Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak are joined by Bradley Myles to discuss the depth of decriminalization laws. Brad has served one of the country’s leading anti-trafficking organizations, Polaris, for 15 years and is currently a strategic consultant through his firm, Meora Global, which optimizes more coherent collective efforts against human trafficking. Together they discuss different actors in the sex trafficking ecosystem and how decriminalization laws and the equality model both impact those actors.

Key Points

The equality model, also known as the Nordic model or partial decrim, decriminalizes the act of directly selling sex and offers support services for individuals who wish to leave the sex trade. However, it would still remain illegal for pimping, owning a brothel, or buying sex.

Resources

197 – Legalization or Decriminalization: What Does it All Mean?

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Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is Episode 219, The Equality Model: A Paradigm Change to Reduce Sex Trafficking.

Production Credits [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Dave [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, today someone who has made a big difference in ending human trafficking. I’m so glad to welcome a wonderful expert to the show today, Bradley Myles. Bradley is the former CEO of Polaris, serving one of the country’s leading anti-trafficking organizations for 15 years. He helped launch the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline at Polaris, a 24/7 live operation that identified and responded to more than 50,000 cases of human trafficking nationwide. And he’s formed partnerships with over 3,000 NGOs and law enforcement, and received more than 10,000 calls directly from survivors, and analyzed a typology of 25 major human trafficking markets in the US. Bradley Myles has served as an advisor, coach, and technical subject matter expert on human trafficking, gender-based violence, and social entrepreneurship to multiple government and non-government organizations in the anti-trafficking field, including Freedom Forward, AnnieCannons, Freedom United, The Sanar Institute, and the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery. Currently, he’s a strategic consultant through his firm Meora Global, which provides support on strategic planning and envisioning, scaling and growth for social impact, leadership coaching, sector wide mobilization, venture philanthropy in the human trafficking space, and optimizing more coherent collective efforts against human trafficking. Brad, we’re so glad to welcome you to the show.

Brad [00:02:13] Glad to be here. Thrilled to join you all.

Sandie [00:02:15] Brad and I have known each other a really long time, Dave. In fact, I remember when the hotline number 888-3737-888, just so my listeners will check that box because they know how much I promote that. When that number started and I was the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force administrator, someone saw some of your statistics and they extrapolated from the number of calls from Orange County that there was more trafficking in Orange County than any place else in California, even than L.A. And I reminded them that we were promoting it at every event 2 and 3 times. So, it’s just another example of how messy trying to use statistics can be.

Dave [00:03:04] Very true, sometimes when I was at Polaris, we would say call volume doesn’t necessarily equal prevalence. It might be more a reflection of which communities are doing a better job promoting the number. And it also might be it might be a reflection of prevalence, but you shouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that because calls are spiking in one area, that that’s where the most trafficking is happening, but it could be the case. The underlying importance is the importance of data and that more data is needed in this sector. Data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline is one of the important data sources along with many others. But I know that many different communities rely on data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and I think that’s a good thing.

Sandie [00:03:54] Well, and in another podcast, we will explore data and prevalence strategies because that is an emerging priority need, I believe. But today, we’re going to talk about the equality model. A couple of months ago, we interviewed Dr. Donna Hughes from Rhode Island University and we talked a little about the various models of decriminalization and legalization in the context of commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution. And so, we want to look at it from a different perspective today. And so, I thought we could start by asking you to kind of give us an overview of your understanding of the conversation in the legalization decriminalization community right now.

Brad [00:04:47] Sure. Well, I think that it’s very important when having this conversation to realize that there are multiple different actors in the sex trade and in the broader sex trafficking ecosystem that are impacted by these policy discussions. And its way too simplistic, and in fact, inaccurate, to think that these bills are only about the person selling sex and whether or not the person selling sex should be criminalized by law enforcement or decriminalized by law enforcement. I think superficially, that’s what most people when they hear about these bills, they think, oh, well, maybe we’re just going to decriminalize people selling sex. But make no mistake, many of these bills and much of this conversation is about whether or not pimping should be a crime or not, whether or not brothel owning should be a crime or not, and whether or not sex buying should be a crime or not. In addition to whether or not the person selling sex should be held criminally liable or not. So, we’re talking about at least four different areas...