We know that sex workers are frequent victims of violence rape and even murder as well as being at a much higher risk of catching stds or having unwanted pregnancies.

People argue about these specific numbers because frankly it's a hard population to get honest surveys of, but here's one I found.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9698636/

>As adults in prostitution, 82% had been physically assaulted; 83% had been threatened with a weapon; 68% had been raped while working as prostitutes;

...

>Eighty-eight percent of these respondents stated that they wanted to leave prostitution, and described what they needed in order to escape.

If those numbers are even close to reality I think it's hard to argue that the negatives of prostitution don't far outweigh any positives.

That said I think it's not at all obvious what the solution is here because clearly criminalizing prostitution is ineffective at eliminating prostitution.

Don't those stats only prove that criminalized prostitution is a negative? I expect you'd have a huge differential if you took similar stats from people selling weed in a place that strictly enforces a ban vs a place where it is legal and regulated. Probably not when it comes to rape, but violent/armed encounters are probably negligible for a legal weed shop, but common in an underground industry. Naturally, in the latter case, people would overwhelmingly want to get out, not because of the job itself, but the opportunists that crop up due to the lack of legal oversight.

Sure, but while there is evidence that less abuse and trafficking occurs where prostitution is legal (which is why I do generally support legalization) I think it's clear that it doesn't eliminate it.

I wasn't able to find any stats on violence in a country where it is both legal and normalized, but I did find this paper by a doctor of psychology about the trafficking and abuses that still occur under the German system.

https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss3/5/

I'm open to evidence to the contrary, but it seems like in many ways the legalization and normalization of prostitution has both failed to protect sex workers from violence and has normalized the trafficking and pimping of these women.

That article seems to be an anecdotal story from a single person. Sad, but hard to point at it as support for or against legalization without being able to show that similar cases are more common under one system than the other.

Sadly, people with mental health issues and difficult families being preyed upon by abusers is common, even here in the US.