Letter to the Editor: Response to 'Gray Areas Matter: Prostitution'

John Little’s column is missing an extremely important piece of information: While he is correct that criminalizing people in prostitution is not the answer, he is missing a vital middle ground between fully decriminalizing or legalizing the sex trade and full criminalization. The Equality Model, also known as the Nordic Model, is a third legal framework that addresses the needs of people in the sex trade by offering medical, legal and social services to address the reasons people end up engaged in prostitution. While the Equality Model decriminalizes those who are selling sex, this model continues to hold sex buyers, pimps and other exploiters accountable through criminal sanctions.

When the state decriminalizes the entire sex market, it decriminalizes sex buyers, pimps and other exploiters. Full decriminalization of the sex trade is dangerous and harmful. The sex trade, a multi-billion dollar industry, works like any other market, following economic principles of supply and demand.

As a society, if we allow the state to profit and normalize sex buying, we only create a greater demand. Pimps and traffickers meet the increased demand by increasing the “supply” which is filled by women and girls of color, members of the LGBTQ community and other vulnerable members of society.

Many countries around the world, including Sweden, Norway, France and Canada, among others, have adopted the Equality Model because there is strong data to support its success in combatting sex trafficking. Countries that have legalized prostitution such as Germany and the Netherlands have created a legalized industry of mega brothels that have fueled and increased trafficking and exploitation in those countries. It is time for the United States to wake up to the harms of the commercial sex industry and for our states to adopt the Equality Model.