By Derek J. Demeri

In recognition of International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I ask New Jersey today to do better for its people.

Last month, the attorney general issued a statewide Directive Governing Law Enforcement Interactions with Transgender Individuals. The new directive makes great strides on respecting people’s dignity when arrests are being made but fails to acknowledge how stereotypes and prejudice of transgender and gender-diverse people play into why arrests of the community are being done in the first place. The deafening silence when it comes to the profiling of transgender women and non-binary femme individuals as sex workers is particularly salient.

As the New Jersey Task Force on Transgender Equality recent noted in their Report and Recommendations, transgender women of color are frequently profiled as sex workers by law enforcement. One-third of Black transgender women who interacted with police reported that law enforcement assumed they were engaging in prostitution. While the new directive states law enforcement cannot “[c]onsider a person’s actual or perceived gender identity or expression and/or sexual orientation as a basis for reasonable suspicion,” its value falls flat without explicit guidance on the issue of profiling transgender women as sex workers.

This profiling has led to serious repercussions especially when condoms continue to be used as evidence of prostitution in New Jersey. In a conversation with Gary-Paul Wright, executive director of the African-American Office of Gay Concerns in Newark, I learned that the Port Authority Police Department attempted to arrest a Black transgender woman who was working as a public health outreach worker. Why? She was handing out condoms to other transgender women of color and that fit the definition of “promoting prostitution” under New Jersey’s laws. California recently banned using condoms as evidence because of the serious public health consequences it has on the wider community.

To be fair, the attorney general does have a challenge at ending the profiling of transgender women as sex workers: New Jersey’s Criminal Code requires it. Section 2C:34-1.1 criminalizes “wander[ing] . . . in a public place with the purpose of engaging in prostitution” and stereotypes are oftentimes the only way to enforce such a vague statute. This is the same problem Arizona ran into when they arrested a Black transgender woman for walking down the street. The inherently discriminatory enforcement of these laws is why New York is considering removing their equivalent loitering statute.

The profiling of transgender people as sex workers by law enforcement is just one example of the many ways in which the lives of transgender people are regularly disrupted. Despite New Jersey’s civil rights protections for gender identity, the Transgender Equality Task Force reported that 26% of transgender people have been fired, denied a promotion, or not hired because of their gender identity. They also reported that 21% of transgender people from New Jersey experienced problems accessing healthcare and that 24% of the New Jersey community has experienced homelessness. Worst of all, the average life expectancy for transgender women of color is a mere 35 years.

The AG’s directive came out on Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience. Disturbingly, 60% of transgender people murdered this year were people (that we know of) who were involved in sex work and the erasure of issues related to the sex trades only contributes to the epidemic of violence that transgender and gender-diverse people regularly experience.

Respecting people’s pronouns and the right to exist as the gender they are is absolutely necessary to furthering the principles of dignity and respect for all of New Jerseyans. The new Directive furthers just that. However, one can never feel dignity when they are being profiled and arrested for being transgender in a public space. New Jersey can, and must, do more.

Derek J. Demeri co-founded the New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance in 2013, New Jersey’s only sex worker rights organization, and is a current law student at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey.

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