Sex workers in Anchorage were being targeted by a serial killer and the police did nothing. As Season 2 of the HBO docuseries “The Lost Women of Alaska” reveals, sex workers themselves discovered critical information leading to the killer’s identity: he showed one of them a video of him raping a black woman’s corpse, but when she reported it to police, they ignored her, and he continued his crime spree for another year. Instead, she was herself arrested for “sex trafficking” because she helped others in the industry. Rather than aggressively pursuing truly violent predators, police are too busy wasting time with easy targets whom they stigmatize for their sex work. Decriminalizing sex work would allow them to focus on catching the real criminals.
