This is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem. Driving things underground is only going to cause more issues and abuse to the sex workers.
It's kind of ironic when in France, for example, a law gets passed criminalizing the customers while the sex workers go in the street to protest that law saying that it will create more abuse (and one year after, they were right).
Trying to stop behaviors that will always exist in human societies doesn't work, it just drives the demand underground and if things are illegal already, then other more illegal, more abusive behaviors start to surface.
> This is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem.
Why do we have to "believe"? There are many examples to learn from, to see what works and what doesn't.
For example, this study [0].
"This paper suggests it’s the latter. Using trafficking data from 150 countries, the authors find that "countries where prostitution is legal experience a larger reported incidence of human trafficking inflows."
As an example, they discuss Germany, which legalized prostitution in 2002. The minimum estimate of sex trafficking victims in the country increased from 9,870 in 2001 to 11,080 in 2002, to 12,350 in 2003."
As an anecdotal example: Sweden has one of the harshest stances on prostitution, and it's working just fine [1].
> As an example, they discuss Germany, which legalized prostitution in 2002. The minimum estimate of sex trafficking victims in the country increased from 9,870 in 2001 to 11,080 in 2002, to 12,350 in 2003."
Careful, such numbers typically come from criminal statistics. Those count reported cases, not convictions, and (by design) can't contain unreported cases.
Alternative reading: by legalizing prostitution, an entire economical sector (there's €€€ involved) is now open to routine law enforcement controls which increased visibility in the trafficking part of it, since sex workers can be more forthcoming with information as they don't need to hide their own business.
The ramp up into 2003 could indicate that law enforcement took a while to properly take advantage of that.
> That's a narrative (like the comment I was responding to), not backed by any studies as far as I can tell.
The legalization narrative is about sexual abuse (in the general sense both for sex workers and the broader population) and not specifically trafficking.
You are redefining English in attempt to use a paper that is entirely conjecture based on the predispositions of the authors. I stated _abuse_ as in sexual abuse, not trafficking specifically.
Sex workers are objecting to this law because it is cutting off their ability to communicate dangerous clients to each other. That will lead to an increase in them getting raped.
Like, I get you want to say "Sex trafficking bad and clearly that is the only issue that matters" but it is far from the only issue.
Trafficked persons, in a legal environment, are going to have their place of work inspected, regular interviews with the police for licensing, and their citizenship status checked. The studies of early legalization Germany are so fun for opponents to push because they know Germany did not do this for the first years.
It is like comparing a known, obviously broken implementation and insisting all implementations look like that or that is the only measure of success.
> I was a #sexworker organizer for years in NYC. #FOSTA would undermine almost every single thing I would tell people for how to stay alive. ALL screening, ALL peer references, ALL bad date lists I could send. #SurvivorsAgainstFOSTA
> The authors provide “causal evidence” of a 32 to 40 percent reduction in rape and sexual abuse within two years of a city opening a tippelzone. The higher number is for cities that license sex work in the tippelzone; the lower figure is for cities without a licensing process. “The decreases in sexual abuse are stronger in cities with licensed tippelzones.”
> In cities with both a tippelzone and a licensing requirement, the authors find a 25 percent reduction in drug-related crimes within two years. That result persists beyond two years.
> Most governments in the world including the United States prohibit prostitution. Given these types of laws rarely change and are fairly uniform across regions, our knowledge about the impact of decriminalizing sex work is largely conjectural. We exploit the fact that a Rhode Island District Court judge unexpectedly decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 to provide the first causal estimates of the impact of decriminalization on the composition of the sex market, rape offenses, and sexually transmitted infection outcomes. Not surprisingly, we find that decriminalization increased the size of the indoor market. However, we also find that decriminalization caused both forcible rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population. Our synthetic control model finds 824 fewer reported rape offenses (31 percent decrease) and 1,035 fewer cases of female gonorrhea (39 percent decrease) from 2004 to 2009.
I'm sure that places with legalized drugs also experience increases in drug trafficking inflows. And the overall alcohol consumption in the USA rose after the prohibition.
>> Does this mean legalizing prostitution is a bad idea? Well, not necessarily. The authors note that legalization could have other positive effects, such making it easier for prostitutes to seek legal or medical help and decreasing rates of abuse and sexually-transmitted disease.
The real key, and it's also highlighted in your [0] link, is if the situation is better for almost everyone after legalizing.
About the Sweden example, claiming that "since the law came into effect fewer men reported purchasing sex and prostitutes were less visible" (your [1] link) is a winning situation is a bit lame. Of course after a prohibition you expect the prostitution to go underground and less visible. It's like denying paedophilia just because nobody reports himself as a peadophile and you cannot see children on the streets.
Imagine we had legalized drugs, but barely anyone wanted to make them, because making them was nasty and degrading in a way that few people could even tolerate. No matter what you did, you simply couldn't find enough people willing to make them. Paying them more wont help, because beyond a certain point the nastiness of making them can't be washed away with money.
FWIW there's been another reform in Germany. Brothels and prostitution are legal, provided prostitutes register with the police. The police registration is a bit of paperwork and an interview every 6/12 months, the goal of the interview is to uncover trafficking.
Skipping that interview is a crime for the brothel owner, not just the prostitute.
A contradicting practical example is the situation with legal brothels in Turkey. The goverment wants them shut but the women working there wants them kept open, because otherwise they have no option but to go underground, and then they lose access to facilities like security and routine health controls. When some years ago the Istanbul municipality tried to shut them off the women protested: http://www.milliyet.com.tr/karakoy-de-genelevde-calisan-kadi...
This does not take into account the increased number of ppl. As an extreme example to illustrate my point if it has been 2 million ppl living in Germany in 2001 and 10 million in 2002 in the age range they are looking at then it’s actually better. It should be based on % rather than just numbers. Also it doesn’t look at the trend. If it the trend was to increase by 30% but dropped afterwards to 20% then again it has worked in some way.
I’m not arguing that this is definitely the case, I’m just saying how data should be looked at and compared to have a better understanding of the outcome of an event. But if I’m wrong I’d love to hear why. :)
Firstly, The entire paper is guesswork. There are no official numbers to support the fact that legalising prostitution increases the victim count. I just finished reading it and they even in the beginning state that they don’t have the data.
Secondly, I was just making a point that in these kinds of researches a % value is IMO a better measurement
> Why do we have to "believe"? There are many examples to learn from, to see what works and what doesn't.
The discussion was about abuse, not about total number of trafficking incidents. Those _estimates_ are not actual numbers but extrapolations of the actual numbers in the opinion of the study's authors.
Germany also failed to properly regulate its brothels with the same vigor as they apply to other industries which was genuinely unfortunate.
All it takes is going to legal brothels with business licenses and checking citizenship status.
It seems some of the men living in Sweden are among the planets worst sexual predators, to word it carefully.
Sweden is pushing new legislation that will increase the number of rapes even more. It will be a law of consent and will shift the burden of proof from the victim to the rapist. Unless the rapist can prove consent, he will be sentenced for rape by negligence. Under the new law, having sex with a traffic victim prostitute can be considered "rape", and the burden of proof will be on the john to prove that it is not a traffic victim.
(1,2,3)
I live next door, in Norway. Here we talk of the "Swedish condition".
I think it's to do with the collection of statistics as well.
They record the rape at the initial reporting to the police, no matter what any later investigation shows, and multiple rapes are counted individually (many countries do not).
This is not saying which approach is correct for recording the numbers, but that you cant simply compare the numbers.
This is a well known trope (especially in less palatable corners of the internet). A quick read of the "Rape in Sweden" [0] wikipedia page explains why these numbers are very high. Each separate relation is counted as a different rape, the definition of rape is broader, and the reporting rate is higher.
For people that lived in Sweden, this claim (that Sweden has some incredible rape problem) is surprising to say the least.
(with that being said, there has been an increase in sexual violence lately, probably correlated with immigration from regions where the rate is higher, but from what I could gather it was not a dramatic increase)
It's worth pointing out that the "Nordic Model" used in Sweden is indeed harsh, but only for pimps and buyers.
Prostitutes themselves are not punished with a criminal record like they are in the US. Instead they are offered support to exit. Which makes sense if you really want them to to leave that industry. Legit jobs are hard to find with a record, so it's no wonder people who get arrested for crimes like prostitution and drug dealing often end up in the same situation after getting arrested.
Oh course German sex trafficing increased; prostitution is illegal in the neighboring countries, so now Germany's border regions service a large international customer base. Sex tourism is also big thing for some cities. The market got a lot bigger the second prostitution was legalized.
> This is key. I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem
I agree, but It's not a complete solution. Where I live brothels are legal, there is one 5 minutes from my house yet there are still street workers. The street workers are generally suffering from homelessness, mental health issues, drugs or all three. Legal brothels take care of much of the demand side, but they don't do much for people pushed into selling themselves.
1. Most folks don't think it is a complete solution, and perhaps simply not limiting prostitution to brothels is one of the expansions that would work. You can still outlaw selling from the streets and require folks be registered and working through personals and whatnot, with some safety plans in place.
2. It seems the solution for these particular folks would be to focus less on picking them up for prostitution and instead, finding them safe housing, repeatedly offering mental health care, and repeatedly offering addiction services or at least helping them find a way to avoid feeling like they are forced into prostitution. With prostitution itself being legal, it is much easier to focus on these sorts of technicalities.
> I strongly believe that legalization is the only answer to the problem.
This appears to be a popular thesis among the commenters on this page. But your hunch is not proven by the realities of countries that have legalized prostitution. As I've commented elsewhere here, all you have to do is study the laws of prostitution elsewhere in the world to understand that they have little to no influence on sex trafficking. Prostitution is legal, explicit, and even taxed in the Netherlands, but sex trafficking remains such a major problem that some large cities, like Utrecht, have outlawed prostitution locally to combat the issue.
As I noted in another comment, all you have to do is study the laws of prostitution elsewhere in the world to understand that they have little to no influence on sex trafficking. Prostitution is legal, explicit, and even taxed in the Netherlands, but sex trafficking remains such a major problem that some large cities, like Utrecht, have outlawed prostitution locally to combat the issue.
