It had to be Arizona… Touted as yet another 'inspired' political intervention into Arizona's political trope called "how to make bad people disappear', Project Rose (Reaching Out to the Sexually Exploited) was launched as a new way to link policing, welfare agencies and sex workers. The result is a horrifying mess that is transfixing the academic world of social work. Project Rose has become a lens into the problems of Arizona's law enforcement strategies, the ethics of social work practice and, as the storm intensifies, in its center stand two women who express the best and the worst of social work.
I'll out myself straight away and confess that I work in a university and teach in a department which includes a professional Social Work programme. This story connects with all that is the very best and very worst of how to act as social workers. In this truly desparate and disgusting situation, one social work student - Monica Jones - is emerging as a hero for whom standing up against oppressive practice and unethical conduct by social workers may cost her her future as a social worker and her liberty. She is America's new progressive hero and she faces trial in Arizona in the next few days...
This story has been slowing coming to the boil amongst social work academics for a few months now. Social work is an academic world that is usually characterised by civil debate, a reluctance to overly criticize colleagues, and a general agreement that dialogue trumps polemic in advancing academic debate. Why then did a guest editorial of the feminist social work journal Affilia call out Project Rose in the strongest terms seen in social work discussion in many years? Since then, alternative and online media have really done a stellar job of bringing together the various strands of the story of Project Rose and the amazing social work student who it is about to try to destroy.
For the best broad review of the whole sordid story thus far, Truthout has done an excellent review here.
To provide a quick intro before concentrating on our two protagonists, Project Rose is the 'brainchild' of social work academic Dr Dominique Roe-Sepowitz at Arizona State University and is based on the assumption that sex-workers are victims who need rescuing and that quite significant aspects of their human rights can be waived in pursuit of that rescue. Project Rose has taken place annually since 2011 and positions social workers/students/volunteers alongside Arizona police in engaging in sweeping up sex workers, 'voluntarily' placing them in some convenient location like a church hall and putting them in front of a prosecutor who offers arrest or diversion into a counselling program. This complicity of social work professionals/students with law enforcement touches on one of the most difficult areas for social work professionals as often the police are not exactly the best agency for engaging with at-risk groups. Add into the mix that the 'client' group is sex-workers and this scheme suddently starts to look even more questionable.
Subsequent media reporting has suggested that even in its execution, Project Rose has gone much further than this. Far from volunteering for diversion, some sex-workers were observed being taken into the Project Rose venue in handcuffs and others claim that all requests for legal representation were denied.
And for those that complied, what kind of 'counselling' were they likely to be offered? Here we have a quote from the scheme's architect outlining her crude and offensive views about sex-work:
In November 2013, Roe-Sepowitz told Al Jazeera: “Once you've prostituted you can never not have prostituted... Having that many body parts in your body parts, having that many body fluids near you and doing things that are freaky and weird really messes up your ideas of what a relationship looks like, and intimacy.”
To my ear, it sounds like the sex-workers might not be the ones with sexuality issues to confront.
The story just gets worse with the realization that for those caught up in the sweeps, testimony given to social workers then ended up in the prosecutor's files and those that were arrested under Arizona's vicious anti-prostitution laws faced mandatory minimum sentences and then entered life-threatening situations. The Affilia editorial refers to the case of one sex worker who was arrested and subsequently died in custody after being left in a cage with no water for an extended period of time. This suggests that arresting sex-workers is most definitely not the right thing for social workers to support:
Best Practices and Policy Project (2013) report that Marcia Powell, a woman serving a 27-month sentence in Arizona for solicitation of prostitution, died in May 2009 after being left in a prison holding cage in the blazing sun without water. Not only would Marcia have been ineligible to receive services through Project ROSE had she been targeted by the sting, but she would have likely faced a prison sentence due to several prior arrests for prostitution. Ultimately, however, Marcia died in the ‘‘safety’’ of the Arizona prison system because she was a sex worker incarcerated for her own good.
This is the kind of tale that makes progressive social workers want to leave the profession. Across the US and around the world, social work academics have been supporting the Guest Editors of
Affilia in outing this ethical nightmare of social work practice. Many of us, myself included, wonder if this project even came in front of an Ethical Review Board and if it did, how on earth did it get approval to continue?
And then enters a social work student who is the antithesis of everything Dr Roe-Sepowitz stands for. Monica Jones is an articulate, African American, transexual sex-worker and is also a social work student.
Monica is a proud activist. Days ago she spoke to USA Today, comparing struggles against Arizona's SB 1062 bill (which permits businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals) to those her family fought for their civil rights. On her third year of a social-work degree, Monica volunteers with battered women, works at a needle exchange, and passes out condoms to sex workers. She is a member of SWOP-Phoenix. She describes herself as “homemaker at heart,” a girl who loves to cook, dance, and party, but also as an “advocate.”
Monica was arrested as part of
Project Rose under Phoenix's extremely dubious 'manifesting prostitution' code. She had already taken the diversion program - and declared it to be degrading and a waste of time - so was automatically arrested. She was denied access to a lawyer and now is
facing trial and likely imprisonment. Members of advocacy organisation - Sex Workers Outreach Programme - have supported her both locally and in some
inspirational testimony to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland.
How is Monica approaching her trial?
Jones said school is taking up most of her time. She said she's excited to be fighting Phoenix's "manifesting prostitution" law in court but worries that she might miss her classes. If she is found guilty, she could face 30 days in jail... Still, Jones remains optimistic. She said she is in a unique position to understand how the law can be used to unfairly target people. She said her arrest has raised a lot of questions.
"Is this law sexist? Who is being picked up by this? Is it mostly females and trans individuals? Who is being harmed by this law?" Jones said. "I am going to eliminate the harm that is caused by this law.”
So, have our two protagonists ever met? Apparently yes - quite often. Before her arrest, Monica Jones debated the merits of
Project Rose with Dr Roe-Sepowitz as student and professor. But then they met again
on that fateful night:
When the police brought Monica to the Bethany Baptist Church, she saw Dominique Roe-Sepowitz. “She refused to talk to me,” Monica said. “She wanted nothing to do with me.”
While most of the online discussion about Monica has been focused on how this demonstrates yet another dimension to Arizona's repulsive statutes and the police force that upholds them, my concern in this diary is primarily about the profession of social work and the student and professor who are now the central protagonists in this grotesque parody of social work 'rescue'. Will Dr Roe-Sepowitz be in court to see her student being 'rescued' into the paradise of Arizona's prison system?
Here we have before us the best and worst of social work. And the best of them is likely to be sent to jail in the next few days.
I urge you to sign this petition to support Monica as well as trying to recover the lost soul of social work in states like Arizona:
Stand With Monica Jones!