In Alaska, Burns' report suggests, "trafficking" has changed the language around sex work, but has done little to actually alter the way law enforcement treats women doing sex work. If the goal of prostitution policy is to reduce the harm done to victims, the testimony of many women, in Alaska and elsewhere, suggests that it isn’t working yet.

On the one hand, it needs to be policed, but on the other, policing is recognized as ineffective. The result in Alaska and elsewhere are police who say that sex workers are not criminals, coupled with actions that treat them as if they are. (Sgt. Lacey could not be reached for comment.)

In particular, women can still be arrested for prostitution near playgrounds, daycares, and school grounds—a prohibition which could cover a substantial amount of space in dense cities like Montreal.

Canada has taken even stronger action towards a trafficking model; the recently passed Bill C-36 is intended to target johns and sex traffickers rather than sex workers

There are also accusations of police abusing women, or of police having sex with prostitutes before arresting them. When I asked Ray if police were ever arrested or held accountable for such actions, she said, "I know there are folks who are documenting these cases, but nothing has come of it so far."

a former sex worker herself, said that on the ground the supposed change has had little effect. Despite some steps towards reform, police still use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution, meaning that women can be targeted for trying to engage in safe sex.

Police, then, don't seem to be fulfilling a protective function. Instead, the women Burns surveyed and interviewed see the police as a threat. When the sex workers Burns surveyed tried to report a crime against themselves or others to police, they were threatened with arrest a third of the time, and police only actually took reports from them 44 percent of the time.

More than a quarter of the women surveyed said they had been sexually assaulted by police; 9 percent said they had been robbed or beaten by officers. One woman provided a harrowing account of officers tearing her underwear off to see if she was trans and slamming her down on a car. She was left with "broken fingertips, broken toes, fractured cheekbone. And they felt perfectly okay with this," she said, "because there was no law to protect me."

What Burns found was that, despite the new laws, the role of the police has not changed that much. Alaska's definition of "trafficking" is broad and vague. Federal trafficking laws focus on fraud, coercion, and the exploitation of minors. Alaska's law, on the other hand, defines trafficking more broadly, to include those who work indoors, or who work together. There have been only a handful of trafficking charges since the new law was implemented, and none of them involved force or coercion. Instead, the law has been used against people selling sex (who are said to be trafficking themselves) or against those who own a place of prostitution. "In none of the documents I’ve examined since the law’s inception," Burns says in the report, "has it been used to benefit a victim.

"I was left with broken fingertips, broken toes, fractured cheekbone. And they felt perfectly okay with this because there was no law to protect me."

n 2012, Alaska passed laws against sex trafficking—the practice of using force to coerce individuals into selling sex. The change reflects a general reconsideration of prostitution laws in many parts of the country and the world. Rather than seeing sex workers as criminals, new theories and laws targeting trafficking present sex workers as victims who need to be rescued from dangerous situations. Those empowered to do the rescuing are, typically, the police.

“I wish the world knew that these are just people making money in a way that I think is a net societal benefit,” Ms. Edwards, a Democrat, added. “There are always going to be people that want sex. It’s a basic human drive. All you can do is make it safer.”

the “Nordic model” did not solve the problem of prostitution because it still made sex workers “complicit in illegal activity.”“It still would not bring the industry to the surface,” she said

The decriminalization bills offered by lawmakers in Massachusetts and Maine would create systems something akin to the “Nordic Model,” eliminating criminal penalties for prostitutes, but continuing to criminalize sex buyers and pimps

Some opponents of legalization support a form of partial decriminalization known as the “Nordic model,” or the “End Demand” approach, which emphasizes the prosecution of people who buy sex, but not those who are selling their bodies, and offers prostitutes social services instead

In New Zealand, for example, which decriminalized prostitution in 2003, a 2012 study found that “the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off” with decriminalized conditions. But the report also added that “many sex workers were still vulnerable to ‘exploitative employment conditions’” and that some sex workers were being forced to take clients “against their will.”

“It’s a fantasy perpetuated and accepted by the media.”

Ms. Mathieson and others who work with women in the sex trade say that supporters of decriminalization gloss over a raft of gruesome details about the profession, including rape, physical abuse by clients and pimps, commonplace drug use and an often ravaging physical toll of multiple sex partners, sometimes in the span of a few hours.

At a recent rally in Albany to repeal a statute criminalizing loitering for the purposes of prostitution, former sex workers stood next to lawmakers like Senator Ramos and Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, the chairman of the health committee

Supporters of decriminalization see their efforts as part of a larger, decades-long liberalization of American mores, like lifting Sunday bans on selling alcohol and legalizing marijuana. They also frame the issue as an act of harm-reduction for prostitutes and a tacit admission that modern law enforcement and age-old moral indignation has done little to stem the practice.

The debate is unquestionably polarizing in many circles, even among advocates for sex-trafficked and abused women who fear that creating a legal path for prostitution will not eliminate, but rather actually encourage, underground sex trafficking

“This is about the oldest profession, and understanding that we haven’t been able to deter or end it, in millennia,” said Senator Jessica Ramos, a Democrat from Queens who is one of the plan’s backers. “So I think it’s time to confront reality.”