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Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries where prostitution has become fully legal (clients won't be arrested)? Specifically the countries where pimping

Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries where prostitution has become fully legal (clients won't be arrested)? Specifically the countries where pimping is illegal, but an individual sex worker and client transacting is legal. Is there reliable data either way about legalization increasing human trafficking?

Lazare 5y ago
There's extremely poor data on human trafficking in general, and not even a lot of consensus on what it is. (The legal definition is often at odds with how the phrase is used in popular media.) FWIW, New Zealand legalised prostitution fully in 2003, and it seems to have had no negative effects. There was a major review 5 years after the law was passed (so 2008). Safety up, crime down, fewer sex workers on the streets, and at that time, no instances of human trafficking for the sex industry were able to be identified. (Come to that, I'm not sure any have been since either.) Of course, individual laws exist in a larger framework of laws and culture, so it's not always clear that adopting a single law will have the same effects in other jurisdictions. Still, the NZ experience has been almost unremittingly positive.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Amnesty International is for decriminalization on the grounds that it decreases trafficking. Some sources (that I've only skimmed a bit -- and they don't uniformly agree): https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legalizing-or-decriminalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legaliz... https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-d... https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-legalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking/ https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-le... https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-human-trafficking-through-sex-work-decriminalization/2017-01 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-huma...
- RickJWagner 5y ago
  I'm surprised they'd say it decreases trafficking. It seems it would increase it.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Why would it seem it seem like that? The fact that prostitution is illegal is part of what empowers bad people to victimize others: As soon as you have turned your first trick, you are guilty of a crime and cannot go to the police to turn them in without confessing to the crime you just committed. That's exactly how child molesters also operate: By making the child feel complicit so they won't tell anyone.
    - umanwizard 5y ago
      Human trafficking doesn’t necessarily mean victimizing anyone, in my understanding - it can also mean someone being paid to smuggle someone else into a country voluntarily (in contravention of immigration laws). I would suspect this form of trafficking to increase if prostitution is legal and widespread.
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        That contradicts everything I have ever heard about the use of the term. From Wikipedia: Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, especially women and children, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking What you are talking about is illegal immigration.
akvadrako 5y ago
I live in Amsterdam which has had legal prostitution for a while. What I know is they regurally talk about the problems it brings with trafficking. The policies are getting slightly more restrictive, not less. Some percentage of the girls are doing it willingly, but most are imported and essentially have no choice. They try to add regulations to help, like only allowing girls themselves to rent spaces, but that tends to drive more underground.
littlecranky67 5y ago
Prostitution in Germany is fully legal - sex workers have access to health care and (should) pay taxes. The Saarland, a state bordering France, has the heighest brothel concentration in Germany, due to french visitors coming to use the services. In practice, the offering of social insurance is hardly used, and I would say you will have a hard time getting a receipt from a sex worker with displayed VAT (or the legal requirement to express VAT excemption if the sex worker is below the legal income threshold). Anyways, trafficking is still a thing, and you as a customer can be arrested if you have reason to believe the sex worker is not willingly offering services but coerced or forced to do so.
pacman2 5y ago
Yes, Germany. Their "Saunaclubs" are world famous. No matter what you think about prostitution, as long as no coercion is involved, it is none of your business what other people do. "If selling is legal and fucking is legal, selling fucking should be legal."
- bjourne 5y ago
  Coercion is a fact of life. Claiming otherwise is naive. Legal prostitution means that your future daughter might have to choose between losing her unemployment benefits or taking a job selling sex.
  - tokai 5y ago
    Makes more sense to change how unemployment benefits works then.
    - bjourne 5y ago
      Sure. Make working for a living completely optional and then legalize prostitution.
  - pacman2 5y ago
    Hm. Strange that this isn't the case now. Germany has not only unemployment benefits but also social welfare. If you unemployment runs out, you get a reasonable apartment paid, health insurance and about 400 Euro per month. No one if forced to work in a sex related field. If you compare that to some things in the US: Man Who Served 20 Years in Prison for Stealing 2 Shirts Freed https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/man-served-20-years-prison-214753569.html https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/man-served-20-years-p... Even if you consider this a reasonable punishment, the average costs to imprison a person in the US are about USD 30k per year and maybe you should reconsider your view.
  - matt-attack 5y ago
    And who is to say that choosing that career path is any worse than choosing any other job to pay for life? It’s your own hang ups at work. Not everyone sees it as a negative. Just because you wouldn’t want your daughter doing it is entirely different from saying everyone should be criminalized for participating in it.
xwolfi 5y ago
In France clients can't be arrested but providers yes. Not sure your definition of "prostitution has become fully legal" means. So since the prosts can still be prosecuted, we still have many for the east, on the streets by all weather, working in awful condition for a low amount. I live in HK now, where prostitution is fully legal (prosts won't be arrested as long as no pimp involved and one client at a time) and it's better, we don't see them in the streets and the fares are much much MUCH hire compared to France. They seem less drugged addict possibly. It's anecdotal and there are so many differences between France and HK that I'm not sure what I'm comparing exactly :D But, more legal protection seems to provide for better conditions, not a surprise.
- shaftway 5y ago
  > Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries where prostitution has become fully legal This is ambiguously worded. It could mean: - Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries (all of which have made prostitution legal)? - Is anyone knowledgeable about those European countries in which prostitution has been made legal? It's surprisingly difficult to word this unambiguously, but from context I think the author means the latter.
matt-attack 5y ago
I'm trying to figure out if we should legalize farming. We know that farming was heavily associated with slavery, so it's logical that farming should illegal. Some progressive types keep talking about legalizing farming, but all I can think of is that it will increase the smuggling of humans to contribute to the farming workforce.

Lazare 5y ago

There's extremely poor data on human trafficking in general, and not even a lot of consensus on what it is. (The legal definition is often at odds with how the phrase is used in popular media.) FWIW, New Zealand legalised prostitution fully in 2003, and it seems to have had no negative effects. There was a major review 5 years after the law was passed (so 2008). Safety up, crime down, fewer sex workers on the streets, and at that time, no instances of human trafficking for the sex industry were able to be identified. (Come to that, I'm not sure any have been since either.) Of course, individual laws exist in a larger framework of laws and culture, so it's not always clear that adopting a single law will have the same effects in other jurisdictions. Still, the NZ experience has been almost unremittingly positive.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Amnesty International is for decriminalization on the grounds that it decreases trafficking. Some sources (that I've only skimmed a bit -- and they don't uniformly agree): https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legalizing-or-decriminalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legaliz... https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-d... https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-legalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking/ https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-le... https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-human-trafficking-through-sex-work-decriminalization/2017-01 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-huma...

RickJWagner 5y ago
I'm surprised they'd say it decreases trafficking. It seems it would increase it.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Why would it seem it seem like that? The fact that prostitution is illegal is part of what empowers bad people to victimize others: As soon as you have turned your first trick, you are guilty of a crime and cannot go to the police to turn them in without confessing to the crime you just committed. That's exactly how child molesters also operate: By making the child feel complicit so they won't tell anyone.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    Human trafficking doesn’t necessarily mean victimizing anyone, in my understanding - it can also mean someone being paid to smuggle someone else into a country voluntarily (in contravention of immigration laws). I would suspect this form of trafficking to increase if prostitution is legal and widespread.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      That contradicts everything I have ever heard about the use of the term. From Wikipedia: Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, especially women and children, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking What you are talking about is illegal immigration.

akvadrako 5y ago

I live in Amsterdam which has had legal prostitution for a while. What I know is they regurally talk about the problems it brings with trafficking. The policies are getting slightly more restrictive, not less. Some percentage of the girls are doing it willingly, but most are imported and essentially have no choice. They try to add regulations to help, like only allowing girls themselves to rent spaces, but that tends to drive more underground.

littlecranky67 5y ago

Prostitution in Germany is fully legal - sex workers have access to health care and (should) pay taxes. The Saarland, a state bordering France, has the heighest brothel concentration in Germany, due to french visitors coming to use the services. In practice, the offering of social insurance is hardly used, and I would say you will have a hard time getting a receipt from a sex worker with displayed VAT (or the legal requirement to express VAT excemption if the sex worker is below the legal income threshold). Anyways, trafficking is still a thing, and you as a customer can be arrested if you have reason to believe the sex worker is not willingly offering services but coerced or forced to do so.

pacman2 5y ago

Yes, Germany. Their "Saunaclubs" are world famous. No matter what you think about prostitution, as long as no coercion is involved, it is none of your business what other people do. "If selling is legal and fucking is legal, selling fucking should be legal."

bjourne 5y ago
Coercion is a fact of life. Claiming otherwise is naive. Legal prostitution means that your future daughter might have to choose between losing her unemployment benefits or taking a job selling sex.
- tokai 5y ago
  Makes more sense to change how unemployment benefits works then.
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Sure. Make working for a living completely optional and then legalize prostitution.
- pacman2 5y ago
  Hm. Strange that this isn't the case now. Germany has not only unemployment benefits but also social welfare. If you unemployment runs out, you get a reasonable apartment paid, health insurance and about 400 Euro per month. No one if forced to work in a sex related field. If you compare that to some things in the US: Man Who Served 20 Years in Prison for Stealing 2 Shirts Freed https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/man-served-20-years-prison-214753569.html https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/man-served-20-years-p... Even if you consider this a reasonable punishment, the average costs to imprison a person in the US are about USD 30k per year and maybe you should reconsider your view.
- matt-attack 5y ago
  And who is to say that choosing that career path is any worse than choosing any other job to pay for life? It’s your own hang ups at work. Not everyone sees it as a negative. Just because you wouldn’t want your daughter doing it is entirely different from saying everyone should be criminalized for participating in it.

xwolfi 5y ago

In France clients can't be arrested but providers yes. Not sure your definition of "prostitution has become fully legal" means. So since the prosts can still be prosecuted, we still have many for the east, on the streets by all weather, working in awful condition for a low amount. I live in HK now, where prostitution is fully legal (prosts won't be arrested as long as no pimp involved and one client at a time) and it's better, we don't see them in the streets and the fares are much much MUCH hire compared to France. They seem less drugged addict possibly. It's anecdotal and there are so many differences between France and HK that I'm not sure what I'm comparing exactly :D But, more legal protection seems to provide for better conditions, not a surprise.

shaftway 5y ago
> Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries where prostitution has become fully legal This is ambiguously worded. It could mean: - Is anyone knowledgeable about European countries (all of which have made prostitution legal)? - Is anyone knowledgeable about those European countries in which prostitution has been made legal? It's surprisingly difficult to word this unambiguously, but from context I think the author means the latter.

matt-attack 5y ago

I'm trying to figure out if we should legalize farming. We know that farming was heavily associated with slavery, so it's logical that farming should illegal. Some progressive types keep talking about legalizing farming, but all I can think of is that it will increase the smuggling of humans to contribute to the farming workforce.