We ve seen all sorts of crazy things happen over the past year and a half. A pandemic that s shut everything down, marijuana becoming more and more legal, magic mushrooms decriminalized in Ann Arbor, and now one Michigan county is taking a stand for those who perform consensual sex work. Now here s the thing, it s something we all think about in the privacy of our minds, but when someone gets caught we act like they re an awful person, or slam people in the news as if we don t all go through the motions in our mind of having wants.
The fact is it s none of anyone s business how a person makes their money as long as nobody is getting hurt, and to be honest, there s no shame in it and we need to start normalizing that. Washtenaw County s new prosecutor Eli Savit just announced he would no longer charge criminal cases involving marijuana, magic mushrooms, and will now no longer issue criminal charges relating to sex work.
Washtenaw County s new prosecutor is decriminalizing consensual sex work, his office announced Thursday.
Prosecutor Eli Savit announced in a press release that his office is ending the practice of prosecuting sex workers who engage in consensual sex. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office is well aware that sex work carries an increased risk for violence, human trafficking, and coercion. Data and experience, however, have shown that criminalizing sex work does little to alleviate those harms, Savit said in the statement. Indeed the criminalization of sex work actually increases the risk of sex work adjacent harm. Accordingly, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office will henceforth decline to bring charges related to consensual sex work per se. The Prosecutor’s Office, however, will continue to charge sex work-adjacent crime including human trafficking, violence, and offenses involving children that directly harm county residents.