SWOP Behind Bars Advocacy from the Margins

Anti-trafficking organizations love to frame themselves as progress. New language. New branding. New slogans about care, rescue, and restoration. But when you follow the money - and follow the people harmed - the pattern remains stubbornly familiar.

Selah Freedom, One More Child, and Arizona’s Project ROSE are often discussed as different models. One is a large nonprofit with publicly filed 990s. One is a faith-based organization o...

During Human Trafficking Awareness Month, the public is encouraged to support efforts that “help survivors.” Yet, few realize how much funding flows to institutions that expand policing rather than strengthen community care. After exploring the law enforcement and court costs of trafficking stings, this week we turn to the nonprofit landscape that profits from the rescue narrative. We examine the “rescue economy” - the network of p...

By the time someone arrested in a so-called “human trafficking sting” sits down with a public defender, the outcome is already taking shape. Not because the facts are clear. Not because harm has been proven. But because the system has calendars to clear, metrics to meet, and cases to move. Justice, at this point, is less a principle than a scheduling inconvenience.

This part of the process rarely gets a press conference. There are ...

As Human Trafficking Awareness Month continues, conversations often center on awareness campaigns and sensationalized narratives about “saving victims,” But understanding the systemic costs reveals how these efforts strain public resources and divert attention from practical solutions. Last week, we examined the substantial cost of stings to police departments, highlighting the need to question the actual value of these investments...

Three Human Trafficking Stings, $3M in Costs, Zero Transparency

Let’s talk about the American tradition of the human trafficking sting  - part press conference, part moral panic, part budget sinkhole. Across the country, these branded operations promise to crack down on exploitation and rescue victims. But when the headlines fade, what are we actually left with?

Mostly low-level charges, ambiguous outcomes, and taxpayer-funded thea...

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, a time when headlines and press conferences often drown out the voices of those most affected. Each year, cities host panels, release proclamations, and spotlight dramatic “rescues,” but rarely do we talk about the price tag behind these operations - or who actually benefits from them. In this week’s post, we follow the first stage of that money trail by examining what a trafficking sti...

If you grew up in church, you probably met Mary as a porcelain figure in a nativity scene - head bowed, hands folded, bathed in blue light and docile silence. But that sanitized version leaves out the real scandal of her story.

Mary wasn’t a quiet saint. She was a teenage girl, unmarried, poor, and living under Roman occupation. She didn’t float through Bethlehem on a cloud of obedience. She carried danger in her womb and defiance ...

When it comes to “bad girls,” Lilith is the shadowy figure lurking just off the page. You won’t find her in Genesis alongside Eve. She doesn’t get a genealogy, a dramatic fall, or even a name-drop. But in Jewish folklore and later interpretation, she becomes one of the most infamous women of all time: the demoness, the seductress, the baby-killer, the first wife of Adam who refused to submit.

So was Lilith a bad girl? Or was she si...

For more than two decades, December 17 has stood as a beacon of remembrance and resistance - the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

It began in 2003 in San Francisco, when sex workers and allies gathered to mourn the victims of the Green River Killer - women whose lives were erased not just by one man’s violence, but by a society that barely noticed they were gone. From that first vigil organized by St. James In...

December 17 is a day of remembrance—but it has always been more than mourning.

Each year, as we gather under the red umbrella, we hold two truths at once: the depth of our grief and the strength of our resolve. Every candle lit, every name spoken aloud, every moment of silence holds the weight of loss—but it also carries the spark of resistance. Our memorials are not passive acts of sadness. They are declarations that we remember, ...

If we want to end violence against sex workers, we need to start following the money.

For decades, billions in public and private funding have flowed into systems that cause more harm - police raids, carceral “rescue” programs, and anti-trafficking initiatives that erase the difference between consensual sex work and exploitation. These programs are often packaged as “safety.” Still, the reality is far darker: they produce arrests,...

Say the name Jezebel, and most people immediately picture the ultimate bad girl of the Bible - the woman so scandalous she got her own eternal insult. She’s the gold standard of "don’t be that girl". But let’s look a little closer at her story and ask: was Jezebel truly evil, or was she just guilty of existing in a man’s world without apologizing for it? Spoiler: history doesn’t look kindly on women who refuse to stay in their lane...