Hacker News Reader

Comment by blumkvist | Hacker News Reader

Prostitution is legal and regulated in The Netherlands. That doesn't seem to help with human trafficking. In fact, it's the top destination for human trafficking according to the UN ODC and it keeps rising. I am not sure, but have a strong feeling that's the case in the other countries where prostitution is legal and/or regulated.

Do you care to back up your claim with some evidence or at least shed some light how you came up with it in the first place?

View on HN

(Some) people in the Netherlands have also been pushing hard to get prostitution marginalized again, largely under the banner of human trafficking.

Do you know for example that most human trafficking number includes every prostitute that has paid someone for assistance with moving to the Netherlands? Like finding a house, opening a bank account and things like that?

Human trafficking is to prostitution what child porn is to online privacy.

At least some of the UN's figures on human trafficking are based on the amount of news reports about it - which, given all the activist groups with good press contacts using it to argue that prostitution should be banned, is not a terribly accurate measure.

The question is how well it is regulated. I don't know anything about the business. But I'd assume that with the right kind of regulations it can be controlled. E.g., require prostitutes to register. Registering should include a short course about basic rights and hygiene. They should have to go to regular health checks (maybe once a week), which should also provide access to social and legal counselling. The brothels should be required to keep track of anyone who works there and make sure that anyone working there has done those checks. This should be _regularly_ checked by the authority. Violations should be harshly punished.

Of course there is a risk if you over regulate it that there will still be black market prostitution happening. Especially if those regulations result in a price increase. Which regular health checks and access to social/legal counselling would certainly do.

It's pretty well regulated. Quite close to the degree you're describing but based on fairly comprehensive spot checks rather than regular checks if I'm correct.

The fact that they are so well registered is also one of the reasons why we feature so high on the UN's numbers. In very few other countries can you just survey all registered worker and then label them as trafficking victims whether they agree with that label or not.

I was also relating this topic with the truck drivers discussion[1], where it was pointed out that the drivers themselves ignore the safety rules of their job. Cracked[2] has a similar gem:

> Plus, there's a logbook to keep, and regulations that demand that truckers don't drive for longer than 11 hours a day and spend at least 10 hours sleeping. So another big part of trucking is, of course, lying about all that s..t.

So it doesn't seem to me that laws are the definite answer to the problem.

As a side note, even if there were a legal framework, would a trafficked person have access to it? I doubt traffickers allow their "employees" to have private, uninterrupted talks with the customers (or anyone). Hell, I don't even know how to say "Help, I'm being held against my will" in Dutch.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158076

[2] http://www.cracked.com/article_21488_5-terrifying-things-onl...

I am quite sure there's a lot more trafficked farm workers than prostitutes in the US. This is a simple question of supply and demand of work and workers, has very little to do with sex.

I'm in AU where prostitution is legal and regulated, but laws vary from state to state.

As far as I can tell trafficking is not a huge problem. There is certainly no incentive for the majority of clients to seek out trafficked workers when the legal options are very easily available.

I've also heard a couple of stories where there have been violent clients or clients refusing to pay, and they worker just went to the police to help sort it out. So at least here the system is ok.

While I agree with your thrust the UN numbers are a joke. They have little factual basis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com