Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?

[ismnotwasm]

In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex is nil. The Swedish government estimates that in the last few years only 200 to 400 women and girls have been annually sex trafficked into Sweden, a figure that's negligible compared to the 15,000 to 17,000 females yearly sex trafficked into neighboring Finland. No other country, nor any other social experiment, has come anywhere near Sweden's promising results.

By what complex formula has Sweden managed this feat? Amazingly, Sweden's strategy isn't complex at all. It's tenets, in fact, seem so simple and so firmly anchored in common sense as to immediately spark the question, "Why hasn't anyone tried this before?"

Sweden's Groundbreaking 1999 Legislation

In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex. The novel rationale behind this legislation is clearly stated in the government's literature on the law:

"In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem... gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them."

In addition to the two pronged legal strategy, a third and essential element of Sweden's prostitution legislation provides for ample and comprehensive social service funds aimed at helping any prostitute who wants to get out, and additional funds to educate the public. As such, Sweden's unique strategy treats prostitution as a form of violence against women in which the men who exploit by buying sex are criminalized, the mostly female prostitutes are treated as victims who need help, and the public is educated in order to counteract the historical male bias that has long stultified thinking on prostitution. To securely anchor their view in firm legal ground, Sweden's prostitution legislation was passed as part and parcel of the country's 1999 omnibus violence against women legislation

http://esnoticia.co/noticia-8790-swedens-prostitution-solution-why-hasnt-anyone-tried-this-before

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. simple, reasonable and yet, oh.so.radical.

a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex.

yeah, I don't see USA's Male Demographics passing this kind of law anytime soon.

[brer cat]

6. +1

I don't see it happening either, but it sure makes sense.

[tblue37]

2. KnR--to the greatest page. nt

[DeSwiss]

3. See?

- We CAN do this! We can make sense!!!

[SunSeeker]

4. K & R

[Scuba]

5. Won't happen here so long as men control the law-making process.

[jeff47]

7. Because it's a half-solution that exports the problems.

It isn't that hard to get from Sweden to Finland, for example.

If you want to help the women who are being forced into prostitution, you have to find them. It's much harder to find them as long as either side of the transaction is illegal.

Know what would work better? Make it legal on both sides, and require the brothel to send the prostitutes for regular psychological care with independent mental health providers. That allows government to confirm their ages, ensure they are not being coerced, regulate limits such as to the number of "clients" they can see in a day, as well as pointing prostitutes to "we can help you get out of the business" programs. And make it easy for a prostitute to be her own licensed brothel, but tighter restrictions to employ other prostitutes.

There's also the definitional problem: What is sex trafficking? Most people have images of girls being shipped off to foreign lands against their will. But the definition that gets the big number in headlines is any person who travels to another country to be a prostitute, whether or not it is against their will. Because that number can be reasonably guessed at, and the "against their will" number is very hard to figure out.

Around 2002 the UK decided they had a massive sex trafficking problem, due to using the "all foreigners" definition. So they launched a large program that interviewed tens of thousands of prostitutes. The UK offered to help prostitutes get out of the business, including free travel back to their home country. Less than 20 took them up on the offer. The vast majority considered prostitution a "least bad" option. They weren't thrilled with the job, but their other options were worse.

We aren't going to fix that last sentence by throwing anyone in jail......at least anyone who isn't at the top of the income distribution. Prostitutes need better job options, but taking away the prostitution option does not make those better options appear.

[ismnotwasm]

11. Why shouldn't the Johns get psychological care?

Last edited Wed Feb 11, 2015, 03:28 PM - Edit history (1)

Just a thought

[jeff47]

12. Because we aren't looking for signs they are being manipulated.

The point of the psychological care is to ensure the prostitute is not being coerced. If you ask her, she'll always say "No", even if she is being coerced. Someone trained in psychological care is more likely to be able to assess if the denial is truthful or not over regular sessions with the prostitute.

Plus you're building rapport between the prostitute and someone "outside the business". That can be helpful in getting people out who want to get out.

I did not mean to imply that prostitutes were mentally ill, or more likely to be mentally ill. Just re-using a set of skills.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11385727

[jeff47]

15. And how was that stopped by prostitution being illegal?

Oh wait, it wasn't.

My argument is the majority of people will use a legal and more convenient alternative if it is available. If we set up that legal alternative with safeguards, that protects more people than keeping prostitution illegal.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

17. sounds like rationalization to me. you need to justify it, in your own mind.

which is fine for you.

I make up my own mind. Thanks.

[jeff47]

23. The goal is to stop people from being hurt.

Making prostitution illegal has utterly and completely failed to do so. And has utterly and completely failed to do so for centuries. Saying "look! People are getting hurt!" doesn't demonstrate that keeping it illegal works.

Bring it into the open where it can be monitored and regulated, and fewer people will be hurt.

[ismnotwasm]

19. What about looking for signs of potential for violence?

If we are going to examine this from all angles, in order to legalize prostitution, all Johns should be vetted carefully.

My guess is a surprising number would be rejected

[jeff47]

21. I'd argue we should be doing that to the entire population, not just Johns.

But we don't really have a way to do that effectively.

If we make it something like "You have to show your approved John card", then we've created an underground market again. And the point is to keep it "in the open" enough to protect the prostitutes.

[ismnotwasm]

24. Possibly

But my argument is this, until we get past gender inequalities, including sexual ones ie. Women should feel just as comfortable visiting a prostitute, (the availability of chosen partners should be the same)the income disparities between genders is eradicated, until the female body is no longer innapproriatly sexualized, OR both sexes are equally sexuaialized and objectified, there is always going to be an underground market, as shown in countries where it is legal.

To successfully legalize, there is no reason why the stability of purchasers shouldn't be assessed. With the "legialize and regulate" rhetoric, I hear tossed around, when it comes to details, I usually hear things like mandatory STD testing. Fine. Johns should have mandatory testing as well. Married Johns should sign a financial agreement taking responsibility for subsequent lawsuits. I can think of a dozen other details.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

25. Excellent post. Another fine quality post from ism.

Thank you. I am at work and can't type out a long reply if you care to reply for me to answer his question about can't find the trafficked women. I would appreciate it.

[ismnotwasm]

29. This is an article that cites a 2012 study

Does legalized prostitution increase human trafficking?

Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows. The effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a potential destination country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic supply acts as a constraint. Criminalization of prostitution in Sweden resulted in the shrinking of the prostitution market and the decline of human trafficking inflows. Cross-country comparisons of Sweden with Denmark (where prostitution is decriminalized) and Germany (expanded legalization of prostitution) are consistent with the quantitative analysis, showing that trafficking inflows decreased with criminalization and increased with legalization. The type of legalization of prostitution does not matter — it only matters whether prostitution is legal or not. Whether third-party involvement (persons who facilitate the prostitution businesses, i.e, “pimps”) is allowed or not does not have an effect on human trafficking inflows into a country. Legalization of prostitution itself is more important in explaining human trafficking than the type of legalization. Democracies have a higher probability of increased human-trafficking inflows than non-democratic countries. There is a 13.4% higher probability of receiving higher inflows in a democratic country than otherwise. - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/international/human-rights/legalized-prostitution-human-trafficking-inflows#sthash.3EwcCIJa.dpuf

[jeff47]

27. But doing nothing causes more harm.

My risk assessment is we cause more harm by keeping it generally illegal. That could easily be wrong.

Johns should have mandatory testing as well. Married Johns should sign a financial agreement taking responsibility for subsequent lawsuits. I can think of a dozen other details.

The difficulty is in constructing the framework where that is done. Regulation on the brothel side is pretty easy, since we already regulate pretty much every business. Regulation on the customer side requires creating a new framework. That's a lot harder. We still can't even do Driver's Licenses well.

That difficulty doesn't mean it should not be done. Just have to weigh the harm in going with legalization without it, versus having it, versus not changing anything.

Not changing anything seems to me the most harmful, with legalization + John licensing being too hard to get done in one effort, leaving the status quo in place.

[ismnotwasm]

28. Thus this discussion

Sweden tries one way, other counties try others, here we are twist and between, in the meantime allowing great harm.

FWIW, I have a friend who is an escort (the term she prefers) she hates the Swedish approach because to her, it stigmatizes prostitutes-- "not all are victims" she says. She is a feminist and an activist and we disagree completely on this topic. I feel because of gender disparities prostitutes are absolutely victims, that the word choice is practically a misnomer because in our society, it's a logical progression to escape poverty for girls and women-- but not men.

I'm having a discussion elsewhere about this topic, involving street kids from my past, generally, women are tired of taking the blame and the legal consequences. They tend to say "legalize", and I again, think it's far too simplistic and leads to other problems. At least we have countries where it has been legalized, like Sweden, who looked at the consequences and decided on another approach.

[seabeyond]

33. your risk assessment is not correct and the countries that have legalized for over a decade is proof

your risk assessment is incorrect. yet, people on this progressive board ignore the experiment in europe and other countries to continually state, their risk assessment evaluates that there is less harm with legalization, ignoring facts.

[geek tragedy]

35. you ignore the immediate and predictable consequence of legalization--increasing demand.

And where there is increased demand, and not enough local 'supply', there will be trafficking. Demand drives the problem.

Criminalization of buying decreases demand. And legalization without regulation of buying would boost demand.

[jeff47]

37. You're defining trafficking as any movement.

My argument is not everyone who travels to another country to work as a sex worker is doing it against their will. There are a great deal who do it as their "least bad" option.

The same reason you can find undocumented workers hanging out outside home improvement stores, looking for work. They would far prefer a nice job back home, but that isn't an option.

The best solution is to give them a better job back home, but we don't have the power to do that. We can't fix another country from the outside, and invasion is "problematic" (to massively understate the issue).

So we're left with damage reduction strategies. Legalization with regulation would cause less damage than keeping either side of the transaction illegal. Decriminalizing selling while keeping buying criminal doesn't improve on the current situation, because "the business" remains underground where it can not be regulated or monitored.

[geek tragedy]

39. increasing demand will increase the amount of stuff that gets done underground

mainstreaming of p0rn certainly didn't lead to a decrease in the truly revolting and degrading stuff--it increased it because you know once something becomes acceptable the 'customers' get bored with it and want what they aren't allowed to have.

sex isn't a job.

[jeff47]

41. Except the demand is for the legal options

Given a choice between a legal option and an illegal one, the vast majority will chose the former. Additionally, you'll get increased reporting of illegal activities - There's not a lot of people who would go to the police and say "Hey, I just broke the law, but these other people were also breaking the law".

sex isn't a job.

Sex shouldn't be a job. But it is. Banning sex as a job has utterly failed for a very long time.

[geek tragedy]

42. If the illegal option offers fewer rules and costs

to be imposed on the johns, they will go for the illegal. Just like they opt for the illegal now rather than subject themselves to scrutiny and effort/expense in finding a legitimately consensual partner.

If sex were an actual job, there would be no such thing as sexual harassment. How would a boss asking his paid assistant for a bj be categorically different from paying for a bj from a prostituted woman?

[jeff47]

45. Which is why above I proposed regulations on the brothel.

Fixed location, so you can find it, plus having to advertise for business. And the regulations I proposed weren't massively expensive, but would significantly reduce harm. There's not a lot of "underground" restaurants despite states requiring the health department inspect them.

Just like they opt for the illegal now rather than subject themselves to scrutiny and effort/expense in finding a legitimately consensual partner.

The Johns aren't necessarily just lazy. Also, "legitimately consensual" doesn't necessarily mean not-prostitute. There's plenty of "kept women" who aren't legally prostitutes, but are selling their bodies.

If sex were an actual job, there would be no such thing as sexual harassment. How would a boss asking his paid assistant for a bj be categorically different from paying for a bj from a prostituted woman?

Because it's not her job. Just like it isn't her job to replace all the plumbing in the office.

Sex as a job has been around since jobs existed. Banning it hasn't worked over the millennia that we have tried to do so. Perhaps instead of continuing to ban it, we should try something else?

[geek tragedy]

49. Sexual harassment law is not based on the notion that it's not okay to ask people

to do stuff that's not in their job description. If a boss asks someone to take out the trash, or fix a clogged drain, there is a 0.0% chance of them being sued for sexual harassment.

Bans have never eliminated any social ills. Bans haven't eliminated murder, or arson, or theft, or robbery, or embezzlement, or fraud. "Banning hasn't gotten rid of it" is a rather specious argument.

The Netherlands has seen a big increase in its underground sex trade after legalizing the above-ground practice.

Legalization doesn't work unless a country is very much isolated--e.g. New Zealand--such that importing women to be sold for men's pleasure in order to suppress wages and the rights of the women being sold is not an option.

[seabeyond]

51. they are putting their trafficked girls in strip clubs. pretty well set place.

you know how hard it is to find? you do not think the guys enjoying their entertainment have any interest what so ever, these girls experience?

you are being naive.

those countries that legalize have greater issue, than those not. the info is readily available. everything in your first paragraph, thru actual experience in these countries, tell a different story. why pretend there is a magic wand when you can see the creation already.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

14. I like his use of the phrase "definitional problem"

has the same ring to it as "legitimate rape"

[jeff47]

16. Feel free to explain the UK failing to find thousands of victims.

The estimate of trafficked women in the UK was many thousands when they started looking. They interviewed thousands of immigrants working as prostitutes, and found a tiny number that wanted a free ride home. They even threw a few traffickers in prison during their sweep.....just not thousands.

It's easy to estimate the number of foreigners who enter the country for sex work. It's a lot harder to figure out if they're doing that voluntarily.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

18. you want me to explain why men pay for sex? lol

Have a nice day.

[jeff47]

22. No, I want you to explain how the enormous number of trafficked women

can't be found, even when explicitly searched for.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

26. I hope ism addresses this for you. At work now

[ismnotwasm]

30. Are you saying they don't exist?

Or do you not understand the nature of prostitution?

[jeff47]

31. I'm saying that there were claims of a very large number in the UK

As a result of that very large number, a very large effort was taken in the UK to find them (Prostitution had been legalized). They found a lot of prostitutes, including foreigners/immigrants who were working as prostitutes. The UK government even busted a trafficking ring.

During interviews, almost all of the prostitutes said they were doing it because they thought it was a "least bad" option. They weren't thrilled with the career, but they thought it was better than their other options. Usually because it paid much more than their other options. The UK government offered legal protection and free transportation to their home countries during these interviews. Less than 20 took them up on the offer (it was somewhere in the teens, don't have coverage of it handy).

So yes, there are trafficked people, but I think the number is overstated due to poor methodology - the people claiming large numbers appear to base their estimate off all foreigner/immigrant sex workers being trafficked. They don't appear to be considering the "least bad" group. Not to say "least bad" is a good thing, just that they're not in the country against their will.

[ismnotwasm]

40. Then you don't understand the nature of prostitution

There are women who are not trafficked who do the costal circuit on, say the west cost. They travel up and down, hitting the big cities until it gets hot. It used to be Seatlle, Portland, San Fransisco, all the way to San Diego, and further. There is no way to accurately estimate the numbers of these women, as they are working voluntarily. Trafficking is something else-- their families may have sold them or may miss them. There is a paper trail of how many "domestic workers" enter a country. Not all trafficking is sexual in nature. In other words, reasonable estimates can be made.

Pimping and mob connections to trafficking are very real. The fear is very real. There have been misguided attempts to "save" trafficked workers who end up right back where they were in the first place because there was no other viable option

Are these the numbers you doubt?

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 20.9 million victims of human trafficking globally, including 5.5 million children. 55% are women and girls.
In 2013, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline, operated by Polaris, received multiple reports of human trafficking cases in all 50 states and D.C. Find more hotline statistics here.
The International Labor Organization estimates that forced labor and human trafficking is a $150 billion industry worldwide.
There is no official estimate of the total number of human trafficking victims in the U.S. With 100,000 children estimated to be in the sex trade in the United States each year, it is clear that the total number of victims nationally reaches into the hundreds of thousands when estimates of both adults and minors and sex trafficking and labor trafficking are aggregated.[MF2]
The number of human trafficking cases that Polaris learns about increases every year. Read our 2014 statistics report here.

http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview

[jeff47]

43. Nope, I'm doubting studies

where their methodology is to count all foreigners, regardless of that foreigner's will.

Especially when the results of those studies come up with numbers near or exceeding all of the prostitutes in a country.

But studies versus field work is a diversion. We can't stop prostitution. It will happen. A "war on prostitution" will continue to fail just like the "war on drugs" continues to fail. Changing to a harm reduction strategy (legalize and regulate) would be better than continuing the current, failed system.

Making it illegal for the "Johns" but not the prostitutes, as in the OP, does not give you a harm reduction strategy. It just keeps the prostitutes out of jail. They're still working underground because half of the transaction is still illegal.

[ismnotwasm]

44. Regulate what?

Outline this for me please

[jeff47]

46. It's in post 7.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1255&pid=54715

[ismnotwasm]

47. Oh. That one

Well we've clearly come full circle here.

[jeff47]

48. Yep, you did a great job walking right back to the same place

by bringing up a question that wasn't at all relevant to where this subthread had gone, and contained information you already had.

I really don't expect to convince anyone to change their position. But I don't think maintaining the status quo is helpful, and would like someone to explain why maintaining the status quo is better. Instead, I keep getting people talking about how bad the status quo is. Or stories like the OP where radically different survey methodologies are used, and then the numbers directly compared.

We can't stop it completely. So what's so wrong about mitigating the harm?

[ismnotwasm]

50. I didn't agree with your original points.

And quite frankly forgot them.

I'm a Joss Whedon fan, so I'm going to head toward the realm of Sci-Fi here. But until some fundamental inequities are overcome, there will never be enough risk reduction. This is shown by what happen countries where legalized prostitution exists.

The reason I would like to see prostitution as we know it eradicated is because it's built on a rickety structure of sexual norms, fantasy that involve gendered power plays, evolving out of repressed sexuality. This repression evolved from religion, yes, but also war-- to conquer a people you conquer thier reproduction. This is still happenng.

In a Joss Wheadon world, his "companions" still weren't able to overcome the stigma of "whoredom" but they gave it the old college try. So schools were formed, male and female and all inbetween went through a rigorous process of training. A companian was considered (mostly) an honored profession, and there we arrive at the crux of the matter. Prostitutes are not honored. They are subject to violence and abuse. They are a punchline of a thousand jokes. They are objectified and dehumanized.

The legal brothels need to have protections in place. Prostitutes are reliant on these protections-- just like the pump structure. Along with prostitution, legal and not comes any number of illegal activity. Drug running, child prostitution, other violence. I don't see legalization as improving this in any way, although I do believe in decriminalizing it.

[seabeyond]

34. show us this study. i cannot trust your interpretation of what you read. nt

[jeff47]

36. It's not a study. It's actually looking for them.

A study is applying demographics, statistics and a model to try and figure out what you would find if you actually went into the field and talked to people.

That's what the UK actually did - they went out and talked to people. And I gave you the links about a year ago the last time this subject came up. You refused to believe them because they conflicted with studies that had results you preferred.

I fail to see why providing you the same links again would be worth the effort.

[seabeyond]

38. ha ha ha ha

[ismnotwasm]

20. Yup.

[seabeyond]

32. it is not easier finding the taffickers if either side is illegal. legalizing makes it hardest for

cops to find the criminals. that is one of the argument against legalization.

The brothel boom is over. A third of Amsterdam’s bordellos have been closed due to the involvement of organised criminals and drug dealers and the increase in trafficking of women. Police now acknowledge that the red-light district has mutated into a global hub for human trafficking and money laundering. The streets have been infiltrated by grooming gangs seeking out young, vulnerable girls and marketing them to men as virgins who will do whatever they are told. Many of those involved in Amsterdam’s regular tourist trade — the museums and canals — fear that their visitors are vanishing along with the city’s reputation

*

Rather than remove the sleaziness of the red light district, it made the area more depressing than ever — full of drunken sex tourists who act as window shoppers, pointing and laughing at the women they see. Local women pass the streets with their heads down, trying not to see the other women displayed like cuts of meat in a butcher’s shop. Men can be seen entering the brothels, trying to barter down the price. Others come out zipping up their jeans. Many of the women look very young, all of them bored, with the majority sitting on stools in underwear playing with their phones.

Nowhere else in the world is street prostitution legal, because people do not want it in plain sight. Where there is a street sex trade, women are accosted on their way home by punters, and often condoms, drugs paraphernalia and pimps are visible. But the Netherlands decided in 1996 that street prostitution was a decent way to earn money and created several ‘tolerance zones’ for men to safely rent a vagina, anus or mouth for a few minutes. Cars drive into cubicles. This being the Netherlands, there is a special section for cyclists. Keep prostitution green.

The day after the Amsterdam zone opened, more than a hundred residents from nearby neighbourhoods took to the streets in protest. It took six years for the mayor to admit in public that the experiment had been a disaster, a magnet for trafficked women, drug dealers and underage girls. Zones in Rotterdam, The Hague and Heerlen have shut down in similar circumstances. The direction of travel is clear: legalisation will be repealed. Legalisation has not been emancipation. It has instead resulted in the appalling, inhuman, degrading treatment of women, because it declares the buying and selling of human flesh acceptable. And as the Dutch government reforms itself from pimp to protector, it will have time to reflect on the damage done to the women caught in this calamitous social experiment.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8835071/flesh-for-sale/

we just keep saying legalization will fix the problems as the countries that actually experimented with it tells us how wrong we are. i do not get that.

As a teenager, I worked in Germany’s legal sex industry. I was, like many girls in the club, underage; most of us were immigrants, nearly all of us had histories of trauma and abuse prior to our entry into commercial sex. Several of us had pimps despite working in a legal establishment; all of us used copious amounts of drugs and alcohol to get through each night.

Violence is inherent in the sex industry. Numerous studies show that between 70 percent and 90 percent of children and women who end up in commercial sex were sexually abused prior to entry. No other industry is dependent upon a regular supply of victims of trauma and abuse.

*

To truly address trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, it’s critical to address the systemic factors making girls and women so vulnerable -- poverty, gender inequity, racism, classism, child sexual abuse, lack of educational and employment opportunities for women and girls globally. Sanctioning an industry that preys upon some of the most marginalized and disenfranchised individuals in our society isn’t the answer.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalized-prostitution-safer/legalizing-prostitution-leads-to-more-trafficking

[niyad]

8. so obvious, yes? I remember a sting in CA years ago. the police were rounding up the

women selling sex, ignoring the buyers. various women's groups started taking pictures of the men who were doing the buying. sting was cancelled quickly.

[ismnotwasm]

9. Yeah that approach seems to die a quiet death

No surprise

[AwakeAtLast]

10. That evens out the power

Which means it won't happen here.