Manhattan D.A. will stop prosecuting sex workers, not their clients, pimps, or sex traffickers

Sex shop in New York City
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced Wednesday that his office will no longer prosecute prostitution and unlicensed massage, and moved to dismiss nearly 6,000 cases dating back to the 1970s. Along with seeking to vacate 878 open prostitution cases and 36 unlicensed massage cases, Vance asked the Manhattan Criminal Court to discharge 5,080 cases where the main offense was "loitering for the purpose of prostitution." New York State scrapped that "loitering" crime, known as "walking while trans," in February.

Many of the cases Vance requested dismissed "dated to the 1970s and 1980s, when New York waged a war against prostitution in an effort to clean up its image as a center of iniquity and vice," The New York Times notes. The cases "are both a relic of a different New York, and a very real burden for the person who carries the conviction or bench warrant," Vance said in a statement. "Over the last decade we've learned from those with lived experience, and from our own experience on the ground: Criminally prosecuting prostitution does not make us safer, and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.