The Oakland Council will be voting to adopt Recommendation 66 from the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. This recommendation to “eliminate police responsibility for enforcement and investigation of sex trades between adults” is a stealth maneuver to decriminalize pimping and purchasing sex acts. This would result in the mainstreaming of the sex trade in Oakland, California.

In April 2021, 400 survivors, activists and organizations from Oakland, the nation, and other countries wrote letters to the Oakland City Council opposing Recommendation 66. Please join the FREED Collective to urge the Oakland City Council to say NO to Recommendation 66!

Decriminalization of prostitution legalizes exploitation and zones the sex trade into poorer neighborhoods, often neighborhoods of people of color. We do not want Oakland to set out a legal welcome mat for pimps, turning it into a sex tourism destination.  We support decriminalizing the person who is paid for and exploited in prostitution - but not the exploiters.  

Recommendation 66 contains many factual errors. Although framed as an effort to protect people in prostitution, Recommendation 66 would increase the harms perpetrated by traffickers, pimps, and sex buyers. It would lead to increased exploitation of minors who are legally understood as trafficking victims. 

Our concerns are echoed in a 2004 Berkeley City Manager’s report to the Berkeley City Council which stated that decriminalization of prostitution would 1) increase the number of crimes of sexual assault, battery, and robbery, 2) increase exploitation of women and children, 3) increase STDs, especially in vulnerable groups, 4) increase the cost of law enforcement.

Prostitution and trafficking are inextricable. We understand that money coerces the sexual access. But that is not real consent.

When sex buyers no longer fear arrest, they will flock to Oakland, where traffickers will profit from the expanded market. If residential brothels are decriminalized, police will have no reason to enter venues where people may be in harm’s way, prostituted, or trafficked. At a time when SHADE, Love Never Fails, and other agencies report increased trafficking based out of Oakland’s residential brothels, police will have even fewer tools to detect trafficking if Recommendation 66 is passed 

We are committed to policies that improve the lives of vulnerable communities by increasing access to housing, mental health services, job training, and violence-prevention programs. Recommendation 66 does just the opposite:  it would protect traffickers but would not protect prostituted people.  We urge you to stand with exited survivors, activists, and the Oakland community in rejecting Recommendation 66.