Thailand's Prostitution Patrol on High Alert as 5,000 US Sailors Drop Ship After 200 Days at Sea

[u/novagridd]

https://www.fashiontimes.co.uk/pattaya-police-intensify-prostitution-patrols-us-navy-visit-1763395

[u/Turdmeist]

Legalize and regulate all the things. Everyone wins. Except maybe law enforcement/jails. But maybe in sensible countries that would be true as well. What countries profit from jailing people?

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/Turdmeist]

Ya know people say that, but all the places I know of with legalized prostitution are also hubs for human trafficking so I'm not sure how I feel.

[u/nuevacuentanueva → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

Ya know people say that, but all the places I know of with legalized prostitution are also hubs for human trafficking so I'm not sure how I feel.

Honest question. Is it that there is actually more human trafficking or is it the case that it is more reported/controlled since the prostitution is legal so people in the industry are more likely to report those cases?

As an example, if we assume the same amount in both cases, I can see why people involved in an illegal activity wouldn't report cases of another illegal activity since it would affect them negatively. Meanwhile if your activity is legal and it doesn't put your livelihood at risk, you may be more likely to report to avoid issues. So it would look like with legal prostitution there's more cases of trafficking, but it's just more reported ones.

Sort of like how in some places undocumented immigrants tend to report crimes done to them at much lower rates than documented ones. If the risk of being caught for something else is higher, you may not say anything at all.

[u/Neuchacho → u/nuevacuentanueva]

There's more based on the studies that look at it. The basic premise is legalizing it makes the market much larger and there's not usually enough local supply to meet demand and thus there are more opportunities for trafficking. It also becomes easier to hide in plain sight because prostitution isn't an instant flag of illegality. To prove illegality you now have to dig into much wider and time-consuming investigations and spot-checks of all these now-legal businesses.

The combination that actually works seems to be the Nordic model where they decriminalize sex work on the worker side, but still criminalizing buyers, pimps, and the like. It's the only adjusted system that's recorded actual reductions in human trafficking numbers to my knowledge.

[u/nuevacuentanueva → u/Neuchacho]

It's the only adjusted system that's recorded actual reductions in human trafficking numbers to my knowledge.

But that's kind of my point. In my example the human trafficking events that happen in reality are the same, but the recorded number is lower in one case, simply because of reporting issues.

The studies can only use reported events. If something isn't reported they can't know how widespread it actually is.

So saying that legality increase the reported number doesn't mean it increased the actual number of cases.

That's what I'm going at.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think ignoring that massive gap in data will produce incorrect conclusions.

Like I said, I compare it to immigration because I saw studies about that. There were studies that on the same area, with people with the same background/origin, the difference between crime reported was like 2 to 1 on the documented immigrant vs undocumented one.

With that data, you'd think legalizing the immigrants increased crime against them!

Should we assume that criminals were targeting only documented immigrants and not the undocumented ones? If anything you'd think undocumented one should suffer more crime, not less, as they have fewer resources when it happens to them. Or is it way more likely that the undocumented ones simply didn't report the crimes for fear of consequences such as being deported?

Obviously human trafficking is a much more complex issue, but I think the same logic would apply. If you are involved in prostitution while it's illegal, then you'd be way less likely to report than if it was legal and you had protections.

[u/Openly-Horny → u/nuevacuentanueva]

But that's kind of my point. In my example the human trafficking events that happen in reality are the same, but the recorded number is lower in one case, simply because of reporting issues.

Their point is that in decriminalized areas where it was safer to report, they saw a reduction in trafficking, whereas there was no reduction in legal areas compared to illegal areas. By your logic the legal areas would see a reduction, but instead they see an increase over baseline because it's easier to hide dirty business among your clean business. Say you've got a brothel with 30 legal workers and 3 underage ones: the only people who know are clients that specifically pay for discretion so they'd never report.

Because decriminalized areas target the bad actors instead of the SWs, the threat actually goes down.