SWOP Behind Bars Advocacy from the Margins

For many people, laws are supposed to protect. For sex workers, laws often do the opposite. Criminalization - whether full, partial, or through the so-called “Nordic model” - creates conditions that m...

3 Dec 20252min

Violence against sex workers doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. It is created and sustained by the systems around us - criminalization, stigma, and neglect. When sex work is criminalized, it forces ...

2 Dec 20253min

December 17 is recognized worldwide as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers—a day of remembrance, resistance, and solidarity. It began in 2003 in San Francisco as a memorial for t...

1 Dec 20254min

Tamar doesn’t usually make it into Sunday School flannelgraph sets. Her story in Genesis 38 is messy, scandalous, and uncomfortable for anyone who wants the Bible to be a neat moral guidebook. She was...

28 Nov 20256min

In New Orleans, Calvin Duncan - a man who spent 30 years incarcerated for a murder conviction later vacated - has just been elected clerk of criminal court. His victory isn’t just historic; it’s a rem...

26 Nov 20255min

There’s a story making headlines again - a powerful man, a teenage girl, and a media cycle eager to flatten everything into a tidy narrative about “trafficking.” But when you read past the outrage and...

24 Nov 20255min

Every few years, the anti-trafficking field releases another report diagnosing its own dysfunction. The Safehouse Project’s recent white paper is the latest to outline the emotional toll of the work, ...

21 Nov 20256min

If you’ve ever heard Rehab’s name in church, it almost always comes with a label: Rehab the prostitute. Out of all the things she did, all the roles she played, the one word attached to her forever is...

21 Nov 20255min