Toni was a tiny woman. At 4 feet and 10 inches, she barely came up to my shoulders, even while wearing her seven-inch heels. She worked at my club for a few weeks, always getting ready in the same spot in the ever-chaotic dressing room. Nobody knew much about her beyond that she had a daughter, but she was a new girl and the turnover rate at our club was high, so we didn’t pry. After two weeks at our club, someone saw her stick her hand down a customer’s pants in the $100 dance area. In a club like ours, that behavior was scandalous and also just bad sales: An extra, especially such a low-priced one, had the potential to affect the market value of all of our own relatively vanilla services. But, because she was new, the club management gave her a firm talking to, telling her that she didn’t have to perform any illegal acts even if the customer asked for it. Just a few nights later, she was caught giving a blow job in one of the rooms with a clear glass door. The bouncers peeked in, snickered and invited others to do the same. She was fired immediately.

The managers of other clubs in the city were alerted of her behavior, and we all collectively buried the memory of the scandal with fresh gossip. Toni, shut out of employment in the legal sector of the industry, was forced to take her work to the street level. A few weeks later, we saw her picture on the evening news: Oakland police had finally identified a beaten, dismembered body found near Lake Meritt. Forensics teams later uncovered traffic light videos of her getting into a car in San Francisco and the very same car leaving the area where her body was found. In a society where sex work wasn’t criminalized, Toni wouldn’t have been forced to bring her work to the street level and would have been spared a horrible death.

Unfortunately, sex work in most of the United States is criminalized. Many sexual acts beyond intercourse can be used against sex workers as “acts of prostitution” punishable by law. These include, but aren’t limited to, hand jobs, exchanges of drugs for sex and even the fondling of bare breasts in exchange for money. In addition, things such as carrying condoms, loitering and nodding at strangers can be used as reason for arrest. Punishments for soliciting purchase, offering or agreeing to perform sex work include fines ranging from $1000 to $2000 in addition to several months in jail, with each subsequent infraction resulting in a heavier sentence. People who are caught are often forced to register as sex offenders — a burden that further limits their resources to housing, healthcare and their chances at ever working in another industry.

In summer 2014, the 15-year-old website Redbook was seized by federal law enforcement for laundering money and “racketeering based on prostitution.” The owners of the site were arrested and charged with multiple counts of money laundering and facilitating prostitution. Unfortunately, for sex workers, this seizure also meant that many of their safety mechanisms had been dismantled.

Redbook had been a place for workers to post ads, customers to post reviews of workers, users to talk about sexuality in discussion forums, and importantly, a way for workers to screen their clients. Within Redbook, workers could request that a client provide references from other workers as well as look up their reputation in relevant forums to ensure that the client wasn’t a dangerous predator or a cop. When Redbook was taken offline, so was the workers’ safety system — many had to return to more dangerous methods of finding clients.

The criminalized system is undoubtedly the most dangerous for sex workers. Legalization is only marginally better. Policy surrounding sex work is almost always written without consulting sex workers and, unsurprisingly, the implementation of said legislation often actively harms them. Not only would rights and protections be limited, this system would also create multiple opportunities for abuse by government officials who would be put in the position to register or refuse licensure.

Regulation and criminalization of what a sex worker does with their body (in this case, making a living) is essentially a collection of laws based in antiquated religious morality — something our laws are purportedly separate from. These laws also usually don’t affect people outside the industry, so it’s baffling as to why those unaffected disregard the opinions of those who are affected.

The safest option for sex workers is decriminalization. In a decriminalized scenario, sex workers would be allowed to work without fear of violence from law enforcement and would more openly be able to create systems of safety around the industry. Decriminalization would also improve the effectiveness of responses to human trafficking as people within the industry would be able to give accurate reports of who was actually being trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Decriminalization would mean respect for a sex worker’s bodily autonomy. Decriminalization would mean equal access to healthcare and legal empowerment. Decriminalization would mean equal rights. Decriminalization would mean that being a sex worker wouldn’t automatically make one prey to violent government authorities. Decriminalization would mean that Toni might have lived.

Trixie Mehraban writes the Tuesday column on sex. Contact her at [email protected].