catchingjohns_lede

Cook County / Ill.

*Some names have been inverse to protect the rubber of the individuals involved.

Information technology'due south rare to see a grown homo cry. But in a cigarette-scented hotel room well-nigh a Chicago airport, more than a dozen men come and become with wet cheeks and quivering lips. No one had died, no national tragedy had occurred— they had only been caught trying to buy sex.

Beyond the land, cops are implementing a strategy that has long been debated in Europe: targeting the men who buy sexual practice while trying to help the women who sell it. Some police and scholars say that focusing law enforcement attention on sexual activity buyers reduces need for prostitution, which strangles the sex industry and curbs human trafficking. Just some homo rights organizations, well-nigh recently Amnesty International, advocate for the decriminalization of all aspects of sex activity work, including buying sexual activity.

While Amnesty International members were because whether to recommend decriminalizing sex piece of work altogether, I was with a Fourth dimension video team on two buyer-focused sex stings in Cook County, Sick. We idea information technology would be similar an adrenaline-pumping episode of Law & Order SVU, but we were wrong. Sexual practice 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 defenseless is like watching that fantasy get destroyed over and over.

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How One County is Targeting Men Who Buy Sex

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

The Cook County Sheriff'southward Office, led by Tom Dart, has been the driving forcefulness in a national push to make it harder for pimps to sell sex and johns to buy information technology. Until recently, nigh jurisdictions in the U.Due south. have focused their free energy on arresting 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 19,000 men (this number includes johns, pimps, and male person sex workers). But since 2011, Sheriff Dart's role has organized the "National Twenty-four hour period of Johns Arrests," now re-named "National Johns Suppression Initiative," a series of stings coordinated with other jurisdictions over the grade of several weeks, aimed at encouraging a permanent alter in police force practices.

Dart's office now arrests just as many johns per year as sex workers, and with a radically different agenda— while clients are hit with a ticket and fine that can achieve $1,300, sex workers are arrested and then offered counseling and chore training through the Sheriff's Women's Justice Plan, which is run by sex activity trafficking survivors. 60% of the coin collected from johns' fines goes to support the Women's Justice Program, the other xl% goes to juvenile justice programs. Cook county does johns stings year-round, merely the national initiative happens a few times a twelvemonth.

I went forth with Dart's team on two stings: one in a hotel, one on the street. Information technology'south important to note that all genders purchase and sell sex, and trans people are often over-represented in the sexual practice industry considering of workplace discrimination elsewhere. Only in this example, I observed women as sex workers and men as buyers, so that'southward how I'll describe it hither.

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Our first sting starts in an anonymous hotel room almost a Chicago airport. The bedspread smells like old cigarettes and the air conditioner is acting up. Our room is filled with burly cops in baseball caps and T-shirts, badges hung around their necks, watching TV and joking effectually. In the room beyond the hall are female undercover officers dressed as sexual practice workers. A hot pink tank-top, leopard print leggings. Only a few hours before, they had placed ads on a site called backpage.com advertizement sex— already, guys are calling them looking to meet upwardly. "Aye, that'south my real moving picture," says Officeholder Meg*, twirling her hair every bit she talks on the phone. "I work out. You want to political party?" Her colleague, Officer Lisa*, says she sometimes gets asked "'what do your tits look like? What does your ass look similar?'"

When a client arrives at the hotel, the undercover officers text their colleagues to make sure everyone'due south out of the hall. The cops gather by the door, looking through the keyhole and waiting for a sign from the undercover officer. For a few seconds, all joking stops, and anybody is absolutely silent. In one case a deal has been made for sex activity, the undercover officer gives an electronic signal and the other cops rush in and cuff the buyer. The whole process ordinarily takes under a minute. (To protect the safety of the surreptitious officers, we've agreed to use pseudonyms.)

After they're cuffed, the johns are quickly taken to a tertiary room, where they're searched for weapons. If they're unarmed, the officers accept off their handcuffs and explain the state of affairs. They'll get an ordinance violation, which is at least a $500 fine, and in many cases their car volition be towed, which is another $500, plus a towing fee that'south commonly betwixt $200-300. This won't result in a criminal record, nor will they serve any jail time, unless in that location's an open warrant for their arrest on a different charge. And they volition have to sentry a short "Johns Schoolhouse" video about how women are exploited in the sex industry.

Every john that got caught said it was his commencement time, but the cops don't buy it. "You're either the unluckiest guy in the world, or you're lying," says Deputy Chief Michael Anton, who led the stings. His logic is that the cops are out there so infrequently, only people buying regular sex are likely to go caught. "Information technology's gotta be humiliating for these guys."

A higher educatee came in sobbing, "my parents are going to impale me." He explained to the cops, and to TIME, that he had a girlfriend, simply their relationship had recently gotten more serious and she'd said she wanted to abjure until marriage. He says that'southward how he constitute himself seeking out a prostitute. "I'grand going to neglect at life at present," he told us, dejected.

Deputy Chief Anton rolled his optics and made a crybaby face, but let the kid off with simply the ticket, without towing his machine. "I always say it'due south never their first time, merely this might have been his get-go time," he said.

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Cracking Down on the "Johns"

Dart's team isn't the first to target guys who buy sex. Sweden criminalized pimps and buyers (but not private sexual activity workers) in 1999, in a policy at present known as the "Nordic Model." Government reports says this policy may accept led to a reduction in street prostitution and trafficking of immature and vulnerable girls from poor countries. Nether the Nordic Model, which has also been adopted in Norway and Canada and endorsed by a non-bounden European Parliament resolution, sexual practice workers themselves don't face arrest, simply their clients do.

Versions of this arroyo are slowly spreading across the U.South., but well-nigh jurisdictions proceed to arrest prostitutes fifty-fifty as they turn their focus to sex activity buyers. New York established a special courtroom organization in 2013 to process sexual activity workers and trafficking victims, with the goal of offering them counseling and social services, the same year Nassau Canton, NY caught more than 100 johns and posted their pictures online in a controversial sting called "Functioning Flush the Johns." Orange County, Calif. is neat down on pimps and johns instead of prostitutes, reducing arrests of women as they increase arrests of men. Seattle has seen some early on success in its "Buyer Beware" program, and in 2014, Seattle police arrested more sex activity buyers than prostitutes for the first fourth dimension.

"Nosotros make it very unpleasant for the person who'southward out at that place purchasing the sex," says Helm Eric Sano of the Seattle law department, "Because we believe there wouldn't be every bit much supply if in that location wasn't a demand."

Dart only has jurisdiction in Cook County, merely he's encouraging officers from all over the country to try the buyer-focused arroyo. Some cities, like Seattle, have developed their own versions of this strategy just traded notes with Dart. Others, like Phoenix, Cincinnati and Houston, followed Sprint's pb on demand suppression. More than than 70 agencies have participated in at least one of Dart's operations, with more than two,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 constabulary enforcement together across the state to combat it.," says Phoenix police Sergeant Jonathan Howard. "They've actually taken the lead in helping us come with different ways to address demand for prostitution."

Some human being rights groups take issue with this approach. On August eleven, Amnesty International voted to recommend the consummate decriminalization of prostitution, both for the buyers and sellers, saying that criminal laws against the consensual adult sex trade violates the human rights of sex workers. While UNAIDS and the World Health System have previously chosen for the decriminalization of sex work for public wellness reasons (in gild to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases), and other groups take advocated the same, Immunity International is the offset major international human rights grouping to issue a full-throated global public policy recommendation for lifting laws against buying and selling of sex purely on humans rights grounds. Amnesty can't make or enforce laws, simply its recommendations carry international weight. "Information technology's not just saying that sex workers demand rights then 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 activity worker rights are human being rights."

Simply Amnesty'southward determination was met with heavy criticism from some who argue that full decriminalization would enable pimps and johns and could contribute to an explosion in sex trafficking. One-time President Jimmy Carter wrote a strongly worded letter to Immunity members urging them to vote against the policy, and Gloria Steinem and Lena Dunham were among hundreds of feminists and homo rights activists who signed a letter arguing that decriminalizing sex buying would lead to more sexual exploitation of the almost vulnerable women in club. After Germany legalized prostitution in 2002, police reported information technology became much more difficult to target calumniating pimps, even as social workers said that prostitutes were working in even worse conditions than before, according to a 2013 article in 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 human trafficking.

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

So two days later on the hotel sting, we're out hunting for johns over again, this time on a stretch of road about Chicago's O'Hare aerodrome where prostitutes are known to gather. Information technology'southward half dozen:xxx in the forenoon, and already hot. The buyers are men coming off a dark shift at the airport, men dropping off their wives for a trip, men looking for a quickie before work, Sprint'southward squad says.

"I've been stopped by preachers, Bible in hand, who after they're done preaching their sermon, will inquire me for a sexual human action," says Officeholder Kate*, who's posing undercover as a street prostitute. "They're simply men. If they come across information technology, they desire information technology, and they think they're not going to get defenseless."

During the hotel stings, female underground officers wearing apparel like they're going to a party– but on the street, they take to accept a different expect. They vesture stained clothing, gym shoes, and get out their hair looking dirty, because they say almost of the women working the streets have hit rock lesser. "You desire to blend in with the element yous're working with," explains Officer Kate.

"I become my nails washed every two weeks, so I habiliment something where I tin can put my hands," says Officer Lisa, who also sometimes does street operations. "I wear gym shoes to hide my pedicure."

In a street operation, the female hole-and-corner officer stands on the corner in full view of a beau officer, Officer Dan. He's responsible for watching her every move. When a automobile pulls up to her, Officeholder Dan radios the make and model to his boyfriend officers waiting in an abort auto. As presently as she makes a deal for sexual activity, usually only a few seconds after the car pulls upwardly, Officeholder Kate make a special gesture and moves abroad from the motorcar. That's when Officeholder Dan radios the order:"it'south a go."

The john is arrested inside seconds, and taken to a holding area, where he goes through the same process as the guys caught in the hotel sting. "When a $ten blow job costs yous $1,250 and you don't even get it, you got f–ked," says Deputy Chief Anton.

Sheriff Dart isn't just trying to catch johns in the act– he'due south trying to stop prostitution earlier information technology happens, by making information technology harder for pimps to do business. He's started a loftier-contour campaign against Backpage.com, a website usually used to place ads for sex, successfully lobbying Visa and Mastercard to remove their cards as forms of advertising payment on the adult portion the site. Backpage has sued Dart in federal court, challenge his crusade violates their complimentary oral communication, and a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against Dart. But Visa and Mastercard take not still returned to the site, and Backpage did not reply to requests for comment.

Despite the new focus on pimps and johns, hundreds of sex workers are notwithstanding being arrested in the United states–and even the human rights advocates who oppose Amnesty's decriminalization stance don't support punishing prostituted women. Cook County has arrested about 900 sex buyers and more than 2,000 sex workers since 2008, but that gap is closing, and at present, Dart's team says, arrests are roughly equal—this twelvemonth merely 240 sex activity workers have 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 police force, Dart'due south team said they saw men paying the $100 bond fee and then merely going out and buying more sexual practice. Even though a citation sounds more lenient, the hefty fine serves are more of a deterrent to sex buyers than a misdemeanor accuse. The sex workers 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's role. But information technology's still a far cry from the Nordic model, where johns pay the penalization while sex workers walk free.

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Sex Industry Veterans Speak Out

Not everyone who works in the sexual practice trade 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 touch on sexual practice workers' ability to detect piece of work or housing, and that existence hauled abroad in handcuffs but reinforces the stigma around sex activity piece of work. "Arrest is not a form of outreach," says Katherine Koster, communicatoins director of the Sex Worker Outreach Projection.

Yet a significant portion of women who work in the sex trade are coerced in some way. And sex activity trafficking (commonly defined as recruitment, coercion or transport for the purposes of sexual exploitation), is rampant. According to a 2014 report from the UN-backed International Labor Organization, 4.5 meg people are trafficked for sex activity, generating $99 billion a year in revenue from forced sexual exploitation. Of the 208 human trafficking prosecutions pursued by the Department of Justice in 2014, 190 were for sex trafficking, according to a Country Department report on trafficking released in July. That's over 91%. Dart's officers say they can't aid these women if they're not immune to take them off the streets. Marian Hatcher, a trafficking survivor who at present coordinates national coalitions for Dart's function, calls the cops who arrested her "angels with handcuffs."

In some cases, especially in the Us, the line between trafficking and consensual sex work tin can get blurry. "I feel myself to be in between trafficking and having a choice," says Kimmy*, a former prostitute serving fourth dimension in Cook County jail on unrelated charges. She says she was pimped out by her former fellow, and nosotros've changed her get-go name in order to protect her from possible retribution. "I didn't realize I was existence sold or that I was being pimped…He wasn't all bedazzled out with rings and fur glaze and big automobile. He was just regular, a regular person."

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

But fifty-fifty trafficking victims who recall prostitution should stay illegal say they don't think it helps to exist arrested. Caprice is a former prostitute who says she was coerced into selling sex for a pimp from the historic period of 17. She's in Cook Canton Jail on charges unrelated to prostitution, but she said she'due south been arrested for prostitution ten-12 times in different jurisdictions, and she "didn't feel there were any positive outcomes at all."

Many advocates for decriminalization bespeak to a well-documented police force mistreatment of sexual practice workers as justification for lifting all laws confronting prostitution. "I would no more support arresting trafficking victims to get them help than I would support arresting battered women," says Molly Crabapple.

Despite her experience with arrests, Caprice still thinks something should be done about the sexual practice merchandise. "When yous have sex with someone, you lot give them a part of your soul," she says. "And then I don't think — I don't think that it should be something that'south sold."

Kimmy agrees. "If I know that information technology's legal, I'm going to feel similar I can always do it," she says. "Information technology's a legal way to impale yourself."

But despite the promising reports from Sweden and Kingdom of norway, it'due south hard to know how well cease-need tactics work in the United States. Sprint's team openly admits information technology's tough to quantify the efficacy of their program, since it'southward nigh impossible to measure how many men are discouraged from buying sex activity (and any solid numbers well-nigh the sexual activity industry are difficult to come by), but they say they haven't seen a echo offender since they implemented the tough fines. Only some researchers argue that end-demand tactics can have unintended consequences, and that increasing penalties for "arranging" sex work can inadvertently affect female sex activity workers who aren't pimps, just looking out for each other. Advocates for sexual activity worker rights argue that targeting buyers really makes street workers less safe, since clients are jittery and the worker has less time 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 Amnesty International The states. "So if a buyer becomes violent, they're afraid to report them."

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

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

Design: Alexander Ho Additional Camera: Ian Kibbe