America’s Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral
Under the ‘American Plan,’ women could be detained for sitting in a restaurant alone, changing jobs—or, often, for no reason at all.
So, beginning in 1918, federal officials began pushing every state in the nation to pass a “model law,” which enabled officials to forcibly examine any person “reasonably suspected” of having an STI. Under this statute, those who tested positive for an STI could be held in detention for as long as it took to render him or her noninfectious. (On paper, the law was gender-neutral; in practice, it almost exclusively focused on regulating women and their bodies.)
They did this to Korean Prostitutes while I was in Korea. They locked them up in a jail. And I remember hearing them yelling Hey, G.I. out the small windows.