Mobile phones are part of the equation! I don't think this is an either/or scenario. Sites like Craigslist and Backpages make it a lot easier for those who do sex work to do it without a pimp. Legal brothels and want-ad based sex work is a lot safer for the people involved than street trafficking. Want-ads are a part of the puzzle just like phones are.

I'm not convinced that this is doing any more good than harm to the majority of the people out there who are engaged in this sort of work.

How exactly do mobile phones make it easier for sex workers to avoid being victimized by pimps?

One less intermediary for the interaction. That's my understanding of the thought on the subject. The pimp has less economic and coercive power if a girl can make her own appointments. If a girl feels she needs protection it's a lot easier to hire someone to watch outside while she goes and does her work, but that is a very different position than that of the traditional pimp.

I find the argument convincing. Unsurprisingly there's not a ton of research on the subject, at least none that comes up on quick searches other than the usual stuff about violence vs sex workers decreasing with legalization.

It seems like the full protection of the law is the only rational and humane way forward. It is time to legalize prostitution in America.

That's not really what street pump means. Even a sex worker using a smartphone for booking has a similar need for extralegal protection.

And we still do have street pimps and street prostitutes, where police haven't flushed them out.

So... what service do pimps still provide in the age of the smartphone?

The same "service" they've always provided: mafia-style protection. Sex workers didn't suddenly become less vulnerable simply because they're posting Craigslist ads.

Could you provide some support to that statement? Since much of drug dealing went online, there has been several articles on how that activity become more safer when moved out of the street.

Just a few months ago I also read an article here in Sweden where a journalist reached out to sex workers, where the person that agreed on a interview said that they had no pimp. They did all the booking and reservations Online. While anecdotal, its enough to at least question statements like sex workers aren't safer when they can stay out of the street and do their advertisement and booking from home.

Why do you think sex workers ever had pimps?

because they are in bad parts of town at night with cash on them?

Did you have something different in mind?

> Sex workers didn't suddenly become less vulnerable simply because they're posting Craigslist ads.

Actually, they did. With a red-light district you have to be there, exposed to the pimps, to be exposed to the customers. And the density allows pimps to control more people, enough to make the activity profitable.

With out-call services from ads you avoid the presence of the pimps in the first place, and the configuration (outcalls) makes capturing a sex-worker much harder if they try which makes the economics much less attractive. Pimping is a crime of opportunity and outcalls remove most of that.

Also, not being street-people, call-girls get much more respect from police if they need to report a crime.

Wouldn't be better if that protection was provided by the police?

Ceteris paribus (though remember there's a long and ugly history of the police victimizing sex workers as well).

But all things aren't equal. Most importantly: so long as prostitution is formally illegal, men and women can't be pressured by social norms to participate in sex work. Once prostitution is legalized, the stage is set for that to change: perhaps body integrity isn't nearly as important as bootstrapping oneself to self-reliance, or providing for vulnerable family members.

Usually in economic analyses we stop and ask ourselves if normal people would prefer the choice rather than having it foisted on them: for instance, maybe we'd rather allow ticket scalping because someone with a valuable ticket would probably prefer the option of being able to sell it for a steep profit and pay for health care rather than just having the experience promised by the ticket. But here we have a case where most normal people probably do not want the choice deregulation would allow.

>though remember there's a long and ugly history of the police victimizing sex workers as well

Mainly in areas where prostitution is illegal, thus the police use their power over the "criminal" to abuse them.

Sex workers have no legal method to report this abuse with out also admitting to a crime themselves.

Thus if it were legal, Abuse by police would only be as frequent for sex workers as is for other legal occupations, which much hire than it should be but....

You do know there are western countries where prostitution is legalized, right? The moral and social fabrics of these nations are not unraveling at the seams.

> Most importantly: so long as prostitution is formally illegal, men and women can't be pressured by social norms to participate in sex work.

Untrue, social norms can pressure people into formally illegal acts quite easily, and that absolutely happens with sex work now.