Tackling sex trafficking.

 

In general, one can say, that the effort to combat the horrible sex trafficking remain insufficient:

 

Sex trafficking is poorly understood. 

 

The organizations dedicated to combat the sex trafficking are underfunded and uncoordinated internationally.

 

The laws against sex trafficking are overwhelmingly anaemic and poorly enforced.

 

Despite numerous studies and reports, a systematic business and economic analysis of the industry conducted to identify strategic points of intervention, has not yet been undertaken.

 

It is about identifying the vulnerable points of the trafficking industry and to aim the short term tactic against the industry to reduce the aggregate demand of consumers and slave owners.  

 

The most effective way to reduce the aggregate demand is to attack the industry’s immense profitability by inverting its risk-reward economics, that is, by making the risk of operating a sex slave operation far more costly in terms of fines, penalties, imprisonment and public focus and actions.

 

To ensure the business of sex trafficking and other forms of modern slavery are eradicated in the long term, the primary conditions that first gave rise to these crimes – poverty and the destructive asymmetries of economic globalizations – must also be addressed.

 

Four areas on fighting sex trafficking.

 

To fight sex trafficking the tactics used are to be multiple to meet the objective of eradicate or at least minimise the sex trafficking industry as much as possible.

 

Like many other business, sex trafficking has four components: a product (the female victim), a wholesaler (the trafficker), a retailer (the slave owner / exploiter) and a consumer.

 

The product, crudely, is the female victim, the prostitute. The only associated cost of exploiting the product is to move it from its origin to the place of exploitation, where the customer can consume it.

 

The moving process is the slave-trading portion of the sex trafficking industry.

 

The wholesalers are slave traders, except when they are part of a vertically integrated organized- crime network and are compensated for services in place of the acquisition price of a trafficked sex slave.

 

Tactics focussed on disruptive slave trading are for the most part rather ineffective: Movement is too easy, inexpensive and invisible.

 

Wholesalers are always one step ahead of attempts to prevent their movement.

 

Thus, effective anti-trafficking tactics must focus on the stakeholders of demands: retailers and consumers.

 

The retailers own the brothels, clubs, massage parlours, apartments or other locations where the product (the prostitute) is consumed. Because the business is illegal, retailers employ guards and bribe the police.

 

They keep the price for a sexual act as low as possible to secure as many customers as possible, new and repeat. The operating costs of the business are low.

 

The primary up-front costs include purchasing slaves and perhaps the real estate in which the business is conducted.

 

Equipment for business operations must also be purchased: beds, sheets, alcohol, drugs, snacks condoms, makeup and clothes.

 

The retailer demands slaves because the elevate profits and expand the customer base by virtue of lower retail prices. The only vulnerability the retailer suffers is the illicit nature of his business. There is a cost if he is caught (fines, imprisonment) but most slave owners are not targeted with aggressive investigation, and a few bribes typically extricate retailers from legal entanglements.

 

The consumer is the man who buys sex. He is looking for sex, clearly, but also for a way to act out violent, racist, paedophiliac, or other antisocial traits.

 

Thanks to slave labour, he can afford sex from young females that he could not afford before, or he can afford it more often. Demand for sex – be it violent, degrading, or just for “fun” – drives many consumers to prostitutes. Demand for low-cost sex drives the consumer to sex slaves.

 

The individual may not know he is purchasing sex from a slave, but he knows he is purchasing low-cost sex, which the retailer primarily provides with slaves.

 

Whether or not the consumer is aware he is purchasing a slave is largely irrelevant to the magnitude of demand represented by sex slave consumers.

 

In purchasing sex from slaves, the consumer is fundamentally by the minimal retail price; hence, pricing is the prime driver of consumer demand for sex slaves, not awareness of whether or not the female prostitute is a slave or not.

 

The table below summarizes the sex trafficking business chain, including the primary efforts currently deployed to thwart the industry.

 

The tactics shown below can indeed be carried out more effectively and the table below is by no means an exhaustive list of the current efforts to combat sex trafficking, but it summarizes the key initiatives.

 

Each item in the “What should be done” column can be achieved in the short term except the supply-side (product-victim) initiatives.

 

Issues of bias against gender and minorities also can not be resolved overnight. However, decreased demand for sex slaves will decrease the rate at which these populations are exploited.

 

	What is being done	Impact       (at present)	Reason(s)	Whatshouldbe done
Product (the femalevictim)	1. Awarenesscampaigns	Small	Need for migration too great	Long-term anti poverty initiatives and redress of harm of economic globalization
	2. Local education and job training.	Small	Too small in scale; limited resources; limited opportunities	Long-term anti poverty initiatives and redress of harm of economic globalization
	3.Shelter and support the victim once she has been freed from her traffickers	Small to medium	Underfunded helping organisations, too little collaboration international between NGO´s in the victims origin country and the  countries of her transit or exploitation	Intensified domestic and international (cross country) governmental support and focus on helping the victims of trafficking. Public focus from individuals and media.
Wholesaler - slave trader	Border patrol / security	Small	Impossible to guard borders: corruption facilitates movement; invisibility renders victims impossible to identify	Redirect focus to retailers and consumers
	2. Prosecution	Small	Limited resources; lack of multilateral cooperation; corruption in judiciary; lack of witness protection; weak penalties in the law	Long term: deal with all the lacking described left; in the short term redirect focus to retailers and consumers
Retailer - slave owner	1. Prosecution	Small	Almost no focus on market force of demand; same problems as with wholesaler prosecutions lead to impunity	Raise the real cost of operating a business with slave labour to a profit-compromising level by increasing the fines, penalties e.g. by imprisonment tremendously. Strengthen the funding of police investigation in the trafficking industry and increase the effort on fighting sex trafficking.
Consumer	1. Awarenesscampaigns	Small	Most men who purchase sex from slaves seek low-price sexual gratification and lack moral discrimination between "willing" and "forced".	Higher prices (due to higher risk for the slave owner) will decrease demand. Optional: increase consumer "costs" by criminalizing solicitation of sex services.
	2. Legislate and make the buying of sex services illegal (e.g. the Swedish solution). Increase the penalites.	Medium to large	Intensified public focus on penalizing the men, who buy sex services, decreases the demand with at least 60% (measured in Sweden and Norway).	Implement the relevant legislation and dedicate public focus and awareness on the men, who buy sex services.
	3. Support the local organisations that help the men getting into control with their needs / addiction for porn, internet pornography and solicitation prostitutes.	Small to medium	Pornography and especially internet porn increasing tremendously and more and more people become addicted to porn. It is difficult for the men to accept the fact, that many of them are addicted to porn.	Create public focus and awareness of the methods available to deal with the increased addiction of pornography and soliciting prostitutes that an increased number of men face.

 

Text and ideas are seen in the very good book: Sex trafficking; inside the business of modern slavery. SiddharthKara.Columbia University Press. 2009.