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Advocates and researchers urge decriminalizing consensual adult sex work, citing health and safety gains
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Summary
At a March 18 legislative hearing, advocates, academics and people with lived experience urged passage of Senate Bill 54 to decriminalize consensual adult sex work while preserving trafficking laws, citing public‑health studies, Rhode Island’s study commission and local organizing.
A legislative committee heard several hours of testimony March 18 from lawyers, researchers and people with lived experience urging lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 54, which supporters say would decriminalize consensual adult sex work while preserving laws that target trafficking and exploitation.
The hearing opened with Melissa Bridal, a lawyer and legal director of Decriminalized Sex Work, who framed the bill as a public‑health measure. "It would fully decriminalize consensual adult prostitution while retaining laws related to trafficking," Bridal told the committee, and cited a 2018 meta‑analysis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that she said links repressive policing to increased physical violence and infections among sex workers.
Supporters said decriminalization would make it easier for people to report exploitation, reduce the harms of mass criminalization on survivors and let law enforcement focus on trafficking. "Decriminalization brings rights to sex workers and survivors and improves relations between sex workers and law enforcement," said Nina, an academic who identified herself as an assistant professor of international migration at the London School of Economics and a visiting scholar at NYU, citing research on New Zealand and parts of Australia.
Speakers with lived experience argued the bills would ease barriers to housing, banking and child‑custody rights. "We know how it works," Savannah, who identified herself as a sex worker and said she leads a nonprofit called New Moon, told the committee, outlining how FOSTA/SESTA and loss of advertising platforms increased isolation and risk for workers.
Several witnesses pointed to a Rhode Island legislative study (2019–2023) that recommended reconsidering prior restrictions after evidence the state saw fewer assaults and lower rates of some sexually transmitted infections during a period of indoor decriminalization. Witnesses emphasized that the bill as described at the hearing would keep trafficking and exploitation statutes intact while removing penalties for consenting adults.
Committee members asked for clarifications about statutory language that dates to the early 20th century; one lawmaker questioned the phrase "indiscriminate" in century‑old statutes and whether the historic text criminalized noncommercial conduct. Bridal and other witnesses said the bill seeks to target criminal penalties toward coercion and trafficking rather than private, consensual conduct.
The hearing did not include a committee vote. Witnesses said they would share research briefs and data with staff; no further procedural step was announced on the record at the end of the session.
