How legalizing sex work impacts sex trafficking

I have the benefit of being right

As I excitedly shared a few months ago, the steering committee for the 61st International Affairs conference at Lewis & Clark invited me to debate Rebekah Charleston on whether legalizing prostitution increases rates of sex trafficking. It happened last night.

Two students said they came in with one belief and walked out open to my perspective! Couldn’t ask for more than that.

A LOT of antis showed up and were very vocal. Which is great. I’m not interested in preaching to the choir. I hope everyone walked away with more information on which to form an opinion.

Since they’re not going to share the video publicly, here’s clip.

Below is the written version of my opening remarks.

Enjoy!

I want to start by thanking the organizers for hosting this debate.

Tonight, I want to share three things with you. First, why this question is so important to me. Second, I want to address some common misconceptions about prostitution and sex trafficking. Third, I want to reveal the reality of prohibition and explain why it creates more sex trafficking, not less. 

Why this matters to me

So, why do I care about this topic? First, I’m a writer and a sex worker. 

The other big reason I care about this topic is something I’ve never talked about publicly before. 

One of my sisters is a survivor of sex trafficking. 

I chose sex work. She ran away with a partner who drugged her and sold sexual access to her 15-year-old body. 

There’s a massive difference between what we   experienced. I consented. She did not. 

My sister gave me permission to share this with you because this conflation lies at the heart of the claim that legal sex work drives sex trafficking. 

In fact, when Rebekah tried to shut down Nevada’s legal brothels, she accused Nevada of violating federal laws against sex trafficking by allowing legal sex work. 

In his 17-page motion to dismiss, Attorney General Aaron Ford explained that “federal law does not criminalize prostitution and both Nevada law and federal law criminalize sex trafficking.” The two are not the same. 

Pretending sex work and sex trafficking are the same thing downplays the horrors of trafficking, dehumanizes sex workers by robbing us of our agency, and makes it impossible to determine how legal sex work impacts sex trafficking. 

Setting the record straight

Let’s talk about prohibition.

Sex Trafficking already is, and should remain, illegal everywhere. 

We’re debating whether to ban sex work, which by definition, only involves consenting adults. 

The question we must answer is whether banning sex work reduces sex trafficking. 

And the answer is a resounding no. 

Sex work bans don’t even reduce rates of sex work by very much. They just move it around and make it more violent. 

In every place on earth where it’s illegal to buy or sell alcohol, cannabis, or sex, you will find people buying and selling alcohol, cannabis, and sex. You’ll also find more violence and exploitation. 

The idea that legalizing sex work leads to more sex trafficking doesn’t really make sense. 

Legalizing alcohol didn’t boost demand for black-market hootch. Legal cannabis hasn’t boosted demand for black-market cannabis. Legalizing sex work doesn’t boost demand for the black-market sex trade. 

The history of prohibition in every industry ever studied shows legalization shifts demand from the black market to the white market. 

That’s why no one is seriously suggesting that we make farm work or house cleaning illegal even though the vast majority of trafficked persons worldwide are trafficked into agricultural, domestic, and other forms of labor.

While the idea that legal sex work boosts trafficking doesn’t really make common sense, it’s also true that lots of counterintuitive ideas turn out to have empirical support. 

So, let’s look at what the research says about whether legal sex work increases sex trafficking.

A Harvard Law review of the literature found multiple studies which demonstrated a connection between legal sex work and sex trafficking. None, however, indicated that legal sex work caused more sex trafficking. 

Plus, the vast majority of these studies use shoddy data, according to Ronald Weitzer, sex work researcher and professor emeritus of sociology at George Washington University. 

Unfortunately, most estimates of trafficking are extremely unreliable. 

Major Anti-trafficking organizations in the US, for example, report every unverified call to a tip line as an instance of trafficking. Many of these calls actually report consenting sex workers, or something even more benign. In 2019, Cindy McCain apologized for reporting a trafficking incident that was actually just a toddler who had a different skin tone than their parents in an airport.  

And these organizations will count multiple calls about the same unverified incident as multiple instances of trafficking. 

Even if legalization and trafficking are connected, it’s likely because some global traffickers will move to places where sex work is legal because that’s where the money is. 

But there is simply no credible empirical evidence for the claim that legal sex work causes more trafficking.

Writing for Global Policy Journal, Weitzer pointed out that in Germany, the poster child for idea that legal sex work drives trafficking, police arrested half as many traffickers by 2014 than in 2000. What happened? A 2002 law gave sex workers more legal rights.

Trafficking rates also plummeted in the months and years after New Zealand fully decriminalized prostitution. 

“Criminalization, not legalization, increases risks,” Weitzer wrote.

How criminalizing full-service sex work leads to more trafficking

There is no good reason to believe sex work prohibition reduces sex trafficking. There is, however, robust, compelling evidence that prohibition actually facilitates sex trafficking. 

It does so in two ways. 

First, sex work prohibition creates more trafficking victims. 

Second, it makes life easier for traffickers by making it harder for law enforcement to find and rescue victims.

To understand how prohibition exacerbates trafficking, 

I want to introduce you to Wendi Cooper. 

As a Black trans sex worker, Wendi and women like her face rampant employment discrimination. “Without sex work,” Wendi said, “a lot of us wouldn’t be able to live.”

One night, Wendi was walking to a club in New Orleans where she lives. An officer approached her and brought up various sex acts. She thought he was hitting on her until he put her in handcuffs. Prostitution has long been illegal in Louisiana. But in 1982 the state passed CANS, the Crimes Against Nature for Solicitation act, so gay and trans sex workers would serve longer sentences. It specifically targets paid sex acts that don’t involve a vagina.

Not only are many anti-prostitution laws homophobic and transphobic in intent and practice, prohibition is also racist as all hell. Studies show that police harass and arrest non-white, trans sex workers far more often than their cis, white colleagues. 

In 1992, Louisiana made being a trans sex worker even more dangerous by adding mandatory lifetime sex offender registration to the list of punishments for CANS violations. By 2011, nearly 40% of New Orleans’ registered sex offenders were there due to CANS. 

Lousisiana forced Wendi to register as a sex offender. So even though she was able to land a “civilian” job with a criminal record, her colleagues forced her out once they discovered her status. 

Wendi already had to find work as a Black trans woman in a fundamentally racist and transphobic society. Then prohibition saddled her with a criminal record and sex offender status. 

Making it harder for sex workers to find and maintain jobs outside of sex work only increases their vulnerability to trafficking. If we want sex work to be a choice, rather than something women are forced into, why are we doing everything we can to make it impossible for women to do anything else? 

The Harvard researchers referenced above admitted that legalization improves working conditions for sex workers. Better working conditions usually lead to less exploitation and trafficking, not more. That’s why Harvard researchers support legalization. They also like that legalization increases tax revenue and reduces sexually transmitted infections.

Criminalization creates more trafficking victims by making anyone even suspected of being a sex worker more susceptible to trafficking. 

A wealth of evidence shows that where sex work is banned sex workers are more likely to experience violence, exploitation, arrest, unemployment, incarceration, eviction, deportation, financial exclusion, STIs, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and more harms too numerous to list. 

After creating more victims, criminalization makes survivors harder to find and rescue.  

Three groups of people are most able to identify and rescue trafficking victims. They are sex workers, clients, and law enforcement. 

Federal law enforcement officers were essential to Rebekah’s rescue. It shouldn’t take an arrest, conviction, and presidential pardon for a trafficking survivor to find help.

But criminalization makes this cooperation all but impossible. 

When sex work is a crime, sex workers can’t just go to police and report instances of possible trafficking without fearing arrest, or far worse.

To understand how much worse, I want to share another painful chapter of Wendi’s life. Sometime after her release, police confronted Wendi again. This time, an officer hit Wendi across the face with his billy club, fracturing her face and knocking out several of her teeth. Police mocked and misgendered Wendi while she was in their custody. After they let her go, one of the officers who had misgendered her raped her. “He had the power to do that,” Wendi said. “No one was going to believe me.” According to Revolting Prostitutes, on-duty police commit twice as many sexual assaults as the general US population.

Police arrested another Black trans sex worker, Milan, under CANS. No sex worker needs a criminal record. But at 16 years old, Milan clearly needed material support. Instead, she got a warning. 

Research shows that where sex work is legal, cops spend less time surveilling, harassing, raping, and arresting consenting sex workers and more time rescuing trafficking victims. 

There’s a reason the ACLU, the Lancet, Amnesty International, and many other human rights organizations agree that banning prostitution actually increases sex trafficking and the best way to reduce trafficking is to fully decriminalize sex work. 

There’s a reason that in 2020, for the first time, a majority of likely voters said they support decriminalizing sex work. 

Please understand that there is no “nice” form of prohibition. End Demand, The Nordic Model, the Swedish Model, etc. all create more trafficking, not less. And they harm sex workers along the way. 

Rebekah, in your TED talk you said, “Over the past seven years, when I’ve been ready to give up or the thought of dealing with stress in destructive ways creeps into my mind, I have a community of women standing beside me and behind me, sitting in the muck and mire with me, pushing me to get through.” 

I am so grateful to be able to say the same. 

Those women are my co-workers. 

They’re women like Lily Cortez, a leader of the El Alto Association of Nighttime Workers. Surrounded by other prostitutes who had sewn their mouths shut in protest, she said “Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard.” 

They’re women like Wendi Cooper, who in 2021 testified alongside other sex workers in support of a bill that would have fully decriminalized sex work in Lousisiana.

I genuinely appreciate the organizers for centering a sex worker and trafficking survivor in this conversation. I'd also ask everyone here to listen to trustworthy researchers, history, and common sense. 

The main thing I want you to walk away with is this: Whether legalizing prostitution increases sex trafficking is not actually an open question. The top researchers and the most respected human rights organizations have reached a consensus. 

Banning sex work creates more trafficking, not less. It puts more women at greater risk of being trafficked and makes it harder for police to find and rescue victims. 

Sex work is an uncomfortable topic. That’s okay. I’m not up here to ask you to be like or support or be comfortable with sex work. That’s a different debate. 

I’m asking you to stop tolerating a policy that facilitates a crime as unfathomably horrific as sex trafficking when we know how to fight it instead. 

I’m asking you to support the policy that actually stops traffickers and saves victims.

I’m asking you to hate trafficking more than you dislike sex work. 

Not for me. For my sister. For Rebekah. For Wendi. And for all the women we have not yet found. For whom there is no time to waste on an already settled debate. 

Thank you. 

And thank you

Melissa Mermin

for coming and taking photos and videos and commenting!

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