Background: The state of Rhode Island has a unique history within the U.S. as indoor prostitution was decriminalized from 1980 - 2009. While studies of this period through metrics like disease incidence or violent crime rates have been used to discuss various legal models, many Rhode Island-based sex workers still found themselves criminalized. An in-depth understanding of the relationship between sex work, drug use, racism, transphobia, xenophobia, and poverty is necessary in developing policy that will promote safety and health.
Objectives: This work explores the narrative experiences of criminalization of drug use and sex work in Rhode Island, USA.
Methods: This community-based research was carried out among in-person sex workers in Rhode Island in 2021. We collected 100 surveys and 35 semi-structured interviews and completed analysis using grounded theory qualitative analysis.
Results: Sex work and drug use exist as sites of criminalization. These are also practices that provide support in the face of oppression and economic precarity and are a means of survival for many. While indoor full service sex work was decriminalized in RI, marginalized sex workers continued to be prosecuted.
Implications: We have seen a number of developments in the past 5 years in both decriminalizing drugs as well as sex work. However, the experiences of many sex workers during Rhode Island’s period of decriminalization suggest that decriminalization must be understood as only effective within a larger effort to dismantle the US’s carceral state built upon settler colonialism and anti-blackness.