Ross Kemp on trafficking

Last night on Sky 1 there was a documentary about human trafficking. I didn't see it but yesterday I read the article in the Mirror newspaper. Before I read it I thought it was going to be the usual sensationalist rubbish but in fact it was more reasoned than most.

He wrote that we don't know how many people have been trafficked into the UK illegally. He didn't use false statistics as have so many commentators on the issue. He didn't condemn men who pay for sex, as long as it is consensual. He wrote about other forms of trafficking apart from sex trafficking. There were a few paragraphs about Vietnamese teenagers locked into marijuana factories. There was a mention of domestic servitude.

Farmers come in for some criticism "There are a lot of farmers out there, as well as others in the agricultural sector, who need to take a good, hard look at themselves and the things that they do." A bit harsh on farmers, you might think, but if you have read about exploitation of workers in the agricultural sector he has a point.

Most people think that Eastern European farm workers in the UK have a 9 to 5 job. If your read what Felicity Lawrence has found out about it, you find that they might have to work 12 hours one day and then not get any work for the next 3 days. And they have to pay rent on substandard shared accommodation whether they are given work or not. That's not the worst of it - read Felicity Lawrence.

Ross mentions the Chinese cockle pickers who died in Morecambe Bay in 2004. At least 21 people died. They had all been trafficked. "Some bosses believe they can't afford to employ someone legitimately - so they employ them illegally."

I have written in previous posts that I suspect that in some communities in the UK such as the West African community prostitution can be underground. This is an important point because some radical feminists believe that prostitution cannot be driven underground, by banning it or banning advertisement of it.

It can never be truly underground they say because if punters can find prostitutes then so can the police and outreach workers. As I said this is not true of drug dealing so why would it be true of prostitution. Drug addicts can find drug dealers but the police find it more difficult.

Ross seems to understand this. "Language and cultural barriers make it very difficult to get inside many communities, particularly those from Nigeria, China and south east Asia." It suspect that in some communities prostitution is not advertised but spread by word of mouth.

The one thing I do think is incorrect about Ross's article is when he says "Some of the girls have sex with 40 men in a day, sometimes more". From what I know of prostitution, brothels just don't have that many customers, especially since the recession. The busiest prostitutes in the UK would be the ones in Soho. They might have 20 customers a day if they're busy, probably double the number of ones in suburban brothels.

Trafficking and coercion do happen, in the sex industry and in other industries. It happens with children, teenagers and adults, as Ross says. In the sex industry coercion is infrequent with adults, even less frequent with teenagers, and happens hardly at all with children. That doesn't mean we should be complacent. We should strive to eliminate coercion. However, trying to criminalize punters would be as stupid as trying to criminalize people who want to eat cockles.

You might not think that a soap opera actor would not make a good journalist. However, he seems to make a better journalist than some professional journalists like Kirsty Whalley. She has a hidden agenda; she wants to ban prostitution and is using false statistics and the issue of trafficking to try to attain that goal.