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Sex Trafficking


Stripped of Promises: The Hidden Realities of Guam’s Exotic Dance Industry
Labor trafficking doesn’t always involve chains or cages. Sometimes it looks like contracts written in legalese, passports held just out of reach, or threats veiled as “rules.” It’s coercion in a cocktail dress. It’s violence dressed up as opportunity.

Alex Andrews
Oct 27, 20254 min read


Passing the Gravy: How Systems Perpetuate Violence Instead of Ending It
She was twelve the first time the bruises should have mattered. The teacher noticed. The nurse filed a report. A caseworker visited the...

Swop Behind Bars
Sep 8, 20253 min read


Receipts Please! Myths Don't Stand A Chance!
Myth #4: Sex Workers Can Just “Get a Real Job” Reality: Many already have other jobs. Barriers like discrimination, criminal records,...

Swop Behind Bars
Aug 30, 20255 min read


Understanding the Myth: All Sex Workers Are Women
This myth isn’t just about who people imagine when they hear the words “sex worker.” It reflects who feminism has historically chosen to see and who it has chosen to leave out.

Swop Behind Bars
Aug 22, 20254 min read


Receipts Please! Myths Don't Stand a Chance!
Reality: Evidence from New Zealand and parts of Australia shows the opposite—decriminalization can improve safety, reduce exploitation, and increase cooperation with law enforcement for actual trafficking cases.

Swop Behind Bars
Aug 18, 20256 min read


Receipts, Please! Myths Don’t Stand a Chance
We bring you facts, figures, and context - not only so you can hold your own at the next policy meeting, but also so you can dismantle lazy arguments at the dinner table, on social media, or even in the comment section of that “concerned citizens” Facebook group your aunt keeps inviting you to.

Swop Behind Bars
Aug 14, 20254 min read


Fantasy, Fallout, and the Politics of Outrage: The Ghislaine Maxwell Edition
This week, the national conversation once again spiraled around the so-called Epstein “client list.” The same question resurfaced:Where is it? Who’s on it? When will it be released? And just like every other time, the obsession with the list revealed more about the public’s craving for spectacle than their actual commitment to justice.

Swop Behind Bars
Jul 28, 20254 min read


Seen but Still Silenced: The Complicated Gratitude of the Sex Worker Rights Movement
When a certain child rescue organization—you know, the one whose name sounds like a Christian indie band—published their recent reflection titled “Mistakes happen in anti-trafficking work. We must learn from them,” a strange thing happened across the sex worker rights community.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 30, 20254 min read


Tariffs and End Demand: When “Protection” Becomes the Problem
Remember when tariffs were marketed as the golden ticket to economic salvation?

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 25, 20253 min read


The Most Expensive DUI in Massachusetts History
In what could be seen as the most expensive DUI in Massachusetts history, Karen Read was found Not Guilty this week of second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe.

Blair Hopkins
Jun 23, 20253 min read


Degrees of Separation: Why We Must Redefine What Counts as Education
It started with a question. “What college degree do you have?” Tasha had just been released and was sitting in the intake office of a...

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 20, 20255 min read


Classroom Contraband — What They Don’t Teach You in Prison
For years, prisons were called “crime schools” because people learned more about how to survive in the underground economy than how to build a stable life.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 20, 20254 min read


🚨 Weekend Hot Takes🚨
Good morning, Red Umbrella fam. Hope your coffee is strong and your boundaries stronger, because this weekend delivered a full-course meal of carceral nonsense, QAnon fever dreams, ICE agents crashing into elementary school zones, and a grown man throwing himself a military parade for his birthday.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 16, 20254 min read


Degrees of Survival — When Learning Is a Lifeline for Trafficking Survivors
When people imagine what “freedom” looks like for trafficking survivors, they often picture a dramatic rescue or a courtroom triumph—handcuffs off, a predator jailed, a survivor walking into the sunlight.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 13, 20255 min read


Friday the 13th, Prank Calls, and Trafficking Conspiracies We Wish We Made Up
There’s something about Friday the 13th that makes people lose their ever-loving minds.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 12, 20254 min read


When Feminism Wears Lip Gloss: How Pink Patriarchy Undermines the Fight for Liberation
There’s a version of feminism out there that wears a pussyhat, clutches her pearls, and still calls the manager when a sex worker speaks at a panel.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 11, 20253 min read


Correspondence Course Hustle — Higher Education from a Cell
Education is more than a classroom, a test, or a diploma. For criminalized women, survivors, and sex workers, it’s a form of resistance. It’s a survival strategy. It’s a way to reclaim power in systems designed to keep us voiceless.

Swop Behind Bars
Jun 6, 20255 min read


The GED Gap — Why Basic Education Still Isn’t Basic (Especially if You're a Woman in a Cage)
Education is often sold as the golden ticket—the “way out,” the “great equalizer,” the shiny ladder out of poverty. But for women who’ve...

Swop Behind Bars
May 30, 20255 min read


“I Don’t Want You to Worry About Me”: A Letter No Mother Should Ever Have to Write
No mother should have to write a letter to her child from prison.

Swop Behind Bars
May 27, 20253 min read


Models for Change: Community-led and policy-driven solutions that center healing, safety and equity
Community-led services and support for incarcerated women being released from prison are grounded in one radical belief: that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. Rather than imposing top-down programs that often miss the mark, grassroots organizations across the country—many founded and led by formerly incarcerated women—offer holistic, peer-based support that centers dignity, autonomy, and lived experience.

Swop Behind Bars
May 23, 20256 min read
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