catchingjohns_lede

Melt Canton / Ill.

*Some names have been changed to protect the condom of the individuals involved.

It's rare to see a grown human cry. But in a cigarette-scented hotel room near a Chicago airdrome, more than a dozen men come up and get with wet cheeks and quivering lips. No one had died, no national tragedy had occurred— they had simply been caught trying to purchase sex.

Across the country, cops are implementing a strategy that has long been debated in Europe: targeting the men who buy sex while trying to aid the women who sell it. Some police and scholars say that focusing law enforcement attention on sex buyers reduces need for prostitution, which strangles the sex activity manufacture and curbs human being trafficking. But some man rights organizations, most recently Amnesty International, advocate for the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work, including buying sex.

While Amnesty International members were considering whether to recommend decriminalizing sex work altogether, I was with a Fourth dimension video squad on ii buyer-focused sex stings in Melt County, Ill. We thought it would be like an adrenaline-pumping episode of Police & Order SVU, only we were incorrect. Sex stings aren't glamorous—they're grim windows into the loneliness and desperation that motivates some men to grasp at the sexual cornucopia they think they are owed. Watching guys get caught is like watching that fantasy get destroyed over and over.

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How Ane County is Targeting Men Who Purchase Sex

The men are all different races and ages, from all walks of life– the only thing they have in common is shock. Some sit motionless with their hands over their optics. One, a man so wide cops needed two pairs of handcuffs to arrest him, sat on the bedspread shaking his caput slowly. Another expressed incredulity at his arrest, arguing that cops should be going subsequently rapists and child molesters instead. All of them were slapped with a citation and a fine for buying sex on Sheriff Tom Dart's turf.

The Cook Canton Sheriff's Function, led by Tom Dart, has been the driving force in a national push to make information technology harder for pimps to sell sex and johns to buy it. Until recently, about jurisdictions in the U.Southward. have focused their energy on absorbing prostituted women— according to records from the Department of Justice, more 43,000 women were arrested for prostitution-related offenses in 2010, compared to only over xix,000 men (this number includes johns, pimps, and male sexual activity workers). But since 2011, Sheriff Dart's part has organized the "National Mean solar day of Johns Arrests," now re-named "National Johns Suppression Initiative," a serial of stings coordinated with other jurisdictions over the class of several weeks, aimed at encouraging a permanent modify in police force practices.

Dart's office now arrests but as many johns per year as sex activity workers, and with a radically different agenda— while clients are hit with a ticket and fine that tin can reach $1,300, sex workers are arrested and then offered counseling and job preparation through the Sheriff's Women'due south Justice Program, which is run by sex trafficking survivors. 60% of the money collected from johns' fines goes to support the Women's Justice Program, the other 40% goes to juvenile justice programs. Cook county does johns stings year-circular, but the national initiative happens a few times a year.

I went forth with Dart'south team on ii stings: one in a hotel, one on the street. It'due south of import to note that all genders buy and sell sex activity, and trans people are often over-represented in the sexual activity industry because of workplace bigotry elsewhere. But in this case, I observed women as sexual activity workers and men every bit buyers, so that'south how I'll describe information technology hither.

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Our first sting starts in an anonymous hotel room nearly a Chicago airport. The bedspread smells like onetime cigarettes and the air conditioner is acting upwardly. Our room is filled with burly cops in baseball game caps and T-shirts, badges hung around their necks, watching Telly and joking around. In the room across the hall are female underground officers dressed equally sex workers. A hot pink tank-top, leopard print leggings. Only a few hours earlier, they had placed ads on a site called backpage.com advertizing sex— already, guys are calling them looking to encounter up. "Yes, that's my real moving-picture show," says Officer Meg*, twirling her hair as she talks on the phone. "I work out. You want to political party?" Her colleague, Officer Lisa*, says she sometimes gets asked "'what practise your tits wait like? What does your ass expect like?'"

When a client arrives at the hotel, the undercover officers text their colleagues to make sure everyone's out of the hall. The cops assemble past the door, looking through the keyhole and waiting for a sign from the undercover officeholder. For a few seconds, all joking stops, and everyone is admittedly silent. One time a deal has been made for sex, the hugger-mugger officer gives an electronic signal and the other cops blitz in and gage the buyer. The whole procedure usually takes under a minute. (To protect the condom of the undercover officers, we've agreed to use pseudonyms.)

After they're cuffed, the johns are apace taken to a tertiary room, where they're searched for weapons. If they're unarmed, the officers take off their handcuffs and explain the state of affairs. They'll become an ordinance violation, which is at least a $500 fine, and in many cases their car will exist towed, which is another $500, plus a towing fee that'due south usually between $200-300. This won't result in a criminal tape, nor will they serve whatsoever jail time, unless at that place's an open warrant for their abort on a different charge. And they volition accept to picket a short "Johns School" video nigh how women are exploited in the sex manufacture.

Every john that got caught said it was his showtime time, just the cops don't buy it. "You're either the unluckiest guy in the earth, or yous're lying," says Deputy Chief Michael Anton, who led the stings. His logic is that the cops are out there so infrequently, only people ownership regular sex are likely to get caught. "It's gotta be humiliating for these guys."

A college educatee came in sobbing, "my parents are going to impale me." He explained to the cops, and to TIME, that he had a girlfriend, but their human relationship had recently gotten more serious and she'd said she wanted to abjure until matrimony. He says that'south how he found himself seeking out a prostitute. "I'chiliad going to fail at life at present," he told us, dejected.

Deputy Chief Anton rolled his optics and made a crybaby face, only let the kid off with simply the ticket, without towing his machine. "I always say information technology'southward never their start fourth dimension, simply this might take been his commencement time," he said.

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Groovy Down on the "Johns"

Dart'due south team isn't the showtime to target guys who buy sex. Sweden criminalized pimps and buyers (just not individual sex workers) in 1999, in a policy at present known every bit the "Nordic Model." Government reports says this policy may have led to a reduction in street prostitution and trafficking of young and vulnerable girls from poor countries. Under the Nordic Model, which has also been adopted in Kingdom of norway and Canada and endorsed by a non-binding European Parliament resolution, sex workers themselves don't face arrest, simply their clients do.

Versions of this approach are slowly spreading across the U.S., only most jurisdictions keep to arrest prostitutes even as they turn their focus to sexual activity buyers. New York established a special courtroom system in 2013 to process sex workers and trafficking victims, with the goal of offering them counseling and social services, the aforementioned yr Nassau County, NY caught more than 100 johns and posted their pictures online in a controversial sting called "Operation Affluent the Johns." Orange Canton, Calif. is cracking downwards on pimps and johns instead of prostitutes, reducing arrests of women as they increment arrests of men. Seattle has seen some early success in its "Buyer Beware" program, and in 2014, Seattle police arrested more sex buyers than prostitutes for the first time.

"We brand it very unpleasant for the person who's out there purchasing the sex," says Captain Eric Sano of the Seattle constabulary section, "Because we believe there wouldn't be equally much supply if there wasn't a demand."

Dart only has jurisdiction in Cook County, but he's encouraging officers from all over the country to try the buyer-focused approach. Some cities, like Seattle, have developed their own versions of this strategy merely traded notes with Dart. Others, similar Phoenix, Cincinnati and Houston, followed Dart'southward lead on demand suppression. More than 70 agencies accept participated in at least 1 of Dart'due south operations, with more than 2,900 buyers arrested across all jurisdictions since 2011.

"What Cook County has done that'due south really been benign is to highlight this problem and bring law enforcement together beyond the state to combat it.," says Phoenix police Sergeant Jonathan Howard. "They've actually taken the lead in helping usa come with different ways to address need for prostitution."

Some homo rights groups have event with this approach. On August 11, Amnesty International voted to recommend the consummate decriminalization of prostitution, both for the buyers and sellers, maxim that criminal laws against the consensual adult sex trade violates the human rights of sexual practice workers. While UNAIDS and the World Health Organization have previously called for the decriminalization of sexual activity work for public health reasons (in society to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases), and other groups have advocated the same, Amnesty International is the first major international human rights group to issue a full-throated global public policy recommendation for lifting laws against ownership and selling of sex purely on humans rights grounds. Immunity can't make or enforce laws, but its recommendations carry international weight. "Information technology's not just proverb that sexual practice workers need rights so AIDS doesn't spread," says Molly Crabapple, a prominent artist and journalist who has long advocated on behalf of sex workers. "Information technology's an acknowledgement that sex worker rights are human rights."

But Amnesty's decision was met with heavy criticism from some who fence that full decriminalization would enable pimps and johns and could contribute to an explosion in sex trafficking. Onetime President Jimmy Carter wrote a strongly worded letter to Amnesty members urging them to vote against the policy, and Gloria Steinem and Lena Dunham were among hundreds of feminists and human rights activists who signed a alphabetic character arguing that decriminalizing sex ownership would lead to more sexual exploitation of the near vulnerable women in society. After Deutschland legalized prostitution in 2002, police reported information technology became much more difficult to target abusive pimps, fifty-fifty as social workers said that prostitutes were working in fifty-fifty worse conditions than before, co-ordinate to a 2013 article in High german magazine Der Speigel. And a 2012 report published in the journal World Development found that equally a full general tendency, countries with legalized prostitution tend to have more than human being trafficking.

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"If we're serious virtually ending sex activity trafficking, its very clear that something needs to be done about the buyers," says Brad Myles, CEO of Polaris, a global anti-trafficking advocacy group. "Leaving a thriving market of sexual activity buyers and assuming that no pimps and traffickers are going to enter that market, that doesn't hold up." Sheriff Dart says he'southward open to any solutions, but is skeptical of the "naiveté" around legalization. "The pimps and the traffickers are not going to say 'oh it'due south legalized now, nosotros're out of the business," he says.

So two days after the hotel sting, nosotros're out hunting for johns again, this time on a stretch of road almost Chicago's O'Hare airport where prostitutes are known to get together. It'south vi:30 in the forenoon, and already hot. The buyers are men coming off a night shift at the drome, men dropping off their wives for a trip, men looking for a quickie earlier work, Dart's team says.

"I've been stopped by preachers, Bible in paw, who later on they're done preaching their sermon, volition inquire me for a sexual act," says Officer Kate*, who'due south posing underground as a street prostitute. "They're just men. If they see it, they want it, and they think they're not going to go defenseless."

During the hotel stings, female person hugger-mugger officers clothes similar they're going to a party– merely on the street, they have to have a different await. They wear stained clothing, gym shoes, and leave their hair looking dirty, because they say most of the women working the streets have hitting stone bottom. "You lot want to blend in with the element you lot're working with," explains Officer Kate.

"I go my nails done every 2 weeks, and so I wearable something where I can put my hands," says Officer Lisa, who also sometimes does street operations. "I wear gym shoes to hide my pedicure."

In a street functioning, the female undercover officer stands on the corner in full view of a fellow officer, Officeholder Dan. He's responsible for watching her every movement. When a car pulls up to her, Officer Dan radios the make and model to his fellow officers waiting in an abort car. As presently as she makes a deal for sexual activity, usually merely a few seconds afterward the car pulls up, Officer Kate make a special gesture and moves away from the automobile. That's when Officer Dan radios the order:"it's a get."

The john is arrested inside seconds, and taken to a holding surface area, where he goes through the same process equally the guys defenseless in the hotel sting. "When a $10 blow job costs you $1,250 and you don't even become information technology, you got f–ked," says Deputy Chief Anton.

Sheriff Sprint isn't simply trying to catch johns in the act– he's trying to stop prostitution before it happens, past making information technology harder for pimps to exercise concern. He'south started a high-contour campaign confronting Backpage.com, a website usually used to place ads for sexual activity, successfully lobbying Visa and Mastercard to remove their cards as forms of advertizing payment on the adult portion the site. Backpage has sued Dart in federal court, challenge his crusade violates their gratis speech, and a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining lodge against Dart. But Visa and Mastercard have not notwithstanding returned to the site, and Backpage did non answer to requests for comment.

Despite the new focus on pimps and johns, hundreds of sex workers are notwithstanding being arrested in the U.s.a.–and even the human rights advocates who oppose Immunity's decriminalization stance don't support punishing prostituted women. Melt Canton has arrested almost 900 sex buyers and more than 2,000 sex workers since 2008, but that gap is closing, and now, Sprint'southward team says, arrests are roughly equal—this year but 240 sex activity workers take been arrested so far in Cook County, compared to 258 johns.

Prostituted women are charged with a misdemeanor (if they're charged at all), and johns get slapped with the citation and fines mentioned above. Even though soliciting a prostitute is technically a misdemeanor under Illinois law, Sprint's squad said they saw men paying the $100 bond fee and then just going out and ownership more sex. Even though a citation sounds more lenient, the hefty fine serves are more of a deterrent to sexual activity buyers than a misdemeanor charge. The sex activity workers tin can complete the Sheriff'south Women's Justice Program– which includes counseling and social services—rarely serve jail time if they're arrested past the Cook County Sheriff'southward office. But it's still a far cry from the Nordic model, where johns pay the penalty while sex workers walk free.

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Sex Industry Veterans Speak Out

Not everyone who works in the sexual activity merchandise is a victim. And advocates for decriminalization say that arrests, even if they're done with the intention of providing social services, are inherently harmful. Arrest records tin can affect sex workers' ability to find work or housing, and that existence hauled away in handcuffs just reinforces the stigma around sex work. "Arrest is not a course of outreach," says Katherine Koster, communicatoins manager of the Sex Worker Outreach Project.

Yet a significant portion of women who work in the sexual activity merchandise are coerced in some way. And sex trafficking (ordinarily divers every bit recruitment, compulsion or transport for the purposes of sexual exploitation), is rampant. According to a 2014 report from the UN-backed International Labor System, 4.5 million people are trafficked for sex activity, generating $99 billion a yr in revenue from forced sexual exploitation. Of the 208 human trafficking prosecutions pursued by the Department of Justice in 2014, 190 were for sexual activity trafficking, co-ordinate to a State Section written report on trafficking released in July. That'southward over 91%. Dart'due south officers say they tin't assist these women if they're not allowed to take them off the streets. Marian Hatcher, a trafficking survivor who now coordinates national coalitions for Dart'south office, calls the cops who arrested her "angels with handcuffs."

In some cases, especially in the The states, the line between trafficking and consensual sex piece of work can get blurry. "I feel myself to exist in betwixt trafficking and having a choice," says Kimmy*, a old prostitute serving time in Cook County jail on unrelated charges. She says she was pimped out by her onetime boyfriend, and we've changed her start name in order to protect her from possible retribution. "I didn't realize I was being sold or that I was being pimped…He wasn't all bedazzled out with rings and fur glaze and big automobile. He was only regular, a regular person."

"Prostitution is sneaky," she connected. "I'thou so smart just I didn't know that, you know? I didn't know that prostitution was prostitution."

But even trafficking victims who retrieve prostitution should stay illegal say they don't think it helps to be arrested. Caprice is a one-time prostitute who says she was coerced into selling sex for a pimp from the age of 17. She's in Cook County Jail on charges unrelated to prostitution, but she said she'southward been arrested for prostitution 10-12 times in dissimilar jurisdictions, and she "didn't feel there were whatever positive outcomes at all."

Many advocates for decriminalization point to a well-documented constabulary mistreatment of sex workers as justification for lifting all laws confronting prostitution. "I would no more than back up arresting trafficking victims to get them assist than I would support absorbing dilapidated women," says Molly Crabapple.

Despite her experience with arrests, Caprice however thinks something should be done about the sex trade. "When you lot have sex with someone, you give them a part of your soul," she says. "So I don't recall — I don't call up that it should be something that's sold."

Kimmy agrees. "If I know that information technology's legal, I'grand going to feel like I tin always do it," she says. "Information technology'due south a legal mode to kill yourself."

But despite the promising reports from Sweden and Kingdom of norway, information technology's hard to know how well end-demand tactics work in the United states. Dart's squad openly admits it's tough to quantify the efficacy of their programme, since it's nearly impossible to mensurate how many men are discouraged from buying sex (and whatsoever solid numbers almost the sex industry are hard to come by), but they say they haven't seen a repeat offender since they implemented the tough fines. But some researchers argue that end-demand tactics can have unintended consequences, and that increasing penalties for "arranging" sex work can inadvertently touch female sex activity workers who aren't pimps, just looking out for each other. Advocates for sex worker rights argue that targeting buyers really makes street workers less safe, since clients are jittery and the worker has less fourth dimension to screen them.

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"They're put into a situation where they're forced to try to protect their buyers," says Margaret Huang, Deputy Executive Director of Immunity International USA. "And so if a buyer becomes violent, they're afraid to report them."

Sitting in the minor apartment she shares with her big cat on Chicago's Due west Side, former escort Samantha Acosta says she feels more victimized by current policy than she does by her clients. She says she doesn't think the police accept violence against sex activity workers seriously, which only makes women more vulnerable. "They don't intendance nigh saving the lives of prostitutes," she says of Dart and his team. "They care about ending prostitution."

After the johns receive their citations, watch the "Johns School" video and go their cars towed, officers usually ask them whether they're going to look upward a prostitute again. All of them say no, and Deputy Master Anton thinks this is the i moment they're telling the truth: "We haven't seen the same one twice."

Design: Alexander Ho Additional Camera: Ian Kibbe