One interesting point–your suggestion in the third paragraph, of an anonymous hotline–could be seen as confusing by LE if, say, they receive a large number of calls that aren’t related at all to trafficking.

Even if, say, prostitution were legal, we’d still have large numbers of “well-intentioned (cough-rightwingnuts-cough) people” calling about girls that choose to be in the industry, solely because the caller disagrees with the choice; there could be many calls from spiteful exes, parents, and the like, as well. It could get difficult to wade through calls for LE.

I’m not saying it’s not worth pursuing. It’s certainly better than one alternative of raid/arrest/criminalize. And what-ifs aren’t my cup of tea for not doing something better than what isn’t working. But it’s one point to consider, along with funding, which seems to be in short order at the moment for anything related to actual human beings.

A helpful article for me on more than just the general information fed to me previously. Thanks!

I didn’t say that everyone’s doing it wrong. I said the United States dangles financial aid over countries to encourage destructive grandstanding that makes life miserable and more hazardous for sex workers in all varieties of situations.

It is not awful to say: the starting point can be stopping bad policies. There’s hope in that alone. We are doing damage worldwide and here at home, and we have the power to stop doing damage. That’s exciting; there is already a way to make things better! Halting those harms doesn’t mean giving up on helping those who want help. It means getting rid of horrible practices that are, quite arguably, not helping those they’re designed to help anyway, in addition to having the appalling collateral damage of gang rapes and traumatic deportation and police violence. I think clearing the weeds is a good first step to finding the perfect path.

Raids are traumatizing and ineffective, but many countries (including the US) are wedded to them and are apparently unwilling to entertain the idea that other options might be better. One of the suggestions I’ve seen is encouraging clients to call police if they believe they visited a prostitute who is underage and/or in fear, physically abused, etc. A campaign publicizing a number where people could report anonymously might go a long way, although it would probably be hampered if the country is aggressively prosecuting clients indiscriminately (as opposed to those who purposefully seek out a child, for instance.)

What also commonly comes up is criticism of the reliance on law enforcement, because they are trained to use force and to deal with criminals, not to counsel and identify victims. And the focus on LE is often to the exclusion of more qualified resource providers and outreach programs. Decriminalization would mean that those who’ve been forced to work wouldn’t have to be so terrified of conviction when/if they encounter police. As it is often pointed out, no country has outlawed making sneakers or farming, in spite of the fact that these are also areas in which people are trafficked.

The pervasive moral condemnation around sex work as an institution (regardless of the participants’ age or consent level) is a serious obstacle to helping sex trafficked people. I don’t think that’s discussed baldly enough or frequently enough.

I linked to quite a few articles in the piece that testify to all this, but here’s a few more, including one that discusses Kristoff:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-gira-grant/obama-please-ignore-krist_b_164775.html
http://www.sexworkersproject.org/downloads/swp-2009-raids-and-trafficking-report.pdf
http://www.lauraagustin.com/whats-wrong-with-the-trafficking-crusade

In the second link above, which is the same report I embedded in my post, albeit with a different title, there is an extensive list of recommendations for both governments and law enforcement that were derived from conversations with trafficked women. You can use that as a cheat sheet for your arguments as to what will work better.

I’ve been reading a lot of your articles here and your lucid explanations have turned me around on quite a few issues. I’m having a harder time with this one. I absolutely believe that crackdowns are making life worse for sex workers the world over – clearly. But I also think (child, in particular) sex trafficking is a pretty horrific. So what’s the solution? If everyone’s doing it wrong, what is the right way to combat forced prostitution? Or are you saying this is akin to the war on drugs, and there will never be a workable solution.

I’ve read a lot of Nick Kristof’s articles on brothel raids in India, and the girls he spoke with there were both traumatized and relieved to be free – to be reunited with their families (some of whom had sold them to to the brothels in the first place.)

I think all you have to do is look at Canada to say that prostitution could and should be legal. I am completely over that part of the argument. But there is a massive, massive world of difference between consensual anything and forced anything. So what is the activist / political route here — I would like to argue for a solution, but I don’t know what that solution is. I’m at a loss, but it seems pretty awful to just leave it at that.