Cops Arrest Sex Workers for Carrying Condoms (by HumanRightsWatch)

The report includes testimony from sex workers and transgender women who said that police harass, threaten, and arrest them for carrying condoms. In New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, prosecutors introduce condoms into evidence at trial, asking courts to consider them indicators of criminal activity. For immigrants, arrest for prostitution can mean detention or removal from the United States. Some women told Human Rights Watch that they continued to carry condoms despite the potentially harsh consequences, but many did not. One sex worker in Washington, DC, said, “Police always ask ‘why do you have so many condoms?’ No one walks around with a lot of condoms because of it.”

[Human Rights Watch]