Intersections of Sex Work, Violence and Incarceration

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Violence and incarceration are everyday realities for people who trade sex. Fear of police encounters. Fear of arrest. Fear of being assaulted, exploited, or ignored. These aren’t side notes. They’re central to our lives—and yet they’re often brushed aside in public policy debates.

We talk about the intersections of policing, poverty, and marginalization like they’re obvious. But what’s less often explored is what happens after the arrest—what violence looks like inside jails and prisons, especially for sex workers.

When Our People Are Doing Time

Many of our incarcerated members are serving time for violent charges. That reality is jarring for people unfamiliar with how deep the system’s trauma runs. When you’ve only imagined sex workers as victims or petty offenders, it can be shocking to see a mugshot paired with a decades-long sentence—or life without parole.

But instead of reacting with disbelief, we need to ask better questions: What does violence look like under systemic oppression? Who gets to defend themselves, and who gets labeled violent for surviving? How do cycles of abuse, poverty, addiction, and mental illness lead to long-term incarceration?

We know sex workers are overpoliced. We know we’re disproportionately arrested. But what we don’t talk about enough is what happens after the cuffs go on—and how deep the stigma cuts inside the criminal legal system.

Mass Incarceration by Design

The U.S. incarcerates over 2.2 million people—more than any other country in the world. This includes local jails, state prisons, and federal facilities.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of people in state prisons—where most people are held—are serving time for violent offenses. But many others are locked up pretrial, simply because they can’t afford bail, or are serving long sentences tied to poverty-related crimes like theft, drug possession, or probation violations.

These policies don’t fight crime. They punish poverty. And they fall hardest on low-income communities and people of color. Black and Brown people make up 32% of the U.S. population—but 56% of the incarcerated population. That’s not an accident.

That’s by design.

Plea Bargains: A Rigged Game

Over 95% of federal convictions—and more than 90% at the state level—come from plea bargains, not jury trials. Prosecutors have enormous power to coerce guilty pleas, especially from poor defendants with public defenders juggling hundreds of cases.

People are routinely pressured to plead guilty—sometimes to crimes they didn’t commit—just to avoid the threat of a longer sentence at trial. The Supreme Court itself has said, “American criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.”

This isn’t justice. It’s assembly-line punishment.

Mandatory Minimums and the Sentencing Machine

Mandatory minimums—more than 150 in federal law alone—force judges to issue long sentences without considering the individual circumstances of a case. Many of these are tied to drug offenses, and disproportionately affect poor and marginalized people.

Add in “three-strikes” laws and parole restrictions, and we’ve created a sentencing machine that keeps people in prison for decades—sometimes for survival-level offenses. Judges can’t intervene. Prosecutors hold all the cards. And people’s lives are reduced to checklists of convictions.

The War on Drugs = The War on the Poor

Of the 2.2 million people currently incarcerated, nearly half a million are behind bars for drug offenses. The vast majority were arrested for possession, not trafficking. These are non-violent crimes—but they come with life-changing consequences.

The War on Drugs was never about safety. It was—and is—about social control. It devastates poor communities, punishes addiction, and keeps the carceral machine fed without addressing the root causes of harm. It’s not just ineffective. It’s inhumane.

Cash Bail and Pretrial Punishment

Across the U.S., 1 in 5 people in jail is legally innocent—held pretrial, often for months or years, simply because they can’t afford bail. In many counties, pretrial detainees far outnumber people serving actual sentences.

Most of these folks have been accused of non-violent crimes. But their punishment starts long before conviction—losing jobs, homes, or custody of their kids while they sit behind bars awaiting their day in court.

Criminalizing Poverty, Homelessness, and Survival

In 187 cities across the U.S., laws criminalize basic survival: sitting, sleeping, loitering, panhandling, even sharing food. These ordinances don’t solve homelessness. They just hide it. People experiencing poverty are easy targets for arrest—and easy to disappear into jails and prisons.

This isn’t public safety. It’s public cruelty.

Racism Is Baked In

Racial bias permeates every corner of the U.S. criminal legal system. Black men are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of white men. Black women are imprisoned at twice the rate of white women.

The racial disparities start young: Black and Brown youth make up 32% of the U.S. child population, but 52% of children whose cases are waived to adult criminal court. From the cradle to the cage, systemic racism is not a glitch—it’s the blueprint.

Mental Illness, Addiction, and Unhealed Trauma

An estimated 20% of incarcerated people live with serious mental illness. Up to 60% have substance use disorders. More and more people are locked up for being sick, not dangerous. Jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health institutions in America—an outcome no one planned for, and one we are utterly failing at.

Most incarcerated people—especially women—have also survived childhood abuse, including sexual violence. Trauma and incarceration are deeply intertwined. That doesn’t negate accountability, but it demands compassion, not cages.

This System Was Never Meant to Heal

The U.S. criminal legal system doesn’t just fail to rehabilitate—it actively harms. Police and prosecutors hold extraordinary power with little accountability. The system exceeds any moral or constitutional mandate, routinely using force against marginalized people—including sex workers—without consequence.

When you combine unchecked power with a refusal to recognize the humanity of sex workers, what you get isn’t just injustice. You get disaster.

And if it can’t be fixed—and for many of us, that’s already clear—it must be abolished.