It's just more visible where prostitution is legal.

There was a sharp increase in arrests immediately post legalization, but the numbers have now dropped below pre-legalization levels. Police in Germany have said that it's made the traffickers easier to identify, although they complain that the penalties are too low to have a proper deterrent effect.

Meanwhile, trafficking in Sweden is on the rise:



Swedish workers also report increases in violence and unsafe situations since the law was enacted.

I don't think any further comment is necessary.

In 2001, German parliament, the Bundestag, with the votes of the Social Democratic Party/Green Party governing coalition in power at the time, passed a prostitution law intended to improve working conditions for prostitutes. Under the new law, women could sue for their wages and contribute to health, unemployment and pension insurance programs. The goal of the legislation was to make prostitution a profession like that of a bank teller or dental assistant, accepted instead of ostracized.

The female propagandists of the autonomous sex trade were very pleased with themselves when the law was passed. Then Family Minister Christine Bergmann (SPD) was seen raising a glass of champagne with Kerstin Müller, Green Party parliamentary floor leader at the time, next to Berlin brothel operator Felicitas Weigmann, now Felicitas Schirow. They were three women toasting the fact that men in Germany could now go to brothels without any scruples.

Today many police officers, women's organizations and politicians familiar with prostitution are convinced that the well-meaning law is in fact little more than a subsidy program for pimps and makes the market more attractive to human traffickers."

.....

Axel Dreher, a professor of international and development politics at the University of Heidelberg, has attempted to answer these questions, using data from 150 countries. The numbers were imprecise, as are all statistics relating to trafficking and prostitution, but he was able to identify a trend: Where prostitution is legal, there is more human trafficking than elsewhere.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html

It's dropped in Germany, and risen in Sweden, according to their own statistics- exactly the opposite of what's been widely reported.

IIRC, of the tier 3 trafficking countries, only one (Venezuela) has legal prostitution. The worst areas for trafficking in the world have prostitution criminalized and heavily penalized. New Zealand, which decriminalized in 2003 and is deliberately ignored by the abolitionists, is a Tier 1 country, although they've reported threats to their status simply because of the law.

But I'm not so sure it's that easy to tie cause and effect in that instance.

Human trafficking, and the subset of that which includes sex trafficking, appears to either be rising or is becoming more highly identified, or both. It also seems to be highly dependant on laws which govern immigration as far as how well it propogates. Trying to relate cause and effect of sex trafficking and prostitution reform is going to be a very difficult undertaking. It's very possible that sex trafficking could be indicating an increase, even if reform measures are having a positive impact.

The differences between the Germany and Sweden approach is Sweden only made one side of the transaction legal, which by some reports has had the effect of driving the trade further underground and degrading the working conditions of those involved.

but I suspect even a definitive proof of cause and effect wouldn't convince anyone. I have taken into account the other reports surrounding the numbers when the numbers first appeared: I'd already read the reports from Sweden indicating a worsening of conditions and the increased difficulties in locating the now deeply underground sex trade, so the fact that the numbers are rising in spite of that makes it reasonable to assume that the rise really *is* a rise, not just the result of better policing.

Likewise, the reports from German police, as I mentioned, have been that legalization has made the traffickers and their victims easier to identify, even if law enforcement considers the punishments inadequate. So it's fairly reasonable to assume, also, that the drop in trafficking really *is* a drop in trafficking, and not just underenforcement.

It may not be provable, but there are some reasonable conclusions that can be drawn given other reported conditions in both countries. Sweden has not done well by most accounts. Germany OTOH had a large-scale test in 2006 with the World Cup "40,000 trafficking victims" flap and responded well to it, even though both the number and the hysteria turned out to be ridiculous. With all that factored in, I think the statistics are probably correct. Other people's MMV.

The problem I saw with Sweden's plan is it made no meaningful efforts to improve the conditions of anyone involved. They simply assumed that prostitutes would want to abandon the trade after they started cracking down on the johns which never happened. All it did was force the trade further underground and had the net effect of making conditions even worse for prostitutes. When it became obvious that the program wasn't working, the advocates' answer was to double down on what already wasn't working.

Still do, I think. Some workers took advantage of them. I think they expected everyone to. I suspect it came as a shock to them that not everyone wanted their help, and that the increasingly desperate coverups of the program's failure is their way of expressing their disbelief.

Exit programs for those who don't want to be in the trade are a great idea. Wedding them to criminalization is not.

I should know, because I live here.

Expect to happen: a predictable rise in the nationalist RW party next election.

I'm sorry. I feel for you, believe me. I live in Utah.

I lived in California and Oregon...

One can say that immigration is immigration, what else can you say, except no, it's not exactly the same.

It's wildly opposite cultures, here. It's muslims as the outsiders. They don't come here to work, in contrast to hispanic immigrants to the US. The asylum seekers can't find work for several years on average and get welfare instead. But there is discrimination.

The swedish immigration policy is extremely f'd up. I have met people who have migrated here for work, but after a couple of weeks if they can't get a job they get kicked out. But someone with asylum status can milk it for all its worth.

I had also seen the news about the rioting but didn't read up on why. I will now go do that, before inserting foot into mouth again.

It's a much more liberal clmate here, and people are oversensitive to accusations of racism, which shuts people up.
This is not like California, Arizona, or other states, regarding amnesty. Mexicans come to the US to work!

In Sweden, the immigration policy is not based on who wants to be a productive part of society. Sweden's immigration policy is centered on the hypocrisy of "helping people" from war torn lands such as Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria.

Can you imagine such a wildly different transition of cultures and languages?
This is harder work than the stupid Swedish leaders envisioned.

I misread "expect to happen" as "expected to happen" as if it were pretty much a done deal, and for some reason didn't connect it to the immigration comment. Since I live in a state with pretty much guaranteed wingnut wins in every election, I equated it to that. What you said was clear, my understanding of it wasn't. My fault.

Rinse and repeat of what we saw in the Paris riots.

Angry middle eastern immigrants who can't find work and who are segregated, yet keep on living in the country who invted them because they get welfare.

A sex slave may just be innocently employed as a prostitute here. Just as slaves are "empolyed" as domestic employees, etc.

You get an illegal market when the legal market is in short supply or over priced.

I just had to get more information. Thanks for the reply.

Germany has to 'import' prostituted women because (surprise surprise) the demand for rent-a-woman exceeds the supply of women who choose to enter the industry.

Because German women have other options.

Assumption after assumption.

Summary: one paper before us showed that legalizing prostitution reduced human trafficking. However, we disagree.

1: that paper focused on Europe, we want to expand to the rest of the world
2: real human trafficking numbers are unknown, but but most reporting agencies are in Europe/north america, so we will assume they under reported all other areas

Etc.

The comparison of Sweden and Denmark seemed the most apt bit of information available there. It does seem to prove out their hypothesis, and would be worth more study.

But overall, when you are putting Australia and Saudi Arabia in the same category, or Ireland and Yemen, I think your results are going to be fairly worthless. Comparisons of countries with otherwise similar circumstances but differing prostitution laws seem much more helpful than a study that lumps together countries with very dissimilar laws in regards to womens rights, economic equality, and human rights in general.

how sexuality and prostitution is viewed. In the U.S. gun worship vastly exceeds sexuality so Puritanical customs still persist in the U.S.