On Thursday, the D.C. City Council held a committee hearing to consider passing a bill that would turn the national’s capital into a mecca for sex tourism.

The benign-sounding proposed law, the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019 will deliver neither community safety nor improved health.

As professors of public policy and law and longtime students of the problem of human trafficking, organized crime, and the sale of sexual services, our research suggests that passage of this law threatens our community. Organized crime will rise, the exploitation of the most vulnerable in our community will grow, and the health and well-being of residents will be undermined.

Violence is inherent in prostitution in D.C., as local survivors attest. Tina Frundt runs Courtney’s House, a long-term shelter housing many minors who seek to escape the exploitation of prostitution. She recently wrote that the sex trade industry simply cannot be fixed by regulation because it is a trade that by its very nature causes physical and psychological trauma to those in it.

This law is especially poorly conceived. It proposes to abolish existing law first and then to establish a task force to study the problem of legalizing prostitution, brothel-keeping, and the purchase of sexual services. This sequencing is the antithesis of the formulation of good policy.

Even so, any well-designed and informed task force would reveal why the passage of this law would be devastating for our residents, especially vulnerable minority youth.

This proposed bill does nothing to address the social and medical needs of the most vulnerable. Routinely exposed to violence and disease, many sex workers are even forced by their pimps to sell sexual services while pregnant. D.C. already has the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States, double that of the rest of the country and resembling the rates of a developing country. Existing statistics reveal that maternal mortality is disproportionately high among black women, the same population that is also forced by pimps to work on the streets while pregnant.

Apart from a few counties in Nevada, no American city has chosen to legalize all aspects of the sale of sexual services. Other urban centers have rejected such legislation because research and experience show that decriminalizing prostitution makes communities less safe.

The passage of this law would make D.C. a magnet for traffickers seeking to sell their victims and for customers who would be free to buy the services of exploited individuals with impunity. These sex-buyers are more likely to have arrest records, felonies, acts of violence against women, and to have been subjects of restraining orders. Whom would they prey upon? Not only would our vulnerable minority citizens suffer, but the impunity for the traffickers would result in the import of vulnerable economically disadvantaged people to our city as well as exploited immigrants lacking the right to work or stay in this country.

Legalization in Europe has created a large and illegal secondary market in minors and foreigners who are trafficked and controlled by organized crime. The same problems would occur here as sex buyers would also want to buy from younger women who can’t sell themselves legally or who want specific services that also might be unpalatable for women who have control over their own bodies.

In Europe's two-tier system, the “legal market” does not keep up with demand. A small portion of prostitutes sell sexual services legally and voluntarily, and a much larger secondary market has developed of individuals sold by pimps and traffickers. The individuals these latter sell are minors or foreigners who lack the right to work in the countries where they are living.

But conditions in D.C. are very different from the countries in Western Europe. In those countries, there are many social welfare protections. Individuals who engage in sex work have affordable and accessible medical care. In countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, sex workers are eligible for pension plans.

None of this exists in the D.C. proposal. We cannot replicate the European system in a society such as ours that provides so few social benefits for the poor and minorities most represented among those selling sexual services.

Human traffickers, often very astute business people, would seize on this opportunity. D.C. would become a mecca for sex tourism, as it would be the only city in the country with legal prostitution. As a destination for conventions and sporting events, it is a natural target for human traffickers as seen in other locales.

This bill claims to be limited to legalizing only voluntary prostitution, but pimps and traffickers go to great efforts to disguise their coercion and police need probable cause to investigate crimes of coercion. With the new legislation, if they have probable cause of prostitution but suspect trafficking, they will be unable to move forward to protect the victim.

Who are this law's winners and losers? At least the losers are clear. They are the most vulnerable in our society: minors and illegal immigrants, forced to prostitute themselves and having no voice. The winners of this legislation would be organized crime and gangs trafficking in human individuals for sexual exploitation. Is that the climate we want to foster in our nation’s capital?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/what-would-really-happen-if-dc-legalized-prostitution