Public debate about prostitution law often collapses distinct issues into one moral argument. But criminal law is ultimately a tool designed to produce outcomes: reduced violence, improved reporting of serious crimes, and enforcement resources aimed at coercion and exploitation rather than ambiguity.

This article does not ask the reader to endorse any particular lifestyle or social norm. It asks a narrower, more legally grounded question: how do different legal frameworks affect safety, reporting, and enforcement outcomes in the real world.

1) Start With Common Ground

Sex trafficking involving force, fraud, coercion, or minors is a serious crime. Preventing exploitation and reducing violence are legitimate public interests. The only real question is whether a given legal framework advances those goals, or unintentionally undermines them.

In a prior article, I addressed why legal precision matters when trafficking and prostitution law are treated as the same category. If you want that background first, it is here:

Why Legal Precision Matters: Distinguishing Trafficking From Prostitution Law.

2) The Framework Question: What Are We Actually Comparing

Jurisdictions generally fall into a few broad approaches:

• Full criminalization (seller and buyer criminalized; broad enforcement authority),
• Partial criminalization (for example, criminalizing buyers or third parties; some activity remains illegal),
• Regulation (legal but subject to licensing, zoning, health rules, and enforcement mechanisms), or
• Decriminalization (removal of criminal penalties for consensual adult sex work, typically paired with targeted enforcement against coercion, trafficking, violence, and exploitation).

The point is not to pretend these models are identical in every place. The point is to evaluate what each model tends to do to the things the state says it cares about: safety, reporting, and effective targeting of coercion and exploitation.

3) Safety Outcomes: What the Evidence Commonly Associates With Criminalization

A consistent theme in public health and policy literature is that criminalization and repressive policing practices are associated with increased risk factors for violence and reduced safety. One widely cited systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized evidence on how sex work laws and policing practices affect safety, health, and access to services:

Platt et al., “Associations between sex work laws and sex workers’ health: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” PLOS Medicine (2018).

That review is notable not because it “solves” the policy debate, but because it focuses on outcomes rather than moral labeling. It examines pathways through which enforcement practices can influence violence exposure, condom use, and access to health services.

4) Reporting and Cooperation: Why Legal Risk Can Reduce Information Flow

If a person reasonably fears arrest or prosecution, that fear can discourage reporting of violence, robbery, coercion, extortion, or exploitation. Even when everyone agrees that trafficking and violence should be targeted, broad criminalization can have the unintended consequence of reducing cooperation and information flow—especially from the very populations most likely to have visibility into coercive actors.

This is not a moral claim; it is an incentive-structure claim. In any enforcement system, people are more likely to report serious wrongdoing when doing so does not place them at risk of criminal liability.

5) Public Health as a Proxy for Safety and Visibility

Public health agencies sometimes evaluate legal frameworks through measurable outcomes like HIV risk, condom negotiation power, and access to services. The World Health Organization has noted the relationship between criminalization, stigma, and vulnerability among sex workers, and it summarizes modelling and evidence-informed recommendations regarding decriminalization and violence reduction:

World Health Organization — Sex workers (Global HIV, Hepatitis and STIs Programme).

Separate WHO guidance has also included good-practice recommendations that explicitly support decriminalization as part of improving access to health services and reducing harm:

WHO/NCBI (Good practice recommendations) — “All countries should work toward decriminalization of sex work…”

6) Enforcement Outcomes: Targeting Coercion Versus Expanding Discretion

From a legal-systems perspective, one recurring concern with broad criminalization is not simply that enforcement exists, but that enforcement can become increasingly dependent on discretion, inference, and context rather than clear harm elements.

A framework that narrows criminal law toward coercion, violence, exploitation, and trafficking has a practical advantage: it aims enforcement resources at cases where the justification for state power is strongest and the harm is clearest. The argument for decriminalization, in its most legally defensible form, is not permissiveness—it is focus.

7) A Cautious Note About “Trafficking Numbers”

Serious discussions should avoid pretending there is one definitive dataset that perfectly measures trafficking prevalence across legal frameworks. Measuring trafficking is inherently difficult. But difficulty of measurement does not eliminate the need to evaluate outcomes. It simply requires intellectual honesty: careful language, reliable sourcing, and an emphasis on mechanisms (reporting incentives, safety, visibility, enforcement focus) rather than absolute claims.

For a concise, professional discussion linking decriminalization arguments to trafficking vulnerability and reporting incentives, see:

AMA Journal of Ethics — “Decreasing Human Trafficking through Sex Work Decriminalization” (2017).

8) Conclusion: Legal Frameworks Should Be Judged by Outcomes

The state has legitimate interests: reducing violence, reducing exploitation, improving reporting, and targeting coercion. The question is not whether those interests matter. The question is which legal frameworks best advance them.

A growing body of public health and policy-oriented legal analysis suggests that broad criminalization can push activity into less visible spaces, reduce reporting, and increase vulnerability—while frameworks that reduce criminal exposure for consensual adult activity may improve safety and cooperation and allow enforcement to concentrate on coercion, violence, and trafficking.

In other words, the decriminalization debate is not only moral or cultural. It is structural. And structure determines outcomes.

Image Credit: OpenAI DALL·E.