Educator: Justice Rivera

Criminalization is a violent strategy of an exploitative criminal legal system, so it can never actually create safety. Knowledge makes us safer, connection makes us safer, resourcing makes us safer; however, these things are all criminalized. Decriminalizing sex work can make sex workers safer. It allows us to connect with each other to gain and share knowledge and resources. But decriminalization might not be enough because the U.S. is playing control whack-a-mole against anyone who doesn’t fit the idea of the cishet white American for whom this country was constructed. Anti-criminalization looks at the numerous overlapping ways that identities and survival are punished and encourages us to reframe and rebuild our systems and approaches. Anti-criminalization can prevent gender-based violence, sex trafficking, overdose, and disease by acknowledging the places where harm overlaps and removing the large layer of political restriction surrounding our daily existence and survival. It is also a framework and approach that creates unity among advocates working towards bodily autonomy.