Persuasive Essay On Sex Trafficking

The penalties to traffickers is inadequate and often the victims of sex trafficking are punished. Prostitution is a punishable crime no matter what your age. Many times the children are punished for prostituting because either police officers are inadequately trained to deal with sex trafficking or because that is the only way they can get them away from their pimp/trafficker. “This statute explicitly recognizes that existing laws often fail to protect victims of trafficking and, paradoxically, often punish victims more severely than they do traffickers.” (Hodge, 148) Symbolic interactionists would argue that by failing the children with the laws that punish them harsher than the actual perpetrator, these kids develop a complex due to labeling

We cannot. These children who constantly see the laws and adults in their lives fail them will no longer ask for help and fall into that life of crime. In order to reduce the amount of sex trafficking that happens to America’s children, we must address the supply and demand. If we reduce the demand, then we will reduce the supply of children across America. Cracking down on solicitors of children will help reduce the demand which in turn will decrease the supply. Harsher punishments for those trafficking and soliciting children will also help reduce the supply/demand of

“First, the research reveals that prosecution and sentencing of sex trafficking offenses relied predominately on pre-TVPA statutes even after passage of TVPA and subsequent reauthorizations acts.” (Albonetti,201) It is hard to establish whether this law is actually working as it is hard to establish the victims of sex trafficking. If the penalties for sex traffickers/solicitors are not followed to the harshest extent, then the supply/demand will not decrease. There are however, programs out there to help the victims of sex trafficking. Programs such as Creating hope through Outreach, Options, Services, and Education for Children and Youth Grant Program; (SNAP) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and others. “Nonetheless, little is known about the extent to which these services and benefits are accessed by child victims/survivors of sex trafficking, and whether victims and service providers are aware of such programs.” (Finklea et al., 24) Making people more aware of what is going on around them, sufficient training for social workers and police officers would make a big difference in how these cases are handled and also in the lives of these children. Funding in order to help victims of trafficking and provide services to them is out there. “DOJ funds have been used by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) to provide services to noncitizens and, beginning in FY2009, to