Banning this vice too makes it worse

Maria Carlshamre MEP has some interesting ideas. She also keeps interesting company.
A prominent member of the women’s committee, Carlshamre was recently convicted of financial irregularities, basically declared a bankrupt, and was nudged out of her party back home, the Swedish liberals, a few weeks ago.
Having realigned herself with a new party on the Swedish scene called Feminist Initiative, the former journalist, a rather single-note politician, remains in the European parliament - against the wishes of the Folkpartiet, those Swedish liberals, who say she was elected on a mandate for them and them only. But she remains in the parliament's liberal group ALDE.
So what is her new berth like? The Swedish feminist movement is not short of firebrands, including the head of the women's shelter organisation was was secretkly filmed calling all men "walking dildos" and gthe Uppsala university academic - a professor, no less - who says there are a satanic rituals carried out in the woods by gangs of Swedish men; without providing proof.
Carlshamre's new party is led by the most successful feminist of her generation, 58-year-old Gudrun Schyman, an ex alcoholic best known for stripping off her underwear and urinating half naked over a TV star's shoes at a society cinema premiere. But before launchinng Feminist initiative, she led Sweden's communist party to record election results, combining a devil-may-care charisma with in-your-face feminism - as if Sweden wasn't already the world's most egalitarian country. Another thing she has in common with Carlshamre uis that she, too, has been convicted of financial crimes - fiddling her taxes. As the Swedish tabloids put it: "New women's party headed by Eco (economic) bandits!"
One of the party's leitmotif policies is to take a hard line on prostitution. Sweden already has the toughest laws on prostitution anywhere - men can actually go to jail for it - but Schyman wants to export the laws Europe-wide. Whether the stance is a popular or not with the cowed Swedish electorate, her attacks on Germany's liberal brothel regime expected to benefit from the world cup have earnt her plenty of publicity, Carlshamre will be doing her bit: the latest entry on her website says she is in Frankfurt talking to prostitutes organisations.
Since legal prostitution is partly an issue of political philosophy, where the continental and Swedish approaches do not meet, Carlshmre frequently argues that a ban on prostitution reduces sex trafficking - which is illegal everywhere.
As evidence, she quotes a report ordered by the parliament's women's committee, and carried out by a network of sociology researchers called Transcrime.
This argument is worth examining. In fact, her assertion might not be in the Satanic rituals league of complete bollocks, but her argument does not stand up. For the report shows that prostitutes trafficked to sweep-it-under the carpet Sweden have a worse existence than prostitutes trafficked elsewhere. According to the small print of a survey, violence levels of women trafficked to Sweden is 50% higher than those who go to Germany, and they get to keep less of their money.
Reasons? There is actually a body of literature on this, and the wisdom of reducing the wicked consequences of prostitution by illegalising it is by no means established. A Swedish female academic, Petra Ostergren, who has written extensively on prostitution, has a few suggestions why women trafficked to Sweden get a worse deal. Because prostitution has been driven off the streets,women are more dependent on pimps, who can beat women with greater impunity since they are afraid of going to the police because they will be deported. Street prostitution, for all its sordidness, at least alows trafficked women to assess the customer. When it is done over the internet or via pimps, the first she gets to see of his customer is when he has a foot in the door. Another reason is that the good hearted customer who might in other countries have warned police he suspects a woman he uses of being trafficked is to afraid of reporting to the police since he himself may be jailed.
Sweden's "success" at reducing visible trafficking is often trupted as a argument foro exporting its model elsewhere, but it ain't that simple. As the report admits, the trafficking has gone underground now, and what you don't know you don't know.
Those closer to the scene that MEPS and party leaders are in fact sceptical of a hardline prostitution aproach: prostitutes themselves. While they condemn trafficking, incidentally, many take pride in the fact that it is a profession. They are in fact rather insulted by the likes of Schyman and Carlshamre sopeaking on their behalf and saying it leads to general depravity including, ironically, alcoholism.
All this would have mattered less if it were a domestic issue only; but tyhe Swedish anti prostitution a argument has travelled well to at least one country - the UK. A white paper launched by Home Ofice Minister Fiona MacTaggart earlier this year plans to go down precisely the Swedish route, marking a turnaorund from ideas floated during the Blunkett years when liberalisation on the continental model was on the cards.
The British police would love a hardline aproach to prostitution.
Opinion in the UK has already been warmed up by a number of censorious articles in the press - ranging from the Guardian to the Telegraph - on police in the UK arresting people traffickers, the awful lives of trafficked women. The world cup could see slew of articles on Germany's depraved liberal brothel regime, which expect a boom in custom from fans - anything to get at the Germans.
But legislators should reflect on the effects of Swedish laws, and indeed those have been who pushing it. Prohibitionism in legislation seldom has the intended effect.