with the legalization of prostitution, and that inflows of trafficked people are much larger in wealthier nations. It seems that Australia may not have changed their rules to accommodate these findings, but it does not seem likely that Australia is immune to the problems that led other countries to re-look at their policies toward prostitution.
While it is easy to find fairly good studies from other countries on numbers of trafficked persons, I had difficulty finding any hard information about Australia. A number that I saw in a few sources was 1000 trafficked persons, which seems to come from Project Respect, and which doesn't seem to have any actual study behind it. This number seems to be ludicrously small to me, especially because many other sources cite Australia as a hub for trafficking from Asian countries, and because sources describe a well developed trafficking crime syndicate and special police force of 300 members that is dedicated to investigating nothing but trafficking.
What this says to me is that Australia may not be changing its rules, and may not even be looking at the problem, but trafficking is probably as bad there, or worse given Australia's wealth and location, as it was in all the other countries studied after they legalized prostitution.
Here's a summary of the study's findings. They're very interesting:
A 2012 study published in World Development, “Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?” investigates the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows into high-income countries. The researchers — Seo-Yeong Cho of the German Institute for Economic Research, Axel Dreher of the University of Heidelberg and Eric Neumayer of the London School of Economics and Political Science — analyzed cross-sectional data of 116 countries to determine the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. In addition, they reviewed case studies of Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to examine the longitudinal effects of legalizing or criminalizing prostitution. The study’s findings include:
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.nUI0kGjw.dpuf
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