OFF THE HOOK
Rikers plan decriminalizes prostitution
The city’s plan to shut down Rikers Island has a surprise twist — a suggestion to reclassify prostitution as a civil offense rather than a criminal one.
“The modern thinking on this is that the defendants in prostitution cases . . . are victims,” former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said yesterday while formally releasing his panel’s proposal. “They need help.”
A blue-ribbon panel’s proposal for closing Rikers Island claims there’s no room for hookers in the city’s jails of the future.
A report from the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform says Albany lawmakers should consider reclassifying prostitution as a civil offense rather than a criminal one, which would essentially let hookers off with a summons instead of sending them jail.
“The modern thinking on this is that the defendants in prostitution cases, whether it’s around the world or around the corner, are victims,” Commission Chairman and former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said Sunday while formally releasing the report.
“They need help, those people, and the law enforcement have to get the real perpetrators of this, not the victims: the traffickers, whether it’s the pimp who is standing ten blocks from here and doing this or whether it’s these big cartels who victimize somebody.”
The other offenses targeted for decriminalization are low-level possession of pot in public view, fare-beating and possession of gravity knives, which the report says “are often used legitimately by those in construction.”
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., who also spoke during the news conference at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, didn’t directly address the proposal to decriminalize prostitution, but said the way his office handled that crime “is 180 degrees from where it was even seven years ago.”
Vance said a full-time Trafficking Bureau was identifying people forced into prostitution and “dismissing prior cases, convictions for those individuals where we can demonstrate that it was the product of trafficking.
“When I was a young assistant and I was arraigning those cases, I didn’t see any of the men and women, who they really were, when they came before me,” he said. “Now, 30 years later, we see it’s much better. Not perfect, but much better.”
Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio — who on Friday vowed to shut down Rikers within the next 10 years — compared what he called the “implicit racism” of “mass incarceration” to the horrors of American slavery.
“If you’re going to defeat mass incarceration you’re going to have to go to the root causes,” he told worshippers at the predominantly black Christian Cultural Center megachurch in East New York. “We have to be honest about 400 years of history. It still hangs in the air.”
Asked later about the proposal to decriminalize prostitution and the other offenses, a mayoral spokeswoman said de Blasio was opposed.
“While we appreciate the intent of the commission, these actions would generally have little impact on the jail population and, in some cases, could actually jeopardize public safety and are therefore not supported by the administration,” spokeswoman Natalie Grybauskas said.