Dear Crime Victims: We Don’t Care. Sincerely, Ann Arbor Police Department

A professor and a law student at the University of Michigan were recently arrested for prostitution, according to Above the Law. The professor discovered the law student’s services online via Craigslist, and in his own words, “was interested in experimenting sexually.” Apparently the Professor’s ideas of experimentation involved slapping people in the face, because this is what the law student/sex worker reported to police after their brief hotel encounter.

When the law student complained to the police of the attack and the subsequent vision problems she had because of it, she was arrested. The professor was also arrested, and both ended up pleading to the lesser offense of using a computer to commit a crime. What is troubling here is not only the possible chilling effect that arresting a sex worker complaining of abuse may cause in the future, but the comment by an Ann Arbor detective about the case:

“Perhaps she should have cracked a legal textbook before coming in to the police station to talk about this,” Ann Arbor Detective Sgt. Richard Kinsey said. 

Wow. Really? What conclusion should she have come to? That what she did was illegal, and therefore the fact that she was the victim of a battery is irrelevant? I guess that according to Sgt. Kinsey, if you are the victim of a crime, don’t bother coming to the police if you are also a prostitute.

Sex workers are not only routinely abused, they are often the victims of much more serious crimes like human trafficking and slavery. When sex workers are arrested and publicly ridiculed for coming forward about crimes perpetrated upon them, law enforcement makes it much easier for these far more serious crimes to continue unimpeded. Then again, leave it up to a naïve law student to think that the police are there to actually protect you, or uphold the law in any way.

Predictably, commenters on ATL (at least the ones who appear to be more than 3 years old) focused on the actions of the law student here. This brings up another issue: the criminal justice system’s general preoccupation with the sex worker and not the client in prostitution cases. Indeed, according to FBI national statistics for prostitution, almost 70% of prostitution arrests were of females. (The FBI definition includes solicitation). Why are so many more Janes getting arrested than Johns? Are they easier to arrest? Is this just old fashioned sexism? Maybe if more people were “cracking legal textbooks,” we wouldn’t have so many prostitution crimes, right Sergeant?