# Human trafficking \*in the US\* - Huge issue involving huge numbers or highly overblown? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 12, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133 "2014-10-12T19:55:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/1 "2014-10-12T19:55:06Z")
It’s 2014 and in [2007 this article appeared in the Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401_pf.html) questioning the real world prevalence of human trafficking in \*the US \*based on reported crime stat numbers and confirmed cases of this activity being discovered and prosecuted. A lot of the responses to the article seemed to be along the lines of “Well it’s a hidden problem” and “Even one case is too many”. The article looked closely at the statistics being quoted re human trafficking and found most were simply cobbled together guesstimates and overblown nonsense. A lot of legislation has been passed since then and hundreds of millions of dollars raised to fight this problem. Awareness campaigns for this are everywhere lately. [Websites like this one cite huge numbers.](http://thecoveringhouse.org/act/resources-2/sex-trafficking-statistics-source-documentation/) > [@](#): > > •Human trafficking generates $9.5 billion yearly in the United States. (United Nations) > •Approximately 300,000 children are at risk of being prostituted in the United States. (U.S. Department of Justice) > •The average age of entry into prostitution for a child victim in the United States is 13-14 years old. (U.S. Department of Justice) [A US Government report](http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/226849.pdf)of sex trafficking in the US had these numbers (page 398) > [@](#): > > DOJ prosecutes human trafficking cases through the USAOs and the two specialized units that serve as DOJ’s nationwide subject-matter experts and partner with USAOs around the country. Taken together, USAOs, HTPU, and CEOS initiated a total of 161 federal human trafficking prosecutions in FY 2013, charging 253 defendants. Of these, 222 defendants engaged predominately in sex trafficking and 31 engaged predominately in labor trafficking, although multiple defendants engaged in both. In FY 2013, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, in coordinationwith USAOs, initiated 71 prosecutions involving forced labor and sex trafficking of adults by force, fraud, or coercion. Of these, 53 were predominantly sex trafficking and 18 predominantly labor trafficking; several cases involved both. During FY 2013, DOJ convicted a total of 174 traffickers in cases involving forced labor, sex trafficking of adults, and sex trafficking of children, compared to 138 such convictions obtained in FY 2012. Of these, 113 were predominantly sex trafficking and 25 were predominantly labor trafficking, although several involved both. These totals do not include child sex trafficking cases brought under non-trafficking statutes. In these cases, penalties imposed ranged from probation to life imprisonment plus five years. During the reporting period, federal prosecutors secured life sentences and other significant terms This National Council of State Legislatures website defines human trafficking as follows > [@](#): > > Human trafficking is the control and exploitation of people for profit. As defined under U.S. federal law, victims of human trafficking include children involved in the sex trade, adults age 18 or over who are coerced or deceived into commercial sex acts, and anyone compelled into forced labor. > > Human trafficking has become an increased concern for many state legislators throughout the country. This has led to a proliferation of state laws; these laws attack the issue in varying ways. This document provides an abstract for each human trafficking law state by state. The laws are organized into the following six categories: > > 1.Laws criminalizing human trafficking and increasing penalties > 2.Laws creating task forces on trafficking, state commissions or committees > 3.Laws providing services and protections to victims of human trafficking > 4.Laws that prohibit destruction, concealment, removal or possession of any false passport, immigration or other government document > 5.Laws that establish extortion if threats to report immigration status > 6.Miscellaneous It kind of seems that the original “human trafficking” picture of exploited child prostitutes presented originally has morphed into including run of the mill pimping of volitional sex workers. Since then and now have the article’s findings that (in the US) this is in reality a relatively tiny problem with a lot of dollars and PR chasing it been disproved or not? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/2 "2014-10-12T22:08:20Z")
What the hell is “run of the mill pimping?” If you can’t quit without the threat of violence, it’s trafficking. Even if you are a sex worker, you get to choose. I agree that many numbers are inflated, but it definitely happens. They’ve been busting nail salons and “massage” parlors (where the owner holds everyone’s passport “for safekeeping”) left and right around here. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/3 "2014-10-13T00:19:08Z")
I still remember seeing documentary footage of good ole Pablo Escobar’s PATH train type ceramic-walled tunnel under the US-Mexican border. It went undetected for years because when each laborer finished their task, they were each sent out to a location for a _Tap!_ _Tap!_ final pay off. There’s a really good reason why McCain forced all that “South West Border” AML regulation. Its not his fault that w/i two months of implementing it, all their US money men had moved north to Seattle or East to Chicago. (you were wondering why that Huge spurt o’ murders happened last year? Thank the Cartels). In truth, if 100% of the SW border AML regs were adopted in all 50 states, the cartels would have to move their money men trying to send drug & human trafficking money to locations outside of the US in Canada, Europe or Asia. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/4 "2014-10-13T01:34:22Z")
We’ve had threads on this topic before and they get vitriolic. 16-year old coerced girl? “Whine, we just defined underage as 15 or less.” Woman coerced by drugs, threats, debts, or emotional weakness? “Whine, no handcuffs? no outside lock on her bedroom? no coercion!” We have one Doper who reported her experinece as a homeless youth; she could count her acquaintances who were working the streets and extrapolate. “Nanner, nanner, nanner. Anecdote’s not the singular of data!” The ignorance was stifling. Many Dopers obviously have spent little time in “certain parts of a city.” No one knows the exact numbers and you’ll need to define your terms. Do 18-year olds captive to their own immaturity count or only 15-year olds literally kept chained up? Anyway, the high estimates are probably too high. But the low estimates are way way too low. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/5 "2014-10-13T03:26:31Z")
I have actually been wanting to post a thread like this, because NGOs will just roll up in a random country and announce “100,000 citizens have been kidnapped and trafficked into the sex industry” and they never once provide any kind of basis for this figure. It is ludicrous, I’m not about to defend pimps or human traffickers but you can’t just pull a number out of your butthole. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/6 "2014-10-13T08:05:55Z")
Here’s the thing. If I wanted to find myself a grown-up prostitute, I think I could do so quite easily. I have done so a couple of times it in the past, though, admittedly not since several decades ago, and I never made a habit of it, but although the world has changed quite a lot since then, and although I have not made any deliberate efforts to keep up with how one finds oneself a prostitute, I have very little doubt that I could figure it out again quite easily if I wanted to. It was not hard to figure out, back when I was young and very naïve. I have also (again admittedly, long in the past) quite a few times been to bars or walked down streets where prostitutes would solicit business from me or other passing guys, sometimes quite persistently. (With just a couple of exceptions, I always either ignored them or turned them down, even though some were quite persistent.) I never saw anything, however, to suggest that any of them were being forced to prostitute themselves by men, or forced in any way, except perhaps by economic need. I suppose, in some cases, there may have been pimps in the background somewhere, but if so they were well out of sight, and in many cases I really find it very hard to believe that there was anything like that going on at all. The women (with maybe one exception - an offer I turned down) seemed to be in business for themselves, and fairly well in control of the transactions. (One of them I remember, had a large dog, presumably to keep the “Johns” in line.) More to the point, however, I was never solicited by anyone who could conceivably have been underage, and never heard a ghost of a hint of anyone who might be offering to find me sex with underage girls. Although, as I said, I think I could probably quite easily figure out how to find myself a grown-up prostitute right now, if I wanted to, I have absolutely no idea how I would find myself an _underage_ prostitute. The only possible ways I can think of to even look for one (like Googling), would, I should think, quite quickly get me arrested, and even if they somehow didn’t get me arrested, I have absolutely no confidence that they would actually work. I do not doubt that underage prostitutes (and, also, technically adult, but young and vulnerable, women forced into “sexual slavery”) do exist, but it seems to me that if they existed in large numbers, there would have to be a large market and some degree of not-too-thoroughly-concealed marketing for them. You would see some signs of it if (as I once occasionally did) you hung around places where prostitution goes on. I never saw any such signs. I can only imagine that if you really do want to find an underage “enslaved” prostitute, you have to know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone … and all those someones will have to have some degree of trust in the next guy down the line. Business does sometimes get done in that sort of way, I suppose, especially criminal business, but it does not get done efficiently, in mass amounts. It seems to me that if trafficked, underage prostitutes existed in large numbers in our society, many of us, or at least many men, and most men with any experience of the world of prostitution (even my quite limited sort of experience, as an observer and, on a very small handful of occasions, a client), would have occasionally been offered their services, or would know someone who had, or at least would have a pretty shrewd idea about how to go about finding them. I have never had a hint of such an offer (despite many “offers” from adult prostitutes - almost all refused), and I have no idea how I might go about finding such services. I conclude that they are very hard to come by, are probably only ever found via considerable persistence, and the taking of some serious risks, by people (who must, surely, be a tiny minority of men) who really, really crave such services, and that the numbers of people who provide the services (both the numbers of those who control the business, and the numbers of “slaves” they have to offer) are, therefore, quite small. In short, if there were thousands upon thousand of people involved in this trade, we would all know about it, and many or even most men would either have been offered the services, or would know someone who had. We all know about the illegal drug trade after all, and most people, even if they have never bought illegal drugs themselves, have been offered them or at least know people who have been offered them. It just does not seem to be like that with the “sex trafficking” trade, presumably because it does not exist on anything remotely approaching the same scale. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/7 "2014-10-13T11:13:54Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > We have one Doper who reported her experinece as a homeless youth; she could count her acquaintances who were working the streets and extrapolate. “Nanner, nanner, nanner. Anecdote’s not the singular of data!” The ignorance was stifling. …I know the exact thread you are referencing: and there was no ignorance involved. > **[I Pit idiots/hypocrites unconcerned about America's sex trafficking](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=610269)** > > I just read an article that staggered my imagination about forced prostitution in Connecticut. I know there have been at least two recent threads on this topic, but some responses deny the statistics, and some even take the opportunity to joke. Can... I would politely request that you not misrepresent what was said in that thread. If anyone wants to know what actually went down, I suggest they read the thread in question. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/8 "2014-10-13T13:23:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Approximately 300,000 children are at risk of being prostituted in the United States. (U.S. Department of Justice) This is the kind of thing that signals “hype” and not reality. Note that the line sounds like but does not say that there are 300,000 child prostitutes in the US. It says that there are 300,000 instances where some undefined risk factor for being prostituted exists, and what that risk factor might be is not mentioned. Couple that with the actual statistic of 222 cases that were definitely established of sex trafficking. Notice also that the 222 is not confined only to child prostitution, but all sex trafficking. It seems to me much more like “stranger danger” and the notion of the typical child molestor being a weirdo in a raincoat luring children into his car with candy. I am sure there are some cases of this, and they are as dreadful as they might be. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t mostly hype and hysteria. Same here, AFAICT. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/9 "2014-10-13T13:36:45Z")
Around here (Dallas and Houston), the primary mentions of this sort of thing are almost invariably in the context of immigrant women being transported here with promises of domestic help jobs, etc… and then being forced into sex work. Most commonly, it’s Mexican girls and teenagers (not women) being hoodwinked in Mexico, then forcibly transported here and set to work in sketchy brothels and in the back of Mexican bars. Or it’s Asian women having much the same kind of thing happen in massage parlors. I’d be curious to see if there’s really much in the way of human trafficking outside of the immigrant angles AND not including “run of the mill pimping”. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/10 "2014-10-13T13:39:20Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > (One of them I remember, had a large dog, presumably to keep the “Johns” in line.) A large dog isn’t going to help if the client has a gun. He can just shoot the dog and then rape the prostitute. The ‘anecdotes are no substitute for evidence’ thing works both ways, you know. I tend to agree that the estimates of forced prostitution / child trafficking are exaggerated by lobbying interests (as a great many social problems are), but just because the prostitutes you saw seemed to be in control of the situation, doesn’t mean all or most of them are. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/11 "2014-10-13T14:12:55Z")
I shop at Target all the time. Doesn’t make me an expert on international commerce. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/12 "2014-10-13T15:15:40Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > This is the kind of thing that signals “hype” and not reality. Note that the line sounds like but does not say that there are 300,000 child prostitutes in the US. It says that there are 300,000 instances where some undefined risk factor for being prostituted exists, and what that risk factor might be is not mentioned. From the other thread that was linked to, here’s an article on the source of that 300K number: [http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/](http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/13 "2014-10-13T15:37:11Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …I know the exact thread you are referencing: and there was no ignorance involved. > > [I Pit idiots/hypocrites unconcerned about America's sex trafficking - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=610269) > > I would politely request that you not misrepresent what was said in that thread. If anyone wants to know what actually went down, I suggest they read the thread in question. I wasn’t referring to that thread specifically, but please do read it. It contains posts like this one: > [@I Pit idiots/hypocrites unconcerned about America's sex trafficking](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-idiots-hypocrites-unconcerned-about-americas-sex-trafficking/583520/53): > > Here is a true story of what happened to a friend of mine. This girl who was 15 at the time was waiting for a few friends in a public place when she was nabbed by a pimp who held her, raped her and beat her for 3 days until she agreed to work for him. She was then held naked in a hotel room where Johns were brought in. After having told 3 johns that she was being held against her will, the third one did not carry out the deed, and grabbed her, took his coat, and put it over her naked body and helped her out the back stairwell of the hotel so she could escape. The two men before had sex with her, and one of the two had said that he’d already paid, so he wasn’t going to leave without having sex with her. > > After escaping out the fire escape of the hotel - running to a convenience store where the clerk called the police for her, she endured police who doubted her story, and did little to track down the pimp, despite the pimps name being known to police because this girl had previously ran away from home. > > It wasn’t until another girl was kidnapped and raped by the same pimp that any charges were laid, but only in the case of the other girl because her parents were more well off, and put pressure on the police. As for my friend, she never saw justice for her case. > > This was in 1987, and according to people I know who either advocate or even work in the sex trade, the only thing different now - is the ads in the back of newspapers and street workers have been mainly replaced by online ads. I remember driving through San Francisco’s theater district decades ago and seeing at least 100 streetwalkers. Perhaps there were other red-light districts as well. Add to this those “on other shifts”, several hundred working in advertised massage parlors, bars, as well as those more hidden and it’s easy to conclude that there are at least 1000 prostitutes working in San Francisco at any one time, probably much more. Because of the high turnover, you’d need to multiply by a largish factor to get women who have ever worked as prostitutes. Extrapolate to the entire U.S.A. and the number of prostitutes is certainly in 6 digits, and, even accounting that places like S.F. will have much more than “their share,” likely over a million altogether. How many of these are “coerced” or “underage”? I don’t know but the most criminal encounters will not be easily advertised or seen. And there are many 18-year olds who, through immaturity, drugs, debt, or threats are easily coerced. Are these not victims, or do only 15-year olds count? I’ve already stipulated that some of the most alarming numbers seem way off the mark. But one can reject specific numbers and still recognize that the problem is serious. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/14 "2014-10-13T15:43:52Z")
Despite being mis-used, “at risk of \_\_\_\_\_” is a useful thing to assess…it’s not just a meaningless number. I work on programs for people who undertake a pretty specific high-risk act. Knowing the risk factors and the numbers behind them help us understand if it makes more sense to put our resources into prevention or in to helping people who are already caught up in problems. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/15 "2014-10-13T15:50:03Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Here’s the thing. If I wanted to find myself a grown-up prostitute, I think I could do so quite easily. I have done so a couple of times it in the past, though, admittedly not since several decades ago, and I never made a habit of it, but although the world has changed quite a lot since then, and although I have not made any deliberate efforts to keep up with how one finds oneself a prostitute, I have very little doubt that I could figure it out again quite easily if I wanted to. It was not hard to figure out, back when I was young and very naïve. > > I have also (again admittedly, long in the past) quite a few times been to bars or walked down streets where prostitutes would solicit business from me or other passing guys, sometimes quite persistently. (With just a couple of exceptions, I always either ignored them or turned them down, even though some were quite persistent.) > > I never saw anything, however, to suggest that any of them were being forced to prostitute themselves by men, or forced in any way, except perhaps by economic need. I suppose, in some cases, there may have been pimps in the background somewhere, but if so they were well out of sight, and in many cases I really find it very hard to believe that there was anything like that going on at all. The women (with maybe one exception - an offer I turned down) seemed to be in business for themselves, and fairly well in control of the transactions. (One of them I remember, had a large dog, presumably to keep the “Johns” in line.) > > More to the point, however, I was never solicited by anyone who could conceivably have been underage, and never heard a ghost of a hint of anyone who might be offering to find me sex with underage girls. Although, as I said, I think I could probably quite easily figure out how to find myself a grown-up prostitute right now, if I wanted to, I have absolutely no idea how I would find myself an _underage_ prostitute. The only possible ways I can think of to even look for one (like Googling), would, I should think, quite quickly get me arrested, and even if they somehow didn’t get me arrested, I have absolutely no confidence that they would actually work. > > I do not doubt that underage prostitutes (and, also, technically adult, but young and vulnerable, women forced into “sexual slavery”) do exist, but it seems to me that if they existed in large numbers, there would have to be a large market and some degree of not-too-thoroughly-concealed marketing for them. You would see some signs of it if (as I once occasionally did) you hung around places where prostitution goes on. I never saw any such signs. I can only imagine that if you really do want to find an underage “enslaved” prostitute, you have to know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone … and all those someones will have to have some degree of trust in the next guy down the line. Business does sometimes get done in that sort of way, I suppose, especially criminal business, but it does not get done efficiently, in mass amounts. > > It seems to me that if trafficked, underage prostitutes existed in large numbers in our society, many of us, or at least many men, and most men with any experience of the world of prostitution (even my quite limited sort of experience, as an observer and, on a very small handful of occasions, a client), would have occasionally been offered their services, or would know someone who had, or at least would have a pretty shrewd idea about how to go about finding them. I have never had a hint of such an offer (despite many “offers” from adult prostitutes - almost all refused), and I have no idea how I might go about finding such services. I conclude that they are very hard to come by, are probably only ever found via considerable persistence, and the taking of some serious risks, by people (who must, surely, be a tiny minority of men) who really, really crave such services, and that the numbers of people who provide the services (both the numbers of those who control the business, and the numbers of “slaves” they have to offer) are, therefore, quite small. > > In short, if there were thousands upon thousand of people involved in this trade, we would all know about it, and many or even most men would either have been offered the services, or would know someone who had. We all know about the illegal drug trade after all, and most people, even if they have never bought illegal drugs themselves, have been offered them or at least know people who have been offered them. It just does not seem to be like that with the “sex trafficking” trade, presumably because it does not exist on anything remotely approaching the same scale. Have you actually spoken to some of those entrepreneurs you had dealings with? Coercion takes many forms, physical, mental, emotional, pharmaceutical… Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/16 "2014-10-13T16:17:52Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Have you actually spoken to some of those entrepreneurs you had dealings with? Coercion takes many forms, physical, mental, emotional, pharmaceutical… Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. True, but it’s also fair to ask where this (claimed) huge cohort of exploited underage sex workers is located. Based on news articles I’ve read on the topic, and even some discussions here prostitutes mainly use the web to market themselves these days and do not use pimps, and the notion of a pimp with a stable of prostitutes he is controlling is increasingly rare. If these underage sex workers are not on the street, not on the web, and more or less invisible to people like njtt who travel in areas where they are aggressively solicited by sex workers, and they aren’t showing up in crime statistics … where is this army of underage prostitutes? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/17 "2014-10-13T16:19:09Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > From the other thread that was linked to, here’s an article on the source of that 300K number: > [http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/](http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/) Thanks for this. It appears to be at best a wild exaggeration, as I expected. > [@even\_sven](#): > > Despite being mis-used, “at risk of \_\_\_\_\_” is a useful thing to assess…it’s not just a meaningless number. I work on programs for people who undertake a pretty specific high-risk act. Knowing the risk factors and the numbers behind them help us understand if it makes more sense to put our resources into prevention or in to helping people who are already caught up in problems. Certainly, but if one assesses risk factors and finds that one of them is having access to a car and living near Canada, and that the study was never peer-reviewed, then I wouldn’t make any decisions based on it at all. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/18 "2014-10-13T16:40:20Z")
Well, the risk factors in my case are basically being under 30 and from a certain country, so yeah, it can be rather broad. It’s still helpful to know how many people at risk there are and where they are conceptrated. It’s also helpful to have that baseline so you can do further study on who goes on the the risky thing and start to tease out why. Yes, better science would be better, but better science is expensive and nobody wants to fund studying human trafficking over actually combatting human trafficking. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/19 "2014-10-13T16:43:42Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Yes, better science would be better, but better science is expensive and nobody wants to fund studying human trafficking over actually combatting human trafficking. That’s often the problem, isn’t it - people want to spend tax money fixing a problem before they even know if it exists. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133/20 "2014-10-13T18:41:55Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I wasn’t referring to that thread specifically, but please do read it. It contains posts like this one: …you called out the other posters in that thread as ignorant. They were not. Quoting a particular post does not change that. > [@](#): > > How many of these are “coerced” or “underage”? I don’t know And lets just leave it at that. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-trafficking-in-the-us-huge-issue-involving-huge-numbers-or-highly-overblown/701133.md?page=2)