Hey Hanna Brooks Olsen, thank you for stepping up on the Olympia beat in Goldy's absence. I've appreciated having someone who can cover this stuff and gets into the substance of bills, and I'm glad that you're here capably taking over.

Thanks.

As a sex worker, no it isn't a good thing and will just end up being used against us because (surprise, surprise) we're still the "actual crimepeople". Take a look at the decades of women in LA and many other places becoming sex offenders and losing access to jobs, houses, support services, etc.

I all for punishing sex traffickers severely, but I'm not in favor of broadening the definition of "sex offenders".

The original idea of a sex-offender registry was a good one, and serves a purpose. But I worry about broadening the definition and adding more and more crimes to the list. You water down the meaning if you include too many lesser crimes to the list, and you run the risk of abuse by authorities against people who don't deserve the label, such as sex-workers (as @2 mentioned), teens busted for sexting each other, and other stupid shit like that.

@3: I think we are improving the definition by including sex traffickers, though I agree with you that teens and sex-workers shouldn't be on such lists, as well as feeling that ultimately we need to either figure out how to help people not reoffend, or just jail them for their life, rather than this bullshit where they are supposed to support themselves, but nobody will give them jobs or housing.

so a prostitute and a child rapist will now be treated the same- as a sex offender?

"...but these highly moral politicians and police men would LOVE to help you vacate that prosecution. you just do something for us, and we'll do something for you." sounds TOTALLY legit.

@5 If I'm understanding correctly, this doesn't apply to prostitutes at all. Rather, it seems to put pimps and sex traffickers on the sex offender registry. Sounds good to me.

@7 two women sharing space or one sexworker giving advice to another is enough to be a 'trafficker'.