A few years ago, when I was a full-time member of the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School, faculty and staff were required to go through various trainings. One of them was on how to spot sex trafficking so that we could turn in traffickers to the police.
I’m the kind of person who, during those trainings, will typically read the material. That time was no exception. My memory is hazy, but I do remember that one slide in the presentation showed an equivalence between being an adult prostitute and being sexually trafficked. “That can’t be right,” I thought. I assumed that sexual trafficking involved some amount of coercion or, at least, someone who was under age. If it had a been a live presenter, I would have raised the issue. But it was an on-line video. Tracking down whom to talk to was too much work.
The experience did make me wonder, though, whether there were many other instances in which adults voluntary engaging in voluntary capitalist acts were referred to as sex traffickers.
I was right to wonder. On today’s Reason site, Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown interviews sex work researcher Tara Burns. The item is titled “What Everyone Gets Wrong About Sex Trafficking Laws,” Reason, October 14, 2024.
Here’s a key excerpt:
Burns: So, I thought that there were probably people out there who were being helped by all of this anti-trafficking rhetoric and the anti-trafficking laws. I knew at that point of two sex workers who had been arrested for sex trafficking when they were not sex traffickers, but I thought, “We’re just collateral damage and something good is actually happening for some people who really need it.” What I found when I did my records request to find out all of the cases that had been charged under the new trafficking law: At that point, it was only sex workers who had been charged. And every sex worker who had been charged with sex trafficking had been charged with prostitution in the same case that they were charged with sex trafficking.
When I was designing the survey, I had put in there some questions to find out if people met the federal definition of a sex trafficking survivor or not. And when I filtered for the people who met the definition of a sex trafficking survivor, they were two or three times as likely to be sexually assaulted by police. And just every other bad thing on the survey—being turned away from services at shelters or by counselors or being turned away from trying to report a crime—all of it was happening to them two or three times more often than to other sex workers.
So I had thought that there were victims who were being helped, but actually it was those victims who were being the most harmed by the laws and the rhetoric. I think the same kinds of marginalizations that make people vulnerable to abuse within the sex industry can also make people vulnerable to abuse by police officers and discrimination by shelters and stuff like that.
Note the disgusting irony. We are told to look out for sex traffickers because that will reduce the number of people forced into prostitution. But if we cooperate, we might well be helping the police use force against innocent non-coercive people.
The whole thing is worth reading.
[Editor’s note: Readers may also be interested in this Great Antidote podcast episode from 2023, Kaitlyn Bailey on the Oldest Profession.]
READER COMMENTS
Scott Sumner
Oct 15 2024 at 8:22am
Good post. I’m increasingly inclined to believe that the major purpose these laws is to allow law enforcement people to abuse lower class women. In contrast, high class prostitutes are pretty much ignored by law enforcement.
Robert EV
Oct 16 2024 at 4:10pm
Historically ‘public hygiene’ laws passed during the years around WWI, which targeted women, were used to this effect. And not just against lower class women.
https://www.history.com/news/chamberlain-kahn-act-std-venereal-disease-imprisonment-women
Craig
Oct 15 2024 at 10:06am
I actually took particular note of the word trafficking when Robert Kraft was pinched at some massage parlor in FL. In current parlance the word trafficking seems to convey greater malfeasance, ie if I say that somebody is convicted of prostitution vs sex trafficking, there’s something about the latter that seems far, far worse, doesn’t it?
Robert EV
Oct 16 2024 at 12:06am
Before you get too far in writing about this from an economics and incarceration perspective you should probably peruse the Nordic Model Now! website: https://nordicmodelnow.org/
Peter
Oct 16 2024 at 11:42pm
I have a lot more to write, chewing on it, but let’s hard stop on that BS model which has been pushed forever. It’s basically “men are evil, punish the buyers” which works sooo well with drugs, etc. 99.9999% of criminal prosecution involving nominally sex are against men, let’s quit pitying the supplier who more often than not is the victimizer in the same way dealers often victimize drug addicts, via fraud, theft, assault, etc because good faith buyer has no recourse. The overwhelming amount of violence against sex workers by customers is simply a result of the sex worker not upholding their part the deal (i.e. fraud), being blackmailed, or simply in self defense.
It’s telling that outside of England, punters are excluded from conversation including all harm caused to turn BY sex workers. Let’s quit thinking of “women and children” once and instead think of people .
Robert EV
Oct 17 2024 at 7:24pm
I have zero concern for the rights of anyone who explicitly buys or rents a living person’s literal body for their own bodily use. Whether this is prostitution, organs for transplant, or use as a punching bag.
Robert EV
Oct 17 2024 at 7:28pm
I tried to phrase this to exempt some artistic works, but realize I fell short. So a general artistic exception in most (not all) cases.
David Henderson
Oct 18 2024 at 4:29pm
Ah, so there’s where we differ. I do respect the rights of adults who engage in voluntary transactions, even the ones you disapprove of.
Robert EV
Oct 18 2024 at 2:41pm
Also, I don’t know about the specific laws mentioned by Tara Burns, but anti-sex-trafficking laws have indeed shut down the “Girls do Porn” trafficking operation. And while this only somewhat benefited the trafficked women, it definitely prevented many more women from being trafficked.
David Henderson
Oct 18 2024 at 4:30pm
In this context, what do you mean by “trafficked?” Do you mean that the law prevented women from voluntarily engaging in commercial activities that you disapprove of, Robert EV?