SWOP Behind Bars Advocacy from the Margins

Receipts Please! Myths Don't Stand a Chance! Myth #2: Decriminalization Will Increase Trafficking

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.

When Sport Turns to Moral Panic: Trafficking Rhetoric at Major Events

There’s a familiar narrative that follows mega sporting events in the U.S.—that they spark an inevitable rise in human trafficking, especially the ever salacious sex trafficking. The Super Bowl is the most common example: reports of thousands of underage sex workers flood headlines, but the evidence doesn’t back that up. While adult-oriented online ads may tick up modestly, rigorous studies consistently debunk the notion of dramatic spikes in actual trafficking during such events.
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup coming to North America, it’s already shaping up to be the “new” Super Bowl for trafficking rhetoric—complete with recycled myths, inflated statistics, and the same cast of anti-trafficking organizations eager to cash in on the global spotlight.

The Importantance of Boundaries As A Single Mother and Sex Worker

Being in the sex industry started for me at the age of 20. I was raised in one of the most dangerous cities, Camden, New Jersey. I was a single mother of 2 daughters at the time whose fathers were both absent, one was incarcerated and the other was absent by default. I was raised with family violence and my children and I were kicked out of my mother's house and sent to a women's shelter. At the time I wasn't bothered much emotionally by it, although I had two other grown sisters with children like myself, I was grown and at 20 being on my own was a part of adulting.
 

Intesections of Sex Work, Violence and Incarceration

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.

Pregnant Sex Workers Deserve Dignity Too

I’m a California native born and raised in the suburbs of the state capital city. I understand that I grew up with more privilege than most Black kids my age. Privilege doesn’t absolve you of dysfunction, it delays it.

Weekend Hot Takes - 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.
At SWOP Behind Bars, we spent the week unpacking what this really means—for survivors, for sex workers, and for anyone who’s ever dared to hold receipts on the powerful. From Trump calling his own base “stupid” for caring about trafficking, to the mythologizing of the black book, to the survivors no one believed for years—we followed the threads that mainstream media refuses to pull.
But this week, one name kept surfacing in a different light:Ghislaine Maxwell.
And like so many things in this case, the conversation got murkier, messier, and harder to ignore.

From the Streets to the Cellblock: When “Rescue” Becomes a Rap Sheet

Let’s start with a cold, hard truth: the so-called “anti-trafficking” initiatives that claim to “rescue” sex workers often function more like a conveyor belt straight to jail. And spoiler alert—if your “rescue” ends with a mugshot, trauma, and court-mandated shame therapy, it wasn’t a rescue. It was a raid with a PR team.
Despite all the glossy PSAs, billboards, and tearful press conferences, most “anti-trafficking” operations disproportionately arrest adult consensual sex workers—not traffickers, not clients, and certainly not the multimillion-dollar industries that profit off criminalization. These operations rarely even identify trafficking victims. What they do reliably produce are court dockets full of Black, brown, poor, queer, trans, and undocumented folks booked on charges like prostitution, loitering, failure to identify, or possession of condoms—yes, condoms.
Let’s break down just a few of the conveyor belt’s moving parts
 

Weekend Hot Takes: About the Epstein “List”

The sex worker rights movement has long explored how the public—and too often, the courts—struggle to grasp the realities of exploitation, especially when it hides behind wealth, consent, or celebrity. We’ve written about coercion, manipulation, and the blurry gray lines that survivors are expected to define in black and white.
But there’s something else we need to talk about.Something that resurfaces every few months like clockwork:
The Epstein “client list.”
Where is it? Who’s on it? When will it be released?