Prostitution. It’s found everywhere, including our own city. A human trafficker is a person who lures another person to move to a new place and uses them by recruiting and transporting persons by means of threat or force or other forms of coercion. Prostitutes tend to be pressured and tempted to not use condoms, which has led to the 112% increase of STDs found in California. Human traffickers tell women and children they will receive an education and financial stability, but prostitutes tend to develop Stockholm syndrome, which makes them express empathy toward the person who kidnapped them.

This bill will affect the human traffickers, not the prostitutes. Currently, human traffickers once convicted, only serve a minimum of three years. They mar their workers with traumatic memories and physical abnormalities. With this bill, I propose to increase the prison sentence of human traffickers from the minimum of three years to at least twenty five years to lifetime, based on the severity of the crime, because they took away someone’s confidence by quelling their self-esteem.

Passing this bill will lower crime and STD rates. It will decrease the recidivism of prostitutes returning to the street. There are less human trafficking cases than there are drug cases. Overcrowding in prisons should not be the catalyst to kill this bill. Crime should not be continued, but punishment should.

To paraphrase Victor Hugo “We say that slavery has vanished in our society, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies to women and children and its name is prostitution.”