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BSWAC Legislative Priorities 2025-2026:

1. H1980 – An Act to Promote the Health and Safety of People in the Sex Trade

• Decriminalizes independent adult sex work, while anti-trafficking laws remain.
• Expunges marijuana and prostitution-related records.
• Modernizes Massachusetts’ anti-trafficking law to match the federal and international definition of human trafficking.

2. H2467 – An Act to Study the Decriminalization of Sex Work

• Creates an interagency committee to study decriminalizing sex work.
• The committee’s mandate would include developing strategies to reduce human trafficking and studying the development of a fund to prevent human trafficking.

3. H1747 – An Act Relative to Safe Reporting

• Enables people to report a crime without fear of arrest for prostitution, drug possession, loitering, trespassing, or soliciting.

4. H2634 – An Act Relative to Sexual Assault by an Officer

• Prohibits police from engaging in sexual conduct with a person they are investigating or detaining.
• Requires police agencies to create a policy prohibiting police from engaging in sexual conduct with a person under investigation for prostitution.

We are also asking legislators to oppose the Nordic Model, a.k.a. partial criminalization, “End Demand,” or the “Equality Model,” which H1683/S1116 – An Act to Strengthen Justice and Support for Sex Trade Survivors would enact. This model removes criminal penalties for selling sex but keeps sex workers’ clients criminalized, which evidence shows puts sex workers at greater risk of violence, increases police surveillance, and hurts their livelihoods.

For health care providers:

• Sex Worker Health: Continuing Education for Healthcare Providers: 
  • Module 1
  • Module 2
  • Module 3
• Working with Sex Workers: A Guide for Health Professionals
• COIN Clinic at Callen-Lorde

Learn about decriminalization:

• The UN released this report on March 2024.
• Rhode Island formed a committee to study whether to decriminalize sex work in the state, and they recently issued their final report recommending full decriminalization here. (see pgs 5-8)
• ACLU policy brief on full decriminalization
• Human Rights Watch statement on full decriminalization
• World Health Organization report recommending full decriminalization
• UNAIDS fact sheet on HIV and sex work
• Open Society Foundation brief on decriminalization 
• Here is a helpful report from Data for Progress including national polling on decrim.

Pro-decrim anti-trafficking organizations have been marginalized:

• Freedom Network statement on decriminalization and field report
• Global Alliance on Trafficking in Women’s statement on decriminalization

The Nordic Model harms sex workers:

• Amnesty International finds that implementation of the Nordic Model in Norway has led to human rights abuses against sex workers
• Meta-analysis of 52 studies finding any form of criminalization of the sex industry, including criminalizing clients, harms sex workers
• Sweden’s prostitution law did not decrease the number of people selling sex and led to increased dangers for sex workers
• The Nordic Model has punitive impacts on migrant sex workers
• This study finds that end-demand laws may exacerbate and reproduce harms of previous criminalized approaches to sex work in Canada.
• Other reports from sex worker groups experiencing “end demand”:
  • Ireland: Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, “I Feel Targeted And I Can’t Feel Safe: Peer Research of Sex Workers and the Law,” 2020. Link
  • Sweden: Fückforbundet, “Twenty Years of Failing Sex Workers: A Community Report on the Impact of the 1999 Swedish Sex Purchase Act,” September 2019. Link
  • France: Médecins du Monde et al., “What do sex workers think about the French Prostitution Act? A Study on the Impact of the Law from 13 April 2016 Against the ‘Prostitution System’ in France,” 2018. Link

More on the Nordic model:

• Attacking Demand, Escalating Violence: The Impact of Twenty Years of End Demand Implementation on People who Trade Sex summarizes the impact from five different countries
• A policy brief on “End Demand” from the Global Network of Sex Work Projects is available here.
• Here is a recent paper from Chicago studying Nordic Model-style policing.