4 ms·

Health care takes on the fight against trafficking

47 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago
Horrifying. It occurs to me that even if all you were implanting was an empty metal cylinder, it would be very convincing theater, especially in the context of that level of abuse. It's hard to see a permanent solution to this that doesn't involve massive education initiatives at the community level.
- orclev 10y ago
  I was really struggling to understand the point of this, but your comment made it click, it isn't actually about tracking, it's all head games. That's really messed up, but I guess considering the sorts of people that would be involved in something like this I shouldn't be surprised.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Exactly, it's all about breaking people so they won't even try to fight or escape. Drugs, abuse (physical and psychological torture really), and simply killing the ones who don't perform. It's... unbelievably brutal, and the only ways to fight it are education, and probably a legal framework and oversight for prostitution.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      And brutal punishments for those who are found guilty of human trafficking.
      - _nalply 10y ago
        Won't help. It's a populist request, but a majority of experts, the criminologists, are convinced that the death penalty for example is not a deterrent. A source (one of many): http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-n...
        mgarfias 10y ago
        Devils Advocate here (I don’t personally believe in the state run death penalty): Maybe its not about deterrent as it is getting an abhorrent person out of society permanently?
        _nalply 10y ago
        Acknowledged. I come back with a pointer to the trolley problem: Should someone act to kill the perpetrator to save a number of people from being killed by the perpetrator in the future?
        gambiting 10y ago
        The argument against that is that lifetime imprisonment serves the exact same goal, and gets rid of the nasty issue of killing people who are found innocent 20 years later, as it sometimes happens. If I recall correctly, the process of actually executing the death penalty is so expensive it's not even cheaper than lifetime imprisonment anyway.
        Retric 10y ago
        Humans have been becoming dramatically less violent over time. So, it may act as evolutionary pressure even if it's not as useful right now.
sbierwagen 10y ago
Note that this of course wasn't a GPS tracker, it was a standard implantable RFID chip, as used in pets and livestock. Transmission range on it is a couple centimeters. It can't be used to track people from a distance. GPS trackers have big antennas and large batteries: https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-Tracker/dp/B00JG8KCLO/ https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-Tracker/dp... But if you tell your victim that a RFID chip is a GPS tracker, and they believe you, then it largely accomplishes your goals.
- rtkwe 10y ago
  It's not at all surprising that the woman would believe it was a GPS tracker if told though which makes it nearly as effective as actually having a tracker implanted in her. TV and movies love their impossibly tiny GPS trackers.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Yeah, when you're being drugged, raped, beaten, starved, threatened with death, moved around... threats like "we put a tracking chip in you, we can find you anywhere, anytime," must be absolutely terrifying. Especially since I'm guessing the average victim of human trafficking isn't an electrical engineer.
reacweb 10y ago
"But here’s the challenge: you’ve got to convince doctors and nurses that they are the ones uniquely placed to break the cycle of violence." If health care is used to fight human traffic, human traffic victims will not have any more access to health care. I do not see how this would help victims.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  The problem is deeper that that really. Doctors and nurses are already expected to detect and report a huge host of issues, ranging from child and spousal abuse, to malingering and drug-seeking behavior. This, in addition to increasing workloads, increasing pressure of lawsuits and debt, and decreased time to spend on each patient. At some point you're asking a doctor to spend maybe a third of the 10-15 minutes they might get with a patient to run with a checklist to which the answers will virtually always be "no", regardless of circumstances. In the same way that this rarely detects or interrupts cycles of violence in more traditional abuse models, it would fail to do so here. Doctors and nurses can only function this way when they're part of a functional system, and they are not. We can't keep making demands of them, we need to start offering resources and support, preferably diverted from the obscene profits behind our swollen healthcare costs.
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Errrmmm.... okay so the nature of prostitution (and probably even more so forced prostitution) requires the performance of tasks that degrade the product to such a degree that issues are off-putting for the customer. Or in other words, customers will notice the smell of untreated sexually transmitted diseases. Pregnancy is also noticeable and not profitable, what with being fat and eating more. I'd bet that this sort of education is something that Planned Parenthood's abortion providers are fully aware of. Let's not forgetting getting beat up by the johns and nutso clients. So while human traffickers might put off a visit to the doctor, pregnancy, disease, and injury will drive both the trafficker and the prostitute into a formal medical setting at some point. Unless the trafficker decides to work the girl into an early grave...
Ginden 10y ago
I don't like euphemism "human trafficking". Terms like "slavery" and "slave trade" are better at describing reality.
- RightMillennial 10y ago
  Not to downplay the forced labor aspect of it, but just in case "slavery" isn't strong enough, I think "sex slavery" really gets the point across better than "human trafficking".
- bitwize 10y ago
  "Human trafficking" has one advantage: it can be very broadly defined at law, allowing police, prosecutors, and legislators to look good and like they're "cracking down" as they aggressively prosecute people for relatively innocuous activity compared to actual forced prostitution. For example, you arrange an encounter with a prostitute at a hotel and on top of the usual fee, you pay for her cab fare to the location. It doesn't matter that the prostitute chose this line of work and is not doing it under force or duress. You have "transported" a person for "commercial sexual activity" and are guilty of human trafficking in Massachusetts, a state widely praised for its "comprehensive" human-trafficking legislation. That's a five-year mandatory minimum sentence and a mandatory sex offender registration.
WillyOnWheels 10y ago
About a month ago Trump mentioned in a speech that he would end human trafficking, but I haven't read anything more about it.

47 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

Horrifying. It occurs to me that even if all you were implanting was an empty metal cylinder, it would be very convincing theater, especially in the context of that level of abuse. It's hard to see a permanent solution to this that doesn't involve massive education initiatives at the community level.

orclev 10y ago
I was really struggling to understand the point of this, but your comment made it click, it isn't actually about tracking, it's all head games. That's really messed up, but I guess considering the sorts of people that would be involved in something like this I shouldn't be surprised.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Exactly, it's all about breaking people so they won't even try to fight or escape. Drugs, abuse (physical and psychological torture really), and simply killing the ones who don't perform. It's... unbelievably brutal, and the only ways to fight it are education, and probably a legal framework and oversight for prostitution.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    And brutal punishments for those who are found guilty of human trafficking.
    - _nalply 10y ago
      Won't help. It's a populist request, but a majority of experts, the criminologists, are convinced that the death penalty for example is not a deterrent. A source (one of many): http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-n...
      - mgarfias 10y ago
        Devils Advocate here (I don’t personally believe in the state run death penalty): Maybe its not about deterrent as it is getting an abhorrent person out of society permanently?
        _nalply 10y ago
        Acknowledged. I come back with a pointer to the trolley problem: Should someone act to kill the perpetrator to save a number of people from being killed by the perpetrator in the future?
        gambiting 10y ago
        The argument against that is that lifetime imprisonment serves the exact same goal, and gets rid of the nasty issue of killing people who are found innocent 20 years later, as it sometimes happens. If I recall correctly, the process of actually executing the death penalty is so expensive it's not even cheaper than lifetime imprisonment anyway.
      - Retric 10y ago
        Humans have been becoming dramatically less violent over time. So, it may act as evolutionary pressure even if it's not as useful right now.

sbierwagen 10y ago

Note that this of course wasn't a GPS tracker, it was a standard implantable RFID chip, as used in pets and livestock. Transmission range on it is a couple centimeters. It can't be used to track people from a distance. GPS trackers have big antennas and large batteries: https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-Tracker/dp/B00JG8KCLO/ https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-Tracker/dp... But if you tell your victim that a RFID chip is a GPS tracker, and they believe you, then it largely accomplishes your goals.

rtkwe 10y ago
It's not at all surprising that the woman would believe it was a GPS tracker if told though which makes it nearly as effective as actually having a tracker implanted in her. TV and movies love their impossibly tiny GPS trackers.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Yeah, when you're being drugged, raped, beaten, starved, threatened with death, moved around... threats like "we put a tracking chip in you, we can find you anywhere, anytime," must be absolutely terrifying. Especially since I'm guessing the average victim of human trafficking isn't an electrical engineer.

reacweb 10y ago

"But here’s the challenge: you’ve got to convince doctors and nurses that they are the ones uniquely placed to break the cycle of violence." If health care is used to fight human traffic, human traffic victims will not have any more access to health care. I do not see how this would help victims.

M_Grey 10y ago
The problem is deeper that that really. Doctors and nurses are already expected to detect and report a huge host of issues, ranging from child and spousal abuse, to malingering and drug-seeking behavior. This, in addition to increasing workloads, increasing pressure of lawsuits and debt, and decreased time to spend on each patient. At some point you're asking a doctor to spend maybe a third of the 10-15 minutes they might get with a patient to run with a checklist to which the answers will virtually always be "no", regardless of circumstances. In the same way that this rarely detects or interrupts cycles of violence in more traditional abuse models, it would fail to do so here. Doctors and nurses can only function this way when they're part of a functional system, and they are not. We can't keep making demands of them, we need to start offering resources and support, preferably diverted from the obscene profits behind our swollen healthcare costs.
rabboRubble 10y ago
Errrmmm.... okay so the nature of prostitution (and probably even more so forced prostitution) requires the performance of tasks that degrade the product to such a degree that issues are off-putting for the customer. Or in other words, customers will notice the smell of untreated sexually transmitted diseases. Pregnancy is also noticeable and not profitable, what with being fat and eating more. I'd bet that this sort of education is something that Planned Parenthood's abortion providers are fully aware of. Let's not forgetting getting beat up by the johns and nutso clients. So while human traffickers might put off a visit to the doctor, pregnancy, disease, and injury will drive both the trafficker and the prostitute into a formal medical setting at some point. Unless the trafficker decides to work the girl into an early grave...

Ginden 10y ago

I don't like euphemism "human trafficking". Terms like "slavery" and "slave trade" are better at describing reality.

RightMillennial 10y ago
Not to downplay the forced labor aspect of it, but just in case "slavery" isn't strong enough, I think "sex slavery" really gets the point across better than "human trafficking".
bitwize 10y ago
"Human trafficking" has one advantage: it can be very broadly defined at law, allowing police, prosecutors, and legislators to look good and like they're "cracking down" as they aggressively prosecute people for relatively innocuous activity compared to actual forced prostitution. For example, you arrange an encounter with a prostitute at a hotel and on top of the usual fee, you pay for her cab fare to the location. It doesn't matter that the prostitute chose this line of work and is not doing it under force or duress. You have "transported" a person for "commercial sexual activity" and are guilty of human trafficking in Massachusetts, a state widely praised for its "comprehensive" human-trafficking legislation. That's a five-year mandatory minimum sentence and a mandatory sex offender registration.

WillyOnWheels 10y ago

About a month ago Trump mentioned in a speech that he would end human trafficking, but I haven't read anything more about it.