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The Australian Christian Lobby sent out a campaign in relation to a proposed law to decriminalise prostitution. Part of the campaign against the law is that it will increase trafficking and organised crime. Is this the case?

Evidence is clear from NSW, and other countries, that when prostitution is decriminalised, there is an increase in prostitution, trafficking and organised crime.

This below was an email campaign and not available from their website so I've taken a screenshot.

Letter from the ACL

Oddthinking
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user1605665
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    We require questions on this site to be about widely-believed ("notable") claims. Some users confuse that with claims coming from sources that they consider reliable. The source of this question's claim might not be considered reliable, but they are widely read. I have deleted comments that insist on reliable sources for this question. (Answers, of course, should use reliable sources.) – Oddthinking Aug 17 '21 at 12:49
  • @Oddthinking In my mind seeing propaganda spread gets a bit old and I don't see what is wrong with making a reminder that the organization spreading the propaganda has a long history of fights against the industry. – Joe W Aug 17 '21 at 13:13
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    Claims regarding causal effects on crime are difficult to prove or disprove. Crime statistics are already pretty untrustworthy, because they only cover reported crime. And even if they were reliable: There are a lot of possible factors which affect prevalence of criminal activity, so that it is difficult to find a causal link to any particular policy. – Philipp Aug 17 '21 at 13:15
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    @JoeW: It is an ad hominem attack. If you have evidence the answer is wrong, post it. If you are just sharing your political view of an organisation, sorry, but we don't care. – Oddthinking Aug 17 '21 at 13:17
  • @Oddthinking An attack to point out their very public stances and ask a question about it? – Joe W Aug 17 '21 at 13:26
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    @JoeW: The deleted comment did not ask a question about it. It dismissed the claim in the question with zero evidence because of the political beliefs of the people who made the claim. That is an ad hominem, pseudo-answer. It is not welcome here. – Oddthinking Aug 17 '21 at 13:33
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    @ARogueAnt. I cannot provide a link because the section I posted came from one of their email campaigns, its not on their (ACLs) website. If I provide the link from the email campaign it will be traceable to who received the email. – user1605665 Aug 18 '21 at 07:02
  • @Philipp I agree these types of claims are hard to verify, however they are not impossible. It may be possible that someone has done some credible research into the topic and can answer the question effectively. – user1605665 Aug 18 '21 at 07:03
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    The original source says "evidence is clear..." So someone who looks at this and says "I looked everywhere and I can't find any study about this" would be a substantial portion of an answer, because it means "evidence is clear..." is just made up. – gnasher729 Aug 18 '21 at 09:06
  • FYI: I wrote an answer that addressed the part of the claim that legalising sex work promotes sex work. A commenter noted that this was NOT what the OP asked, and I had to agree, and deleted the answer. – Oddthinking Aug 18 '21 at 11:15
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    "Legalizing prostitution leads to an increase in prostitution" - that's some brilliant insight they're offering, there. – PoloHoleSet Aug 20 '21 at 15:10
  • @user1605665 For centuries population has been increasing. As the number of people increases, the number of criminals and crimes, inclreases, unless the percentage of crimnals can be decreased somehow. If some place decriminalized sex work, eventually there would be a noticable increase in the absolute number of crimes there, due topopulaitn increase, whether or not decrinimalizing sex work had any effect. So my answer is yes, because everything will result in a higher absolute number of crimes eventually. – M. A. Golding Aug 20 '21 at 16:39

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The ad may be thinking about this 2012 study: Does legalized prostitution increase human trafficking?

The study examined data from over 100 countries and used Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland as case studies. They found that countries that legalise prostitution do have more human trafficking than those who do not. They also found that the effect (increased human trafficking) is stronger in richer countries and democracies.

user141592
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    I believe there's a distinction between decriminalising sex work (which is what the question is asking about) and legalising it (which is what the study talks about). It's not enough to invalidate the answer IMO, but it's still worth noting. – F1Krazy Aug 18 '21 at 11:53
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    Observation: That study appears to be repeating a common problem with such data in assuming prostitutes working in another country are trafficked, not considering the possibility that it is voluntary. – Loren Pechtel Aug 19 '21 at 15:22
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    There is the common correlation versus causation issue here. The study shows that countries with legalized prostitution have higher human trafficking than countries without. This does not imply that changing the legality of prostitution will change the amount of human trafficking. – quarague Aug 22 '21 at 17:04
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    Does this study actually contain the raw data / tables / statistics? I opened it directly in the browser and see only an "- Insert Figure 1 here -" placeholder, but neither any graphs nor tables with actual numbers. Without that data we cannot verify their work and have to trust the authors that they drew the correct conclusions from the data only they know. – Elmy Aug 23 '21 at 07:16
  • @LorenPechtel does it? It looks like they got their trafficked numbers from another report that "was constructed based on the Global Programme against Trafficking in Human Beings (GPAT) Database, which includes reviews on publications by 113 institutions reporting incidences of human trafficking in 161 countries over the 1996-2003 period" It sounds like it's looking at explicitly reported cases of trafficking, and so cases of voluntary migration wouldn't be counted. – dsollen Aug 24 '21 at 19:32
  • @dsollen The problem is that again and again we see reports of "trafficking" that are obviously voluntary. – Loren Pechtel Aug 25 '21 at 03:17
  • @LorenPechtel I understand that this is an issue in general. but do you have evidence that this is an issue with this report in particular? I don't feel it's fair to presume fault on the report, even a common fault, unless you have vetted the source and found an actual reason for concern. – dsollen Aug 25 '21 at 13:20
  • @dsollen I have no reason to suspect this report more than typically, but I have seen this distortion so often that I do not trust "trafficked" to be involuntary. – Loren Pechtel Aug 26 '21 at 04:01