Employment as HIV Prevention: An Employment Support Intervention for Adolescent Men Who Have Sex With Men and Adolescent Transgender Women of Color.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to adapt and pilot-test an employment support, primary HIV intervention tailored to the needs of adolescent men who have sex with men and adolescent transgender women of color. SETTING: The intervention was implemented in 2 settings: controlled environment (Phase 1) and real-world community-based (Phase 2) setting in Chicago, IL. METHODS: Eighty-seven adolescent men who have sex with men and adolescent transgender women of color ages 16-24 participated in Work2Prevent , a 4-session employment and HIV prevention intervention, designed to increase job-readiness and reduce HIV risk. Intervention sessions consisted of group activities: educational games, roleplaying/modeling behavior, and self-regulation exercises. Participants were assessed at baseline, postintervention, and 8-month (Phase 1) or 3-month follow-up (Phase 2). RESULTS: Participants evaluated Work2Prevent as feasible and acceptable, rating intervention quality, usefulness, and satisfaction highly. Overall, 59.6% (Phase 1) and 85.0% (Phase 2) participants attended 2 or more sessions. At 8 months, Phase 1 participants reported a mean increase of 11.4 hours worked per week. Phase 2 participants reported a mean increase of 5.2 hours worked per week and an increase in job-seeking self-efficacy. Phase 2 participants also reported a decrease in transactional sex work. CONCLUSION: Work2Prevent is one of the first structural primary HIV interventions to specifically focus on adolescent employment readiness. Findings suggest Work2Prevent is feasible and acceptable, improved adolescent employment outcomes, and reduced HIV risk associated with transactional sex work. Our study underscores the need for alternative pathways, such as addressing socioeconomic determinants, to prevent adolescent HIV infection.

Police Enforcement of Sex Work Criminalization Laws in an "End Demand" City: The Persistence of Quality-of-Life Policing and Seller Arrests.

The purported goals of commercial sex work criminalization policies in the United States have shifted over the past two decades as local jurisdictions have adopted End Demand reforms. These reforms aim to refocus arrest from individuals who sell sexual services to buyers and facilitators, representing a departure from the quality-of-life, nuisance-focused approach of the late twentieth century. This article presents a case study examining enforcement of commercial sex laws in Chicago, a city that has been heralded as a leader in End Demand reforms. Our case study utilized annualized arrest statistics from 1998 to 2017 and individual arrest reports (n = 575) from 2015 to 2017. Commercial sex arrests by the Chicago Police Department have declined substantially over the past two decades, falling 98.4% from its peak. However, our analysis suggests that sellers of sexual services continue to face the heaviest burden of arrest (80.5%) and officers generally continue to approach commercial sex as a quality-of-life issue. We argue that this divergence between the goals and implementation of End Demand are the result of three institutional factors: street-level bureaucracy, logics of spatial governmentality, and participatory security. Our results suggest that the ideals of End Demand may be incompatible with the institutional realties of urban policing.