Pros And Cons Of Legalizing Prostitution

When asked the controversial question of whether prostitution increases or decreases human trafficking, the three prostitutes and one manager I interviewed from brothels in Nevada shared, as expected, that they believe legal prostitution decreases human trafficking. In places like Nevada, where there are only twenty-one relatively small and monitored brothels, the benefits of legal prostitution may seem to outweigh the negatives, and some might buy into the idea that legal prostitution does in fact decrease human trafficking. However, if one looks further, one will find that this claim does not hold true. In fact, there is much evidence to support the claim that prostitution actually increases human trafficking. According to data collected

According to an MSNBC article written by Trymaine Lee, "Staggering report exposes US sex trafficking," the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline has had a two hundred fifty-eight percent increase in phone calls over the last six years. Of the nine thousand, two hundred ninety-eight human trafficking reports received by the NHTRC, sixty-four percent were sex trafficking cases (Lee). Over the years, as the number of legal brothels in Nevada has gone up, so has the number of trafficking victims in the United States (Lee). Although this increase in human trafficking in America may be due to another factor, unrelated to legal prostitution, these statistics--and the others above--call into question the claim that legal prostitution decreases human