NO JUSTICE PROJECT ARCHIVE

On October 28, 2013, all of us at WWAV celebrate a huge victory not only for those who have been criminalized through the Crime Against Nature by Solicitation statute, but for all women and LGBTQ people who have been criminalized across the globe. The class action lawsuit we filed with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., and the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, Law Clinic challenging the CANS statute finally wrapped up. Over 800 individuals with CANS convictions have officially been removed from the Louisiana sex offender registry.

When WWAV started this fight in 2008, we were told that we couldn’t win – that a small, black-led organization in the South couldn’t win a victory on this scale. But we pressed on. We came together, using a grassroots framework to engage community to affect change.

To quote Ms. Michelle, one of our NO Justice clients who has been on the Sex Offender Registry since 1980, ” I can taste my FREEDOM!” All of us can. We also know that this is but one step in realizing the healing that our community needs. The women and LGBTQ people that WWAV supports continue to bear the scars of the war on drugs, mass incarceration, systemic poverty, HIV/AIDS and domestic violence.

Learn more about the history of the NO Justice Project below.

Since our founding in 1991, WWAV has been standing with the women of New Orleans no questions asked. We’ve been let into worlds that few others see, and trusted with stories that traditional public health workers rarely, if ever, hear.

But little could have prepared us for that day when ‘J’ arrived at one of our Our Space events. Barely saying hello, she pulled out her photo I.D. card, which read ‘SEX OFFENDER’ in block red letters. She is only 23 years old, and one month clean from a heroin addiction; the ‘sex offender’ label will remain on her ID until she turns 48. Within a week of talking with ‘J’, we saw another one of our women who told us through tears that she was just forced to register as a sex offender based on 10 year old charges. Her entrapment in the system now won’t end until 2024, when the ‘sex offender’ label is lifted.

Stories like these are what drive WWAV’s holistic approach to harm reduction, social justice and self-care. And we know stories like these cut to the heart of your work, as well. This strategy for criminalizing certain types of sex work has emerged within a climate of persistent lack of access to culturally competent services, gender-based violence, and a lack of respect of health through harm reduction, all which make our communities vulnerable to HIV and other preventable communicable infections.

This law brands and stigmatizes our community members as sexual predators, a modern version of a “Scarlett Letter,” making it virtually impossible for us to recognize our goals, dreams, and desires, even after we have paid our debt to society. That is why our women are calling this project ‘NO Justice.’ And it is their words that we use as our organizing advocacy call moving forward.

Criminalizing Women’s Lives and Women’s Worlds

Through the NO Justice Project, WWAV works to end the criminalization of sex work by recalling the current practice of charging and convicting individuals with Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature Statute (SCAN)-Statute 14:89(A)(2), a felony conviction.

Charging working women with a felony under the SCAN Statute is a human rights violation. Prosecution under this statute is not happening in a vacuum; it is happening within a climate of persistent lack of access to adequate services, violence, extreme poverty, and a lack of respect for and implementation of preventative health strategies.

This law disproportionately affects poor women of color, who are even more marginalized in the post-Katrina New Orleans. Most of the women with a SCAN conviction are low income, have struggled or are struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, and/or cycling in and out of the criminal justice system. We need better, more targeted, comprehensive and coordinated services for formerly incarcerated women and consistent follow through from social services, not more jail time.

Envisioning a World where All Women Can Realize their Hopes and Dreams

We want the DA and Judges to stop imposing harsher sentences for women convicted of SCAN, such as registering as a Sex Offender; this traps them in a cycle of violence and poverty by alienating the women away from needed social services, assistance, and access to jobs. This falsely stigmatizes and marginalizes the women in the community as perpetrators against children and can drive them back into a life where sex work is a means to an end or a way out of poverty.

The NO Justice Project is grounded in the stories and lives of women who are at risk for prosecution and who have been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution under the Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature Statute.Society needs a war on the systems that facilitate poverty, not a war on impoverished women. Helping society’s most marginalized women to succeed is a better strategy to improve public safety as opposed to further alienating them away from society.

Women, especially formerly or currently incarcerated, deserve quality education and access to job training, skills development, personal empowerment, and culturally competent support systems not more jail time, so when they return to society they are better equipped to handle life’s needs and stressors.

What is SCAN?

Louisiana Statute14:89 A(2) defines SCAN as the solicitation by a human being of another with the intent to engage in any unnatural carnal copulation for compensation. Louisiana 14:89 A(1) defines unnatural carnal copulation as anal or oral sex. A(2) further states that emission is not necessary; and, when committed by a human being with another, the use of the genital organ of one of the offenders of whatever sex is sufficient to constitute the crime.
Basically, the offense is defined as prostitution using a genital organ in sex acts such as anal or oral sex, and emission, or the act itself, is not necessary to constitute the crime, just the verbal exchange with the intent to commit the sex act is needed for conviction.
SCAN and Solicitation of Prostitution are two different charges with two different penalties, prostitution being a misdemeanor, and SCAN carrying a potential felony conviction.

Who is affected by SCAN?

SCAN affects mostly low income women and transgender women of color.
SCAN is a registrable sex offense, however it is not a crime committed against children or minors. The crime doesn’t involve minors or children at all. The majority of SCAN cases involve a person and an undercover police officer.
Just under half of the offenders on the Orleans Parish Sex Offender Registry are women with a SCAN conviction, the number ranges from 350-400 women.
Beginning August 2010, the first SCAN offense/conviction is a misdemeanor. The second offense is a felony with required sex offender registration for a period of 15 years. However, the law is not retroactive and only applies to SCAN convictions from August 2010 and on.
If a person has been convicted of SCAN in the past, and sex offender registration was never enforced at the time of the original conviction, that person may be forced to register if ever brought up on new charges, even if the new charge/conviction does not include solicitation or SCAN. They will have to register beginning from the new conviction date.
There is little consistency with regard to how the conviction is enforced, some women having to mail out sex offender notification cards in the neighborhood and some do not. It is at the discretion of the Judge presiding over the case.

Can you get housing with a SCAN conviction?

Under Section 15:538 of the Sexual Offender Law (which is separate from the Registry law), no sexual offender whose offense involved a minor child AND is on probation or parole may physically reside within 1000 feet of a group or residential home.
The law indicates that a person with a prior SCAN conviction and/or who currently registers as a sex offender CAN legally live in a group home, residential home, housing shelter etc if a) the person wasn’t convicted of an offense involving a minor OR b) the person is not on probation or parole.

From Women With A Vision and The Center for Constitutional Rights:

Attorneys, Advocates Say Antiquated Law Unfairly Brands Poor Women and LGBT People with Scarlet Letter, Disproportionately Affects African Americans

February 16, 2011 – Today, attorneys filed a federal civil rights suit in New Orleans on behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs convicted under Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature law and forced to register as sex offenders as a result. The case challenges the continuing use of Louisiana’s 206 year-old Crime Against Nature statute to brand people who solicit oral and anal sex as sex offenders, while a conviction under Louisiana’s prostitution statute triggers no such requirement. The case was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., and the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans. The groups held a press conference with allied organizations at the New Orleans federal courthouse and a telephone press briefing this morning.

Said CCR Attorney Alexis Agathocleous, “A Crime Against Nature by Solicitation conviction involves acts that are historically associated with homosexuality and gets you branded as a sex offender simply because of disapproval of those acts. This archaic law is being used to mark people with a modern-day scarlet letter without any justification. Our clients pose no threat to anyone. None of them has ever been convicted of a sex offense involving children, violence, or force. Their inclusion on the sex offender registry violates basic constitutional equal protection principles and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

In Louisiana, people accused of soliciting sex for a fee can be criminally charged in two ways: either under the prostitution statute, or under the solicitation provision of the Crime Against Nature statute. This statute, adopted in 1805, outlaws “unnatural carnal copulation,” which has been defined by Louisiana courts as oral and anal (but not vaginal) sex – sex acts historically associated with homosexuality. A prostitution conviction is a misdemeanor, but a Crime Against Nature conviction subjects people to far harsher penalties. Most significantly, individuals convicted of a Crime Against Nature are forced to register as sex offenders for 15 years. Multiple convictions require them to register for life.

Said co-counsel Andrea Ritchie, co-author of the just-published book, Queer Injustice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, “Police and prosecutors have complete discretion and are given no guidance whatsoever as to when and who to charge with a Crime Against Nature, and when and who to charge with prostitution. This leaves the door wide open to discriminatory enforcement targeting poor Black women, transgender women, and gay men for a charge that carries much harsher penalties. That decision can change the entire course of a person’s life.” Added Ritchie, “The trend around the country is to recognize and address the high levels of violence and poverty experienced by people in the sex industry. This law runs completely counter to that trend and further victimizes people, rather than providing them with much-needed services.”

Seventy-five percent of the people registered as a sex offender as a result of a Crime Against Nature conviction are women, and 80 percent of them are African American. They all must carry a state driver’s license or non-driver’s identification document emblazoned with the words SEX OFFENDER in bright orange capital letters. They must disclose the fact that they are registered as a sex offender to neighbors, landlords, employers, schools, parks, community centers, and churches. Their names, addresses, and photographs appear on the internet. They are required to mail postcards notifying every person in their neighborhood.

Said one plaintiff, “When you mail those cards it’s so humiliating, people kill you for that. I fear for my safety.”

The plaintiffs in the case chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Said a mother of three who was convicted under the statute in the 90’s, “Because my picture and address are up on the internet with my charge, a guy once came by my house looking for sex.”

Many of the plaintiffs have been unable to secure work or housing as a result of their registration as sex offenders. Several have been barred from homeless shelters. One had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. And another has been refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept sex offenders at their facilities.

Said Deon Haywood, Executive Director of the New Orleans-based organization, Women With a Vision, “I work with the people directly affected by this statute every day: the toll it takes is devastating. Many of these women are survivors of rape and domestic violence themselves, many have struggled with addiction and poverty, yet they are being treated as predators. What this law does is completely disconnect them from our community and from what remains of a social safety net, making it impossible for them to recognize and develop their goals and dreams.”

Said co-counsel Prof. Davida Finger of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, “This case is so important for Louisiana—we’re out of step with the rest of the country and it’s time to end this practice that has such terrible consequences.”

The nine plaintiffs in the case are not alone. Almost 40 percent of registered sex offenders in Orleans Parish are on the registry solely as a result of a conviction of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation. The lawsuit argues that being forced to register as a sex offender because of a Crime Against Nature conviction – the only offense requiring registration that includes no element of force, coercion, lack of consent, use of a weapon, or the involvement of a minor – serves no legitimate purpose. As such, say attorneys, it is unjustifiable and unconstitutional.

For more information about the Doe v. Jindal, please visit the case page here: www.ccrjustice.org/crime-against-nature.

To read a policy brief on the Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law, visit the website of Women With A Vision’s https://wwav-no.org.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org

Click here to download our NO Justice policy brief:

“Just a Talking Crime”: A policy brief in support of the repeal of Louisiana’s Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature (SCAN) Statute.

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