We could do better than Backpage, we could probably make abuse of sex workers rare rather than a cliche, but it would require decriminalization first. For instance, that would enable them to hire their own security, or to press charges against abusers (though that's is own can of worms of course). It's also usually the sex workers who are in a position to understand who is being trafficked and by whom, but they are unable to intervene effectively without institutional support.
We should ask, well, does sex trafficking happen more or less in areas where prostitution is legal? That'll give us a good indicator of the effects of decriminalization.
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.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-...
[1]: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...
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
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
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
Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions. Prohibition is an unreasonable restriction, enforced according to a set of puritan morals that are no longer even popularly held. After all, alcohol is more addictive and more harmful than many schedule 1 drugs. We're not enforcing any kind of consistent moral principle here, we're hewing to the arbitrary views of people who are long dead. I personally do not find prostitution compatible with my moral sensibilities (I'm a prude, I'm just a libertarian prude), so I don't engage with it, but I'm not interested in prosecuting those that do any more than I'm interested in criminalizing pineapple on pizza.
Secondly, that study doesn't show that it made trafficking worse. It showed that it increased inflows of trafficking. Of course traffickers will prefer open markets to closed ones, that doesn't establish a causal relationship whereby increased openness lead to more net trafficking. What this shows is that prohibition makes trafficking happen in someone else's back yard.
Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes. Is there really no more recent study? Browsing Google Scholar is evident that this is an active area off research.
Here's a 2021 one I skimmed to cherrypick an article that finds decriminalization more effective ("Although it seems that partial decriminalization has greater benefits with fewer disadvantages, it is not without defects."): https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html
Why should I find your article more authoritative? (I'm looking for a survey article on the subject presently.)
Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer. If we want to find the traffickers, we're going to have an easier time in a lit market then a dark one.
Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics. Statistics are cool and useful, but predictive mental models and lives experience is a better source of policy. Statistics is better able to tell us that something isn't working than what that something is, why it isn't working, and what should be done about it.
Has there been some new release of prostitution, like a 2.0 where they updated the security to prevent abuse?
Stupid joke but nothing has really changed in that realm of things where a study that isn't that old would be invalid.
You’re starting with a libertarian premise most people don’t accept. The vast majority of the world accepts that it’s proper to restrict individual freedom even to protect people from themselves. Society has a role to play to help people make good choices and to make it hard for them to make bad or dangerous choices.
Also, you’re incorrect about the prevalent morals. Even in the US, women—who bear the lion’s share of the cost of prostitution—oppose legalizing by a large margin (50% to 30%): https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... And of course the overwhelming majority would still say it’s a bad or immoral choice, even if they agree someone should be allowed to make that choice.
> The last critics would be that full decriminalization has not resulted in reduced trafficking victimization, but led to growth trafficking inflows
> Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics.
Have you.. talked to any trafficking victims? Any sex workers? And, why do you think a sex worker has the ability to write prescriptive legal policy? Drug addicts would like drugs to be legal, oil barons would like there to be no natural protection laws, prostitutes would like prostitution to be legal.
And what do you think has changed about sex trafficking and prostitution in 11 years?
> Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer.
Right because you squash the market. Decriminalization of drugs failed because the count of addicts soared and so did ODs. You have less sex trafficking when it is riskier to engage in any prostitution. This isn't rocket science. Arguing your trafficking victims should get better health care is worse than just having meaningfully less trafficking victims.
over centuries consider cities and their populace. Those who practiced strict morality laws led to slum cities where there was nothing but vice, whereas mixed cities past a certain size that licensed bars or theater or taxi-dancing or whatever the action was.. might have different outcomes over time for the population. The character of the police force and others wielding turf-territory might be different over time as well.
As the population grows its hard to imagine purity as a real reaction to public health, whatever your moral compass might be.
