"The report includes the story of an American girl named Harriet who ran away from home at 11 and was pimped out by a man in his thirties. "The police arrested Harriet when she was 13 and charged her with committing prostitution," it says. "They made no efforts to find her pimp." She was sentenced to 18 months' probation, even though she wasn't old enough to legally consent to sex.
That story is one of many horrors recounted in this mammoth document, a compendium of the trafficking situation in just about every country in the world. According to the report, which measures trafficking for both sex bondage and forced labor, 12.3 million people are trapped in modern slavery worldwide. Yet across the globe, only 4,166 trafficking prosecutions were successful in 2009, suggesting that the vast majority of perpetrators are operating with impunity."
In many cases street prostitutes are criminals but in many cases thet are victims.
The justice system has a two-fold purpose and that is to punish and correct. Too often the emphasis is placed on the punish part without any effort to correct the errarnt behaviour. We need a better system.
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