The Seattle City Council on June 22 unanimously voted to repeal its drug traffic and prostitution loitering laws.
The bills seek to drop ordinances from the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC) that help address loitering by suspected drug dealers and prostitutes.
Recommendations from Workgroup
The Seattle Reentry Workgroup, a workgroup convened by the city mayor and the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to develop policies and strategies to help formerly incarcerated individuals reenter society, recommended the ordinance repeal in 2018. The group’s 2018 report (pdf) said that the “City Council should remove drug traffic loitering and prostitution loitering from the City’s criminal code.”The bill to repeal the Seattle drug-traffic loitering ordinance was introduced by Democratic Councilmember Andrew J. Lewis (District 7) and Seattle City Attorney Peter Holmes. The bill to repeal the prostitution loitering ordinance was introduced by left-leaning Councilmembers Lewis, Alex Pedersen (District 4), and Tammy J. Morales (District 2).
“We’re in a different time where lawmakers are no longer participating in ‘war and drugs’ policies, and instead looking at drug addiction through a public health lens,” Lewis added.
“An arrest for Drug Traffic Loitering would occur when a suspect was in a public place and was thought to be soliciting another person to violate felony drug laws, but when apprehended, did not have drugs in their possession,” the announcement continues. “Without evidence of the underlying offense, the police would instead arrest a person for loitering.”
The Seattle Reentry Workgroup’s 2018 report said that the city’s prostitution loitering ordinance “targets individuals in the commercial sex industry, a group already at high risk for trafficking, abuse, and other exploitation.”
The workgroup contends that bringing such people into the criminal legal system “will only exacerbate any underlying unmet needs and exposes them to further physical and sexual harm caused by incarceration.” The group said in its report that in other cities with similar ordinances, “data has shown that these ordinances disproportionately impact” people of color.