"Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows."

I find this interesting.. I wonder why people would still go to an illegal worker over a legal one. Is it that the consumers don't know they're illegal or they have some other advantage like cheaper price or a different experience?

Apparently it's a hard problem to solve. Prostitution is legal in Germany, but still far from "accepted" as regular work.

There are attempts at having the workers register themselves plus regular check ups (which they're not too keen on, because when the political landscape changes, being part of some database isn't a good thing. Plus, being in a database might expose their line of work that they normally don't point a spotlight on in their regular life), at requiring their customers to report suspect cases (but not all customers are interested in having their pastime exposed like that, and also how are they supposed to detect these?).

Every attempt at a solution (without guarantee of success) creates new problems because it's a volatile environment all around.

Illegal workers being immigrants, they are unfamiliar with the law, at risk of deportation (so the protections legal workers theoretically have don't apply to them in whole), and they're also not very keen on their families learning how they made the money that was sent back every month (no, it wasn't by waiting tables). Also, with mafia-like structures trafficking them, blowing the whistle might reduce life expectation for them and their families back home. There's little room for them to help themselves once in the situation.

The only way to help victims of trafficking is to offer them help and some sort of amnesty.

Are all the statistics using a consistent definition of human trafficking? I have no faith that data between different countries is comparable on this issue, especially when it was apparently gathered from other sources. That is the sort of approach that gets Sweden called a 'rape capital' [0].

It is an extreme claim that legalising something causes crime rates to increase. They advance a plausible idea for the mechanism, but it seems reasonable that they are picking up ghosts in the data rather than a real effect. Correlation and causation issues might also be at play somewhere, and the scope of the study is just too big to pick it up. If there is a secondary source on one country that talks about a before-and-after observed change that might be interesting.

Basically, I'm not dismissing it out of hand, but it seems pretty reasonable that legalising drugs/prostitution/whatever automatically reduces crime and this study doesn't meet a reasonable bar of evidence. Maybe if it were combined with a good single-country study that highlighted the mechanism a bit more - but the uncertainties in the case study are enormous. The numbers cited in the report for Germany, for example, could be optimistically (optimistic to the point I feel disingenuous, but I don't think I'm saying anything statistically outrageous) spun to say that it is human trafficking may have declined from 19,740 (1996) to 12,350 (2003) with the legalising of prostitution +.

[0] https://www.thelocal.se/20170221/why-sweden-is-not-the-rape-...

+ Footnote 38 notes that Germany changed their definition of human trafficking victims between 1996 an 2003 to include more people, although they don't think this accounted for the majority of the increase.

Not least because any increase also has to make up for all the crime that went away overnight when $thing became legal.

There is no reason to assume the client knows who is legal and who isn't. I can well imagine that it's less dangerous to traffic someone where prostitution is legal because the activity per se isn't going to get you arrested.

I saw some article about stolen high value tech being booming business because, unlike illegal drugs, simply possessing the tech per se was not illegal. They would have to prove it was obtained illegally to charge you with anything.

But:

(1) Can inflows really be measured comparably between legalized and non-legalized regimes? and

(2) Are inflows actually the figure of merit or a proxy?

(3) If inflows are a proxy for the figure of merit, is the relationship between that proxy and the actual figure of merit consistent between legalized and non-legalized regimes?

Its worth noting that key utilitarian arguments made for legalization (there are also more direct deontological arguments) include that legalization makes it easier for people subjected to abuses within sex work (including, but not limited to, trafficking) to identify themselves and/or be identified, and for them to escape from those abusive situations. If that is true, one would expect:

(1) Any mechanism for detecting trafficking levels (including inflows) to return a result higher relative to the actual level, ceteris paribus, in a legalized regime than a criminalized one, and

(2) Actual inflow levels in a legalized regime to be higher in proportion to impact levels (number of people subjected to trafficking at any point in time, number of person/years per year spent subjected to trafficking, lifetime average number of days spent subjected to trafficking, etc.) because shorter time to escape would require higher inflow levels [0] for any given impact level (or, equivalent, produce lower impact levels for any given inflow level.)

And this doesn't even address that the research uses a source that relies on local reports of human trafficking rather than consistent collection on common standards, and that legalizing regimes (and particular democratic legalizing regimes, which saw the greatest likelihood of increases) might simply tend also to use broader definitions of human trafficking in the first place, or expend more effort to either detect it or to distinguish it from non-trafficking prostitution.

[0] Well, where "inflow" is imports + people newly subjected to trafficking locally; the paper seems to consider only imports, which would ceteris paribus have the same relation, but there could be compounding effects from differences in local trafficking (OTOH, if legalization made it harder to traffic locals--because those who would be at risk would be more able to turn to legal sex work themselves--then that would further increase the ratio between import inflows and domestic impact levels.

Slaves are cheaper and less likely to refuse to perform certain services.

When your metric is "crimes discovered" or "crimes reported", you have to make sure improvements come from reduction in crime, not detection rates...

Prostitution and street-walking are two different things, and it would be possible for prostitution to be legal whilst keeping street-walking illegal.

I suppose it could be argued then a single person could operate from their home, but groups would have to work from licensed premises. Seems like that would have an advantage.

So for instance I think it's extremely likely that you can show that legalizing certain drugs (such as marijuana) can be shown to 'cause' increases in sex trafficking. Of course it almost certainly does not but I'm making the educated assumption that nations that have legalized prostitution are going to have legalized drugs of various sorts more liberally than nations that still have criminalized prostitution. And so, lo and behold, we can show a correlation between legalizing drugs and sex trafficking if we assume that paper is correct that a link exists between sex trafficking and legalized prostitution.

Though indeed even the link itself should be called into question. For instance could the cause not be that legalization enables greater scrutiny over workers and thus the legalization itself helps to increase the detection efficiency of unlawful trafficking? Differences in what you're measuring mean nothing unless you are measuring things in the exact same way, with the exact same 'resolution'. Again you can try to control for things like this, but the controls are subject to just as many problems.

---

Maybe the most important issue here is that this is an issue that is incredibly difficult to do right even when you are 100% impartial and objective analysis is your one and only purpose. In reality people are biased, and a negative result means you basically just wasted however many months researching this topic. And this is a topic where you could, even without malice or intent, show anything to be true if you wanted by just seeking out slightly different data, or controlling for confounding issues in slightly different ways.

These are countries with low unemployment, but also low pay, so sex work appeals as a lucrative (and less boring) alternative.

Many of this women were single mothers and the money was sent home. Few, from what I could tell, used drugs. And all were very strong people - I think that line of work requires it.

So in some parts of the world prostitution is just another job.

Is this the same everywhere? Unfortunately not. And I'm sure the industry as a whole is filled with tales of sorrow.

There are advocacy groups out there campaigning for sex workers' rights, staffed by sex workers and former sex workers, and I would think that if the profession were really so bad for independent providers then groups like this either wouldn't exist or would have a very different character.

But lets not forget that most people aren't happy being cleaners, servers, etc and do it entirely for the money. Nothing wrong with that, but in this world only a very small group is happy enough to love their job (and most people love only a part of it).

If someone feels like they don't have any other job opportunities, then making prostitution illegal certainly won't fix that problem (nor does it eliminate prostitution - prostitution exists everywhere, making it illegal just means a prostitute can't go to the police if a customer takes advantage of her).

Policing prostitution is a complete waste of taxpayer money.

> Everybody has a choice in their type of work, nobody is forced to be a prostitute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

People are forced into sex work all the time, everywhere on the planet including in rich western countries, by various means,debt, violence,death threats,the "boyfriend" who is a pimp, even "curse" threats, especially young kids, and most johns don't give a damn. Women who refuse to submit to their pimps or the mafia are killed to set an example.

Why the hell can we not have a real conversation about sex work among consenting adults without somebody conflating it with slavery and child prostitution?

Versus, you know, never getting off the ground floor?

I've been a member of HN for over 9 years. I spent nearly 6 of it homeless. I have been quite open about hoping to make professional connections here and thereby improve my finances. I've made damn little progress on that goal. HN has not proven to be a good means for me to network.

While homeless, there were a number of men who offered me money to sleep with them or asked if I needed a place to stay (the implication being I could stay with them in exchange for sex).

I've talked about this many times on HN. If I didn't have a serious medical condition making sex work a non starter for me, I likely would have long ago given up on finding another solution because I'm still dirt poor.

I was one of the top three students of my graduating class in high school and I won a National Merit Scholarship. I don't lack talent. But most men don't really want to talk to me in earnest unless they are looking for a sexual relationship. It has proven to be a tremendous barrier to resolving my financial problems and rejoining the middle class.

That’s why I never left Romania. The cost of life here is manageable enough that the possibility of me becoming homeless is practically zero. And it’s not SF, but we do have some startups and software companies here and I can work remotely too.

Given the trouble you’re facing, as an unsolicited advice, wouldn’t it be better for you if you moved someplace where the cost of life is lower?

Personally I find it incredible how highly skilled people in the US, especially in California, can become homeless.

I mean, other than just taking some kind of shot at me like I'm just a whiner who doesn't appreciate how good I have it, what exactly is the point you are trying to make?

If career success in other fields were easier to access for women, it would be easier to make other choices.

Women frequently turn to prostitution because it pays extremely well, too.

Unemployment is 3.7%. Anyone remotely employable can get a job today, but especially women.

Women made up ~47% of the workforce in 2017 and are on track to hold more jobs than men in a few years, even with a lower participation rate.

Female unemployment rate trended significantly lower than male unemployment rate during the last recession.

Women are the majority on college campuses, and earn a majority of bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees.

Women are paid the same for the same work, when they choose to focus on their careers as much as men are expected to. And women hold special legal status to take leave to have children (there is no Federal paternity leave in the US, however some states offer it).

Career success has never been more achievable for women in particular. Inside and outside the specific field of prostitution.

Are you talking about the FMLA? It covers fathers and mothers. It's also unpaid and only lasts 12 weeks.

Ctrl-F 'paternity' and look at the table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...

I don't know how to say this and not come as a jerk, but regarding the glass ceiling. By the time a women hit the glass ceiling sex work is not an option because they are old and the only sex work available would be streetwalking or low level escorting which dose not pay as much as under C-level manager or where the glass ceiling is.

Homeless men with no skills sometimes find day labor jobs. They are much less often offered money or a place to stay in exchange for sex.

I used Glass Ceiling as shorthand for removing barriers generally. Given the response here, I don't think it's worth the time and effort to try to "clarify." I don't think most people here actually want to understand the point. They are too busy shooting the idea down to wonder if there's any merit to the idea.

This actually is not true. Some time ago I had opportune to speak with a homeless man about his situation, and his options. It turns out that he is offered money for sex quite often, perhaps daily. By his telling, he has never done it either.

The proposals are from gay men.

There may be the occasional statistical outlier. But, on average, you are going to see homeless women offered money for sex a great deal more often than homeless men.

If you want to rebut that, please cite sources, not anecdata. I've had a class on homelessness and public policy. I spent nearly six years homeless. I still blog about the topic. Your sample of one doesn't remotely convince me that my assertion is inaccurate.

I didn't say it never happens. I said it is much less common.

Your casual dismissal of my knowledge as mere anecdata on par with theirs isn't in the least bit "interesting".

The glass ceiling is something of a poor metaphor, because what it really refers to is a series of progressively more burdensome barriers to advancement, not a single level beyond which no women progress and below which advancement is egalitarian.

And it becomes very palpable at very low levels in many industries.

As a man, many of my first jobs I got simply because the boss thought I was a promising PFY and was convinced I'd learn everything I needed within the first few days. It's a double standard.

Women will continue to be 'streetwalkers', because they can't access the regulated place of business - maybe because of previous bad behavior such as stealing or assaulting clients - maybe because they have a STD and the regulated place won't let them work for health reasons - maybe because they are being forced to do 'overtime' after their regulated job by a pimp.

Men will likewise continue to use streetwalkers - maybe because they just like them better, maybe because they think their partners have less of a chance of finding out if they pick someone up in the street vs paying with a credit card on an app - maybe because they have been abusive in the past with regulated prostitutes and have been banned - maybe because they want to save 10% on the price.