It seems to reduce the violence against workers, but increases human trafficking, because Germany now acts as a safe haven for traffickers. Maybe trafficking would disappear, if all societies made prostitution illegal and not a looked down profession, but I somehow doubt it[1].
So if your goal is to reduce human trafficking, it might not be the most worthwhile of means.
Also there is the silly issue, of woman losing her unemployment status because she didn't refused to work as a prostitute.
[1] Even if all countries made prostitution legal, nothing stops a gangster from kidnapping a woman and dragging her from say Mexico to US to serve as sex worker. She could escape and there would be less stigma; but it sounds to me like those poor workers trapped in Dubai/Quatar and they had no reprieve. As someone mentioned, there is a supply/demand problem that can't be solved via prositutes.
The numbers of yearly cases seem to be fairly low (about 700-800 cases per year in your Wiki-article), and pimps who force people into prostitution are arrested and jailed.
If anything, I'd say that legality makes it much better for these forced prostitutes to escape - they don't have any fear of persecution.
>Also there is the silly issue, of woman losing her unemployment status because she didn't refused to work as a prostitute.
That was a single mistake - the Arbeitsagentur accidentally sent along a job offer which was from a brothel, and the media made it into a big case (see http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/arbeitsagentur-in... ). Of course she didn't have to take the job, there have been rulings that you can't force unemployed to work as prostitutes (see same article).
But, I think there is a difference between legalizing prostitution and preventing what's essentially human enslavement.
I'm not saying legalizing prostitution won't help or shouldn't be done, I just don't think it will have as big impact as people claimed, and that it will have possible negative impact if other states don't adopt it.
IMO it's akin to legalizing drugs, just legalizing it won't make drug problem disappear. For instance in cases where some states legalized drugs and most didn't; a state that legalized drugs can become safe haven for criminals from other countries, where drugs aren't legal.
This did not happen. There was a sensationalised story in a paper that it could happen, but as far as I know, it was just that: sensationalised conjecturing.
The persistent human trafficking problems are real, though. Proponents of legalised prostitution argue on the meaning of "trafficking" and say that the almost invariably foreign, poor, and immigrant women who are prostituted in Germany are doing so voluntarily.
They aren't in a new country, with typically no job skills, no hope of getting job skills from their current employment, coerced into taking sex work because they are desperate for money!
Do you know any good studies that back this up. While I certainly want to believe it and it does fit nicely with my own general political/economic narrative of the world, I've yet to find any conclusive evidence for it.
(For a little bit of context: prostitution became legal in New Zealand in 2003.)
[0] http://www.justice.govt.nz/policy/commercial-property-and-re...
But you have to keep in mind that that is also the effect of only one country doing it. What would happen if the whole EU legalized prostitution is a different question.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin...
The women go there knowing that they will trade sex for money. What they do not know is how difficult and exploitative the work is.
They have legalized the activity, but they seems to not want to get involved with the operational rules.
To borrow the drug comparison from further up, this would be like legalizing hard drugs but not putting down any ground rules for labeling or certification of content.
Consider alcohol. Most places it is legal to sell, but there are still regulations in place, and hopefully policed, detailing when and to whom it can be sold.
When people talk about legalizing drugs, they likely envision a similar system of regulations surrounding it.
Similarly regulations have to be put in place regarding working conditions etc for prostitutes as part of the legalization process.
Removing the sex aspect and the article reminds me of some of the shit the construction business has with exploiting foreign workers.
I recall reading about people living 6 to the room in what was supposed to be a single occupancy apartment etc.
That's exactly the problem. Campaigning for tougher laws against sex trafficking is great voter bait, but actually enforcing the existing laws? That costs money!
A lot work for themselves. When I was in college, there were many girls who used it as a way to have some fun and some money (college is free, and a lot live in dorms that are also free)).
Also, it is not like in the U.S. (movies) in that you won't find sex-workers on the streets.
This stuff is pretty organized. Happens mostly in night-clubs or in dedicated places that are guarded with security, where you will be thrown out if you cause any problems or are too drunk to behave.
They generally have a compound with the club and the hotel inside, convenient if you plan to get wasted as you won't have to drive. Just a few yards and you're in bed.
These compounds offer a sort of "Security as a Service" and the girls "lease" the place (the client pays an additional fee). And many girls will just go from club to club, compound to compound. They have usual taxi-drivers who take them, etc.
The biggest hazard would be the fact they won't properly put a condom on a man. The usual way would be to put it while he's erect, and some need help, so the girls will perform fellatio on a limp phallus with a condom on and the phallus grows into the condom. They also use cheap condoms that are way too tight for anyone older than a 13 year old (crappy 52mm condoms).
Also, most of those who do anal don't have the proper lubes; so they'll have whatever makes it easy and it is often an oil based hair product, or something. They're not really aware of how latex reacts to that, etc.
And again, some clients are just idiots and want to have protection-free sex at all costs. The girls are reluctant to talk if they have a disease because there's a whole procedure and they'll lose their job, so they comply, infecting the person.
And as for Al Jazeera, is amusing that a Djihadist Channel doesn't even cover Qatar. They used to let nut-jobs go on for hours on their waves inviting people world-wide to kill Algerians because we're not "Arabs or Muslims". It's a channel that has glorified terrorists despite the atrocities they committed. Whether they're trying to make themselves a new virginity is another story.
Prostitution has been legal in Germany since before WWII. That is, neither the offering nor the use of sexual services was a crime (pimping was and still is). What changed in 2000 is merely that prostitution lost its "unconscionable" status, meaning that it can in principle be the subject of enforceable contracts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_United_Kin...
While I don't disagree that prostitution should be legal, it's a bit more complicated than the utopia you just painted.
Drugs are not largely legal at all, they're largely illegal. In fact, they're entirely illegal, there's just a gray area when it comes to a few soft drugs (pretty much just weed now - and I believe truffles in some head shops possibly... but no longer mushrooms.) Bringing weed into the country: still technically illegal. Other drugs: very much illegal. Regarding drug law, I would suggest looking to Portugal as a closer representation to that perfect utopia.
Regarding prostitution, I don't know enough to have much of a personal opinion on whether legalisation would help.
I used to think very strongly that it would. Last year I visited (as a tourist, not as a customer) Europe's largest brothel [0], in Germany, and came away with the opinion that if people are going to pay for sex, in a legal system like this is the best way for it. And I still see the benefits, but I've also since read up a little and found out many of the girls in that brothel were still trafficked over, still have pimps, etc.
But... don't be too quick to jump to one conclusion or the other. Maybe the NL situation would be better if the entire world also legalised it? Maybe there are different ways of doing it to the way NL has done it. Etc.
It won't be perfect, but maybe it can reduce trafficking ?
EDIT: please down just downvote, explain what's wrong with my line of reasoning ?
On the other hand, their are routinely used in classified agencies for some tasks.
So maybe ,even with this error rate, we could see reduction at trafficking , at some risk of loss for freedom of profession. Maybe the benefits are big and the disadvantages are quite small(depending on error rates, etc) ? Maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff ?
So no, it's not a worthwhile tradeoff, because it's hardly better than rolling dice.
Nothing wrong with your reasoning, many people on HN stupidly enough think that the downvote button is for when you disagree with a comment.
for some numbers ,see[1]- "With both P300 and P300-MERMER, error rate was 0 %: determinations were 100 % accurate, no false negatives or false positives; also no indeterminates. Countermeasures had no effect. Median statistical confidence for determinations was 99.9 % with P300-MERMER and 99.6 % with P300"
So maybe this could be a good starting point for something useful for trafficking prevention ?
[1]http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11571-012-9230-0
My remaining question is how we draw the line between voluntary illegal immigration and human trafficking for this class of work. I'd guess from my perspective even the voluntary immigration would seem beyond harrowing and carries risk of abuse and death along the way, so it would be easy to paint all of it as bad, yet clearly many think this is the best chance for them and their families.
Pimps are illegal, prostitutes must be legal and independent. Brothels are often integrated in neighborhoods and not confined to red light districts, although there are some areas where there are more brothels, like around the train stations. Brothels are nothing more than a place where the prostitute rents out a room for the night or week - there's no madam or anything like you see in the movies. Prostitutes can't advertise on the street.
I know it sounds icky, but urge for sex often drives technology.
I recall seeing a video where someone had combined a early Rift headset with a robotic arm holding what i believe they call a tenga.
Strap on the headset, sit in the proper location, and have a 3D anime style girl give you a session...
A decrease of price isn't going to cause more women to be trafficked. Instead, the opposite would happen because there is less money to be made.
I suspect whats happening here is that its easier to bring women over, willing or not because before, this kind of work was illegal, so if caught they'd just send them back.
This whole sex slavery thing seems like hyperbole to me, though. If you've ever been to a third world country, you'd see that prostitution is rampant, even in countries where its technically illegal. There really isn't any shortage of girls, so I suspect they wouldn't have any trouble finding prostitutes willing to go to somewhere they could make more money, that they'd need to kidnap someone and force them into it.
Because prostitution would still be illegal in developed countries, human trafficking would continue to happen, as prostitutes will need someone to "take care of stuff".
If they could become independent with technology, they wouldn't be vulnerable to violence, rape,...