at the beginning and end of their academy training and asked about coping strategies and the confidence they had in performing their jobs. Coping shifted significantly over time, with recruits utilizing task-oriented and outreach strategies less frequently at the end of the academy than at the beginning. Avoidance coping strategies were used more frequently by recruits at the end of the academy than at the beginning. Slight changes were also found in the influence of these strategies on job confidence over time, with avoidance coping having a stronger influence in the beginning of the academy than at the end. The role of demographic factors on coping was largely invariant over time, with only slight differences detected. Implications for policy and research are also discussed.     

Insiders and outsiders: social change,deviant others,and sense of community in a boomtown

In the last decade, the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta has undergone significant social changes due to the rapid growth of the oilsands industry in and around the city. In this short period of time, Fort Murray’s population has more than doubled attracting migrants from all over Canada and internationally to fill labor shortages in the city. In the process, Fort McMurray has become a twenty-first century boomtown. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this article examines how young people and (adult) key informants perceived disorder, crime, risk, and boomtown living. It was found that participants drew a sharp distinction between those who contributed to the community by making Fort McMurray a home (the insiders) and those who did not (the outsiders). Blame for many of the negative aspects (i.e., disorder, crime, and risks) that came along with boomtown living was attributed to these outsiders.     

Managing unacceptable risk: sex offenders,community response,and social policy in the United States and Canada

This article compares the community protection-risk management model for the control of sex offenders with the clinical and justice models that preceded it and with a restorative justice alternative based on the principle of community reintegration. The author discusses how this community protection-risk management model reflects the new penology as well as the fusion of panopticism and synopticism. The author also discusses the model's actual and potential social costs. He concludes with a brief look at circles of support and accountability. This Canadian approach involves setting up support circles of volunteers who enter into a covenant with persons designated as high-risk sex offenders to help them both to integrate into the community and to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend.     

Heroin addiction, crime and economic cost: A critical analysis

The conceptual framework for measuring the economic cost of crime is reviewed. Although this framework is generally accepted, specific applications are shown to contain conceptual errors. In the drug abuse area, where the greatest number of applications have been made, serious misapplications are documented. Because of these conceptual flaws and careless extrapolation of estimates that are hardly more than guesses, the total economic cost of drug-related crime has been greatly overestimated. The result has been to reinforce the policy emphasis on law enforcement and to mislead the public as to the important sources and magnitude of the total economic cost of drug abuse.     

Race,ethnicity, and social change: The democratization of middle‐class crime*

Since the mid‐1970s, the percentage of non‐White people convicted of white‐collar type crimes in the federal judicial system has been growing steadily. In 2015, non‐Whites accounted for more than half of all convictions for certain white‐collar type crimes, but the increase in non‐White participation has not occurred evenly across all race and ethnic groups. Asians and Latinos have increased their participation in white‐collar crime more so than Blacks. Using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the U.S. Census, we investigate whether the differential increase among race and ethnic groups in white‐collar type crimes can be explained by their differential increase in middle‐class occupations. The findings have implications for opportunity, cultural, and race‐centered perspectives on crime, as well as institutional anomie theory, and they suggest that low‐level white‐collar crimes are being democratized along lines of race and ethnicity.     

Delinquency,unstructured socializing,and social change: The rise and fall of a teen culture of independence

This article delves into the connections between time trends in unstructured socializing and other dramatic changes in adolescence since the 1950s. Osgood et al.’s (1996) individual-level application of routine activity theory proposed that unstructured socializing contributes to crime by exposing people to situations conducive to deviance, and a large body of research supports this idea. Unstructured socializing has proven useful as an explanatory bridge that links crime and deviance to key social factors like age, class, and gender. The present article expands on two recent studies (Baumer et al., 2021; Svensson & Oberwittler, 2021), which showed that changing rates of unstructured socializing help explain time trends in delinquency as well. Based on time trends across many domains of adolescent life, I argue that changes in unstructured socializing were a manifestation of the rise and fall of a teen culture of independence from the 1950s to the 2020s. The effectiveness of unstructured socializing as an explanatory bridge demonstrates the value of focusing on ordinary, everyday activities for tapping into features of life that are consequential and that vary across social conditions.