this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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I disagree. Creating a legitimate marketplace creates room for regulations and law enforcement and kills black markets.
Human traffickers get a lot easier to catch if the trafficked can turn their traffickers in without fear of being arrested themselves for the things they were forced to do.
You're arguing against the science on this issue, it's a well established fact that countries that have legalized prostitution in the past have notably larger human trafficking inflows. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065
I have not read that and don't intend to at present, so let's give you that argument.
I'd propose a simple reason for this. I would imagine a lot of the inflow is from other countries where prostitution is still illegal. Traffickers move them to legal countries, possibly even legal brothels, and coerce the person to stay quiet. Johns don't have any reason to suspect, because it's legal, so it may provide safety to the traffickers, in a hiding in plain site way.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or if the article addresses this in some way. I'll read it a bit later.
I think maybe the fact that the frequency of people being kidnapped, shipped to another country, and forced into sex work against their will increasing as a direct and clear correlation of the decriminalization still stands regardless of the policies of the countries of origin. More avoidable harm comes from decriminalizing, and we don't have a very clear solution yet other than the slow modernization of the whole world.
Sure, there's a validity in it regardless of anything else, but the mechanism is important. If it's not a clear causal relationship, if it's instead just correlative, then it doesn't make any sense to base policy decisions on it, though. Murder rates go up at the same time ice cream sales do, but we're not banning ice cream.
Wouldn't that be because they can actually measure their inflow since all of it is above board?
Human Trafficking is never above board. That's the whole point, the illegally kidnapping and forcing into sex slavery part increases. Which is the entire problem. The Human Traffickers don't start reporting the number of lives they've ruined out of good conscience, if that's what you thought?