Causes of mortality among female sex workers: Results of a multi-country study

Sex work‐related homicides: Insights from the National Violent Death Reporting System, 2012–2020

“…This may stem from multiple structural challenges related to transphobia [42], including exclusion from traditional forms of employment, lack of access to livable wages, safe and affordable housing, and lack of availability of trans‐friendly service providers [40, 43, 44, 45]. Our findings emphasize the need for research to include victims assigned male at birth, particularly to study homicides among transfeminine sex workers, as previous research primarily focused on female victims while excluding male victims [1, 2, 6, 12, 20]. Further research is essential to better address the social marginalization and violence experienced by transgender sex workers, considering the needs of diverse racial and ethnic groups within the transgender community.…”

“…The majority of prior research on sex work-related homicide in the US used survey data from small cohorts of sex workers, homicide data from specific cities and states, information obtained from media reports on homicides involving sex work, and/or data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) database [1][2][3][4][5][6]13], which relies on voluntary participation by law enforcement agencies and may therefore be incomplete [14,15] (documentation of SHR data is available at https:// www. ojjdp.…”

“…Homicide is a prevalent cause of death among sex workers [1–3]. In 2004, the largest and most recent study recording the mortality rate of female sex workers in the United States (US) reported women involved in sex work were approximately 18 times more likely to be murdered than women of similar age and race from 1967 to 1999 [2].…”

“…The majority of prior research on sex work‐related homicide in the US used survey data from small cohorts of sex workers, homicide data from specific cities and states, information obtained from media reports on homicides involving sex work, and/or data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) database [1–6, 13], which relies on voluntary participation by law enforcement agencies and may therefore be incomplete [14, 15] (documentation of SHR data is available at https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/). These datasets have limitations in that they are often untimely, may lack comprehensive reports describing the circumstances leading to the deaths, and may not identify other sex work‐related roles, such as clients and sex traffickers.…”