Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. – Václav Havel
For several years now, I’ve been pointing out examples of the increasingly-bizarre claims of “sex trafficking” hysterics; regular readers have watched the claimed numbers of “sex slaves” rise along with their supposed number of clients and their pretended income, while at the same time their “average age” has dropped and the imagined abuses to which they are subjected have become ever more horrifying. It is the natural tendency of rumors to grow in absurdity, and moral panics only collapse when the myths become too ridiculous for the average person to believe any longer; every time a claim ratchets up to a new level more people become skeptics, and the process continues until the number of True Believers drops below the critical mass required to sustain mass hysteria. Every new inflation of the myth is therefore a good thing, because every one hastens the day when the whole thing collapses.
There was a perfect example of this just over a week ago, but the path to it began back in 2001 with the publication of Estes & Weiner’s “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico”. In this farrago of breathless nonsense they claimed that somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 “children” (a category that to the authors includes both adolescents and adults below 21) were currently “at risk” for “sexual exploitation”. Their idea of “risk factors” included things like having access to a car and living within a short drive of either the Canadian or Mexican border, and their definition of “sexual exploitation” included stripping, consensual homosexual relations and merely viewing porn. In fact, they considered “sex trafficking” to be the rarest form of exploitation; in 2011, Estes estimated the number of legal minors actually abducted into “sex slavery” as “very small…We’re talking about a few hundred people.” But by that time, his “estimate” had taken on a life of its own: in the course of ten years “all people under 21” became “children”, “at risk” became “currently involved”, “having some sort of sexual contact with older people” morphed into “coerced prostitution”, “at any given time” grew into “per year”, and the estimate was usually quoted at the high end. By 2011 we were seeing nonsense like “100,000 – 300,000 children between the ages of 12 and 14 years old are victims of the child sex trade in this country” or “100,000 American children are…sold into a life of sex slavery every year”, and by last year it was usually something like “300,000 children at an average age of 13”.
But in November, this meme underwent the strangest metamorphosis yet. Texas congressman Ted Poe, eager to boast of the power of government to destroy people’s lives, stated not that there were 300,000 sex trafficking victims per year, but rather 300,000 sex trafficking prosecutions per year…quite a different claim. And, I might add, an unwise one; while the usual nonsense is supported by hand-waving about how “trafficking is a hidden crime” (therefore we don’t need to prove any of our statements about it), prosecutions are official proceedings for which records are kept. Had the news media in this country not degenerated into the slave-parrots of government this would have immediately been fact-checked, but instead the opposite happened; on Friday the 22nd the Dallas Morning News published an editorial which repeated Poe’s error, further distorting it to “In Houston alone, about 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year.” It proved one of the tipping-points I mentioned in the first paragraph, something so absurd that no rational person could believe it. And as a result, even people outside the sex worker rights sphere took note and wrote about it. The story was first mentioned on Twitter by Dr. Laura Agustín, and I pointed out that the number is 1/7 of the population of Houston. The next morning Amy Alkon published a column on it:
…[including] uncaught…[sex traffickers] on top of the 300,000…suggests that a vast segment of Houston’s population…maybe 25 percent…is engaged in…sex trafficking…a Bureau of Justice Statistics report…[states that there were only] 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking…between January 2008 and June 2010…Hey, Dallas Morning News…should we send over a math teacher and the Jaws of Life to help pull your staffers’ heads out of their asses?…
Walter Olson soon linked that post, and then Texas criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett blew the claim to smithereens:
…according to Texas Office of Court Administration statistics, 2,650 new felony cases…and 5,819 new misdemeanor cases were filed in Harris County in 2012…So the total of all new cases…is nowhere near the 300,000 sex trafficking cases asserted by the Dallas Morning News. According to the Harris County District Clerk’s website, there hasn’t been a prosecution for sex trafficking in Houston since 2010. But when people say “sex trafficking,” they may mean “compelling prostitution.” There have been two compelling-prostitution cases filed in Harris County this year. Not 300,000. Two…
On Sunday, the News “corrected” the story, but I’ve become more diligent lately and had already secured the screengrab I linked above. Then on Monday, Techdirt made sure it got national attention:
Editorials written in support of legislation are prone to conjuring up hysterical…numbers…But the…writer should at least make sure the numbers being used don’t immediately prompt incredulous laughter from any reader with a couple of functioning brain cells…[the claim] that Houston prosecutes nearly 900 sex traffickers a day…365 days a year…has since been removed…
The article extensively quotes Bennett’s analysis, including a reference (and links) to yours truly; it also links Alkon’s post. I’d have been happier if an even bigger media outlet picked it up from Techdirt, but one can’t have everything.
Of course, this is just one incident, and it isn’t even on most people’s radar. But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be. Because it isn’t an isolated incident; it’s part of a trend which will be producing many more equally-egregious idiocies in the coming year. Every one of them will wake up more people, and soon every one will lead to articles like the ones above. And in about three more years by my prediction (and I see no reason to revise it yet), the bubble will implode and the busybodies will all move on to worrying about the next big bogeyman.
Thanks Maggie for speaking the truth as you know it. Kudos on the Cato Unbound essay. Cogent as always. Looking forward to seeing how the debate unfolds.
I would love to share your optimism about the course of this debate at the societal level. But when universities are unveling “Center[s] for Combating Human Trafficking” [http://www.wichita.edu/thisis/home/?u=humantrafficking] that are thinly veiled abolistionist advocacy organizations, it makes me doubt. That organization claims it “serves as a non-partisan think tank and resource bank of anti-human trafficking expertise” but is directed by an avowed abolitionist (Karen Countryman-Roswurm), whose academic credentials consist of extensive MSW experience dealing with at risk youth and a recently minted Ph.D. Correct me if I’m wrong but I find no evidence of publications. This is despite the fact that her organization claims to have validated “the only quantifiable human trafficking assessment that exists” [called the DMST-RA/DMST-RRA]. Validation requires peer review and transparency, and dissertation committes don’t consitute peer review. This is only one of many egregious and deceptive statements on their website. It should be apparent to all that academic integrity is not consistent with absence of such trasparency. How can quality, unbiased research take place in an avowedly biased institute? Likewise, absent this quality, how can its human subjects research be ethical?
Pardon my rant on this subject…but then there is France too…
Reread the epigram, and meditate upon it. 😉
Slightly off-topic, but it’s nice to see I’m not the only one who remembers the Mel Brooks Hitchcock parody film High Anxiety!
That makes three of us. Awesome graphic for this article.
Thank y’all! Once I had the title and epigram I immediately thought of it. Do you realize it featured the first cinematic use of the “enhance” trope?
Let’s say it is just 1000 kids. Still worth getting pretty freaked out about, right?
Nope. Getting “freaked out” never helps anyone. I also suggest you read “Straining at Gnats” before continuing down the “for the children!” rabbit hole.
Worth doing something about it, certainly. Worth destroying millions of lives and trampling all over civil rights? Hell no!
Unfortunately that just feeds into the
* We must do something about this terrible problem!
* THIS IDEA is “something”
* Therefore we must do it!
pattern of really awful responses to situations that politicians tend toward.
Furthermore, if you don’t understand a problem, you can’t fix it. People who have tried to understand this problem have generally concluded that a very specific group of teenagers are vulnerable to sexual exploitation in its true sense, and that generally means runaways or those whose home lives are so abusive that they want to run away with very good cause.
These teenagers are vulnerable because the law doesn’t protect them. It’s near impossible for a teenager to legally escape from abusive parents unless there’s an insane amount of proof that they’re abusive in ways the law cares about, and in most cases there isn’t.
They can’t work legal jobs because that will attract attention and get them forcibly taken back to their parents/guardians, so of course they’re drawn to illegal work. Illegal work is ripe for abuse because of the lack of recourse that the workers have, and the desperation of the people involved. They’re also drawn to people who may be able to support them “off the books”, and abusers know this.
Fix this problem, and pretty much the whole issue goes away. Nobody’s kidnapping happy kids and forcing them into abusive situations.
Now THAT I did not know!
What I did not know about was that High Anxiety was the first movie to use “enhance.” I’d heard somewhere that it was Blade Runner.
Nope. And what made it even funnier was that since this was before digital imaging, it was done by blowing up a photo to absolutely ridiculous size.
I remember watching this thing where a guy is trying to find out where this video tape of a play rehearsal was made. At one point he asks his friend to pause the tape.
“OK, can you zoom in on that part, and enhance it?”
“No.”
“No?!”
“Who do you think I am, the FBI?”
I laughed so hard I had to rewind to catch what I’d missed.
All this trafficking! It’s a plague! An epidemic! 900 prosecutions per day, in Houston alone, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The merest fraction, I tell you! Those are just the ones who got caught! Here’s the thing. I’m 59 years old. I’ve lived in this trafficked-out country all that time — at some point, I must have been trafficked, too. Probably several times. Why can’t I remember it? Maybe it was so awful, I’ve repressed and blocked-out the memories, right?
Actually, I’ve just figured it out. Back in ’06, I had a knee surgery. Again, in 2012, I had a shoulder surgery. Both times, there was a period of hours (well, a couple of hours, anyway) in which I was totally drugged and have no memory. I bet that’s when I got trafficked! Since I’m male, and women don’t really buy sex, I also have to assume it was male homosexual-type trafficking. Now, I can’t say I noticed my rear end being sore when I woke up or anything, but that’s probably because I was still being given pain meds. Trafficked and doped up! I’m a victim!!!
Sure hope it was fun.
I know it makes no sense, but that’s just what they would want you to believe, isn’t it. This just shows how deep the conspiracy goes. There isn’t one shred of evidence that disproves trafficking hysteria that doesn’t serve the agenda of disproving trafficking hysteria.
Numbers and Prostitution. That’s how a newspaper can deserve two Penn & Teller episodes in one BS sentence.
To be fair, 1/7 might be an accurate number of people who are persecuted through these policies, rather than prosecuted. In having to live with the risk that might be hauled in front of some state morality tribunal.
A truly great article Maggie. Thank you.
Oh, we got trouble!
Right here in River City!
We got Trouble with a capital T
And that rhymes with T
And that stands for Trafficking!
Same old song, new verses …
These are the same myths that were told about drug users before legalization became an acceptable point of view. Before that they were told about Communists, and every other group that Big Brother and his fans have singled out for Two Minutes of Hate.
As Harry Potter put it, I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thank you.
I think it is great that Maggie got linked back on an article. I posted on a couple of sites noting that by making prostitution legal for the sex worker (trafficked slave) but arresting the clients as in “The Swedish model”, is putting Female sex workers on the same intellectual level as dogs or sheep as obviously, animals can’t consent. Seems that would be a good point for sex workers to bring up when challenging anti-sex feminists.
[…] re: sex trafficking in US fast spiraling into absurdity. Keep going [Maggie McNeill, earlier] “Perverse Incentives: Sex Work and the Law” [Cato Unbound symposium] […]
[…] by Maggie McNeill […]
When we hear that mainstream media and math professors are in on the conspiracy…
No wait, that won’t be enough to knock it down. However, it might be enough to get mainstream media to quit promoting the nonsense themselves.
Really good work.
The problem here is not the weaponry used in this effort, it’s the people driving the “WarOnWhores”. They’ve already adapted tactics once (public catching on to our sexwork persecution? no worries, we’ll relabel the Great Crusade as being “anti-trafficking to protect the children”).
It was still WarOnWhores, because the sheep are looking at the names, not the substance. We’re getting that here in the shape of the Immigration Act(Antiwhore) and the Investigatory Powers bill(mass spying on everyone).
The goons behind the politics lulling the sheeple aren’t stupid; the direct WoW approach was being sniffed out, they rebranded it as antitrafficking and misused the weapons against sexworkers. They absolutely will repeat that tactic *before* the trafficking propaganda gets debunked/into the sheeple’s eye.
I expect the next one will be Tax Evasion; that’s something that the sheeple are getting hot about, and the HMRC here in the UK pretty much have all the power needed to seize anything you own to settle your tax bill. They can even persue your estate, so death is no escape. That’s the next shit sandwich if you ask me. The HMRC even have the legal precedent of *back dating your taxes owing* after the fact, so called retroactive application. 😠☹
Then add VAT due on personal services. And add for-profit prisons. So jail time costs the criminal, not the state.