by Alison Bass | Jun 15, 2016 | human trafficking, law enforcement, prostitution, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
Last Friday, the police chief of Oakland, California, resigned amid a growing scandal involving a number of his police officers who had sex with an underage sex worker while their supervisors looked the other way, according to reporting by the East Bay Express. The...
by Alison Bass | Jun 6, 2016 | pimps, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
Jimmy Carter is the latest persona to jump on the End Demand bandwagon. In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, he called for making the purchase of sex illegal. Unfortunately, the former President’s argument is based on erroneous information and a naïve moralistic...
by Alison Bass | May 9, 2016 | human trafficking, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
I have been invited to give a talk on sex work on May 16 at California State University in Los Angeles. My 4:30 pm talk, sponsored by CSU’s Cross-Cultural Centers, will focus on research I gathered for my book, Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law, and why...
by Alison Bass | Dec 15, 2015 | law enforcement, prostitution, public health, sex work, underage prostitution
In a rare case of justice being served, a police officer was convicted last week of multiple counts of rape and sexual assault on black women who lived in a low-income neighborhood of Oklahoma City. Daniel Holtzclaw, a 29-year-old police officer of white and Japanese...
by Alison Bass | Oct 25, 2015 | human trafficking, media coverage, prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
When it comes to the coverage of sex work or trafficking, the mainstream media often seems to forget a basic journalistic principle — the need to get their facts straight. Here are two recent examples from supposedly top-notch purveyors of journalism. This week,...
by Alison Bass | Aug 26, 2015 | prostitution, public health, sex trafficking, sex work, trafficking, Uncategorized, underage prostitution
This week, federal and state law enforcement officials shut down the well-known website, Rentboy.com, which provided a venue for thousands of gay escorts to post ads and screen potential clients. In a raid on the site’s headquarters in New York City, the officers...