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.