[clipsy]

> We have a great study on this [1]. Decriminalization makes sex trafficking WORSE - full stop. Prostitution means more sex trafficking happens, and crackdowns on prostitution successfully reduce sex trafficking too.

From the article[0] (NB: not the linked article, the actual research paper): "Among the currently available sources, the aforementioned Report on Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns (UNODC, 2006) has also collected and presented data on incidences of human trafficking at the country level; therefore the utilization of this report best serves the purpose of our study. The UNODC Report provides cross-country information on the reported incidence of human trafficking in 161 countries, measuring trafficking flows on a six-point scale."

There's a fairly serious shortcoming here in my opinion which I did not see addressed while skimming the research design; part of the argument in favor of legalization/decriminalization is specifically that trafficking victims will be more likely to approach the police for help. As such, one would expect an increase in sex trafficking victims identified in countries that legalize/decriminalize -- not because there are more victims, but because the victims that were already present now feel more comfortable seeking help from the state. As a contrived thought experiment, if you have a city with 100 sex trafficking victims and 50 of them would go to the police if they weren't afraid of getting arrested, legalizing sex work would seemingly produce 50 sex trafficking victims virtually overnight! But of course, in reality, those victims were already present, silently suffering and unable to get help for fear of imprisonment.

[0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986065

[s1artibartfast]

Furthermore, pretty much all of these studies avoid any quantification of the benefits. Women employed, the money that they made, the number of people that stayed out of the criminal justice systems, and even satisfied customers.

Of course there will always be questions of induced demand, assuming that that's bad and may increase trafficking. That doesn't mean that there's not tools and policies that can combat trafficking in a legal system. For example, citizenship requirements for prostitutes and a death penalty for traffickers would probably go a long way

[vorpalhex]

I don't think making money or satisfying customers offsets the harm of kidnapping someone and selling their body.

[s1artibartfast]

I obviously dont either, in a 1:1 exchange. When the ratio gets sufficiently large, I think that can change, especially when the alternative also includes kidnapping and sex trafficing.

[Brian_K_White]

What is the draft for military service?

I don't mean in countries where every single person does the same short term, I mean when there is a war and we grab all the fit young men.

It's hardly any different. What really is being defended by all those draftees? Not our lives, just our way of life.

Everyone else agreed that those smaller number of people fed into a meat grinder was worth everyone else's ability to own a car and a house and elect their own mayor.

[vorpalhex]

Except we also track the journey of sex trafficked victims.. and they mostly travel to regions with little law enforcement presence.

Unlike murder, we can just ask the victims.. which the UNODC does.

> More impunity, more victims: Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are convicting fewer traffickers and detecting fewer victims than rest of the world. At the same time, victims from these regions are identified in more destination countries than people from elsewhere

UNODC Human Trafficking report, 2022