Mind you, the U.S. State Department officially supports the criminalization of prostitution and tries to steer other nations in that direction. With that in mind, regardless of their ideology, the U.S.
State Department acknowledged a significant factor leading to high numbers of sex trafficking victims in these two countries and it isn’t related to legalization. Both Germany and the Netherlands have appropriate maximum penalties for human trafficking, but their overly liberal court systems have an appallingly record when it comes to punishing human traffickers. In the Netherlands, convicted human traffickers are punished with an average of only 21 months in prison! The U.S. State Department report stated, “Local police complain that low sentences for traffickers continued to result in the reappearance of the same offenders and thus the continued exploitation of trafficking victims within the regulated commercial sex sector.” Such weak penalties won’t deter the brothel owners, i.
e. the people who profit the most from ignoring signs of human trafficking. Germany’s courts have met human traffickers with an even softer touch. The U.S. State Department report on Germany stated that “the majority of convicted labor and sex trafficking offenders were not required to serve time in prison, raising concerns that punishments were inadequate to deter traffickers or did not reflect the heinous nature of the offense.
” In fact, most of the convicted traffickers have received suspended sentences! That’s particularly astounding as sex trafficking is one of the most awful crimes imaginable as it combines rape, slavery, assault, and kidnapping. On the other hand, Australia also has legalized prostitution, but considerably less sex traffickin. .ion. Despite one of the most commercialized models of prostitution in the world, Germany has one of the lowest rates of HIV in the world. Only 0.
1% of German adults are infected with this disease, as opposed to the rate of 0.6% in the U.S. In fact, nearly all of the first world nations with legal or decriminalized prostitution have lower rates of HIV than the U.S. The CIA World Fact Book designates 33 nations as “developed countries” and 24 of them have legal or decriminalized prostitution.
Yet, only two of the 24 developed countries, Estonia and Portugal, have a higher HIV rate than the U.S! In a similar vein, some Americans would be flabbergasted to find out that a country such as Brazil has an estimated rate of HIV (0.3%), less than the U.S. Consider how Brazil is a country with a notably lower average income, a more sexualized culture, and legal prostitution.
