Ontopic Modern Serial Killers

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but re: the part I bolded above, in reference to murders/assaults in general as well as serial cases, legalization or at least decriminalization of sex work as well as a shift in public perception/destigmatization could be one thing that would help limit the ease of access to victims.

growing up, we had Kendall Francois near us. dude was killing prostitutes (AND STUFFING THEM INTO THE WALLS OF HIS PARENTS' HOUSE) and one of the reasons he got away with it for so long was that nobody gives a shit about prostitutes, missing or not. and nowadays, legislation like FOSTA/SESTA is pushing many sex workers back into more dangerous street work.
THANK YOU! This is so much of reality. There's a heirarchy of who gives a fuck about victims. The bottom of the pile are sex workers who are POC, followed by white sex workers, then everyone else. I find it so worrying in my own city that we as a service track multiple rapists who get away with escalating violence towards sex workers and no prosecutions happen. Once the man escalates to 'normal' people in society then they'll do something. It's totally fucked. I get upset about this probably once a week at work because it's constant. I wish more lessons were learned about how these people get away with it by choosing the most vulnerable, but the complexity of the most vulnerable people is the reason they get away with it in the first place. There's no real solution to it. The system is fucked and stacked up against victims in so many ways its tragic.
 
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in addition to being able to report missing sex workers without fear of endangering them, it would be good for them to be able to report clients who are violent (beyond agreed upon/consented to boundaries) because it would keep other sex workers safe AND they could be aware of escalating violence. with Francois again, when it came out that he was doing this, plenty of area sex workers were like "oh yeah that dude, fuck that guy, one time he strangled me so I never went with him again" but of course nobody reported it because they knew they wouldn't be taken seriously, AND they were putting themselves at risk of arrest.

In the UK we have National Ugly Mugs which is exactly what you're describing. It's an anonymous reporting system that sends national wide alerts to all sex workers and sex work projects to alert of violent/dodgy men so they can blacklisted by workers and people can stay clear of them. It definitely helps to build police cases and keep women safe. I imagine there must be something similar in America.
 
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In the UK we have National Ugly Mugs which is exactly what you're describing. It's an anonymous reporting system that sends national wide alerts to all sex workers and sex work projects to alert of violent/dodgy men so they can blacklisted by workers and people can stay clear of them. It definitely helps to build police cases and keep women safe. I imagine there must be something similar in America.
We have sex offender lists, many online complete with pictures, but it's only of those who have been convicted. And of course, those fucks can jump in a car and drive 1/2 hour away and even if a sex worker had looked at the local list, they'd be fucked. It's a bit scarey to look at the online lists, you cast a few miles/km circle around your place and you're like "ewwwwwwww." Somehow they all LOOK like degenerates in their mug shots. It's weird, you think, "fuck, I'd know that one was a creeper at the first glance!"
I wanted to chuckle at the end but it's serious shit. :(
 
In the UK we have National Ugly Mugs which is exactly what you're describing. It's an anonymous reporting system that sends national wide alerts to all sex workers and sex work projects to alert of violent/dodgy men so they can blacklisted by workers and people can stay clear of them. It definitely helps to build police cases and keep women safe. I imagine there must be something similar in America.
word of mouth/private social media groups would be it. there's no official/sanctioned method of reporting or tracking, the legal system does not give fuck one for the safety of sex workers, it only sees them as potential income.
 
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We have sex offender lists, many online complete with pictures, but it's only of those who have been convicted. And of course, those fucks can jump in a car and drive 1/2 hour away and even if a sex worker had looked at the local list, they'd be fucked. It's a bit scarey to look at the online lists, you cast a few miles/km circle around your place and you're like "ewwwwwwww." Somehow they all LOOK like degenerates in their mug shots. It's weird, you think, "fuck, I'd know that one was a creeper at the first glance!"
I wanted to chuckle at the end but it's serious shit. :(
The great thing about the NUM Is that because its a network for sex workers it doesn't need to be sex offenders or people who are prosecuted. We get alerts at my work for anyone in the whole Midlands area as some of our women work to travel. If you do online sex work now you can then screen the phone number against the NUM registry to see if anyone has reported the person as dodgy/violent etc. It's a great system that definitely helps. It also helps when you have projects like the one I work in as we collect so much intelligence and take so many informal reports we can put the pieces together and then work with the relevant police teams to take the guys down. We haven't had a sex worker killed in my city for many years now, partially due to liaising between the sex workers, the project I'm at and the Police.
 
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word of mouth/private social media groups would be it. there's no official/sanctioned method of reporting or tracking, the legal system does not give fuck one for the safety of sex workers, it only sees them as potential income.
Yeah this isn't a legal system, although it gets government funding. It's not a system to gain conviction or make police statement, its just a national alert system. It would be easy to set up in states if you had sex work projects pooling together and creating a database and back end etc. Sex workers dont report to the police often, but they report through us to the NUM most of the time they have a bad interaction with someone so it's real progress. Many of our women will now report to the police too because we work hard to reduce stigma and get the police on board with keeping our women safe.
 
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Yeah this isn't a legal system, although it gets government funding. It's not a system to gain conviction or make police statement, its just a national alert system. It would be easy to set up in states if you had sex work projects pooling together and creating a database and back end etc. Sex workers dont report to the police often, but they report through us to the NUM most of the time they have a bad interaction with someone so it's real progress. Many of our women will now report to the police too because we work hard to reduce stigma and get the police on board with keeping our women safe.
I think it's a great idea and I would love for it to be implemented here, but it'll be an uphill battle between people saying it encourages sex work and people whom the alerts are about suing for defamation. definitely not trying to poo-poo it, and I'm glad it's been so helpful there.
 
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I think it's a great idea and I would love for it to be implemented here, but it'll be an uphill battle between people saying it encourages sex work and people whom the alerts are about suing for defamation. definitely not trying to poo-poo it, and I'm glad it's been so helpful there.
The lovely thing is the men have no idea they're on the blacklist so I think the defamation thing could be moot. The intermediary I think is really having advocates between the police and the sex work community so there's a united front. The job of the police is to safeguard people in society, not criminalise, anything that keeps people safe should be supported by the police. Hence they're on board with this kind of scheme 100%.

I can't envisage the argument about encouraging sex work as it's only a system known about by sex workers so not public knowledge. I know you have a huge religious lobby and all that kinda bullshit and we certainly have stigma here in the UK around sex work but that's why advocacy and specialist services can step in to educate about harm minimising and safety. No one with a conscious can morally object to a system that prevents serial killers ;)
 
Yeah this isn't a legal system, although it gets government funding. It's not a system to gain conviction or make police statement, its just a national alert system. It would be easy to set up in states if you had sex work projects pooling together and creating a database and back end etc. Sex workers dont report to the police often, but they report through us to the NUM most of the time they have a bad interaction with someone so it's real progress. Many of our women will now report to the police too because we work hard to reduce stigma and get the police on board with keeping our women safe.
Dory, do I have this right? You're against women being used for porn and I guess from prostitution, but since neither is going away quickly, you want to at least keep the women safe/safer? That's very cool - I assumed the answer is yes.
 
Dory, do I have this right? You're against women being used for porn and I guess from prostitution, but since neither is going away quickly, you want to at least keep the women safe/safer?
On a personal level and as a feminist I'm against sex work and feel it's inherently exploitative. From a realistic perspective from the inner workings of my new career path I'm pragmatic about reducing harm and risk as much as possible and so accept that sex work is not and never will go away and so whatever makes the most safety is what I advocate. We've had some very productive discussions and debates at work this year and the system we support is overwhelmingly decriminalisation rather than legalisation from a safety perspective. Both have pros and cons and are not perfect. I think a sweet spot would be between the middle of both but I think the best solution would come from the sex work community, which we do have the insight into about what would be the best way forward. We're lucky enough to have a local MP who is very vocal and works with us and is on board with our agenda about decrim and I'm in touch with her and getting a good relationship so things might change.