
Health care takes on the fight against trafficking - mbgaxyz
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/03/02/health-care/health-care-takes-fight-against-trafficking
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M_Grey
Horrifying. It occurs to me that even if all you were implanting was an empty
metal cylinder, it would be _very_ convincing theater, especially in the
context of that level of abuse. It's hard to see a permanent solution to this
that doesn't involve massive education initiatives at the community level.

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orclev
I was really struggling to understand the point of this, but your comment made
it click, it isn't _actually_ about tracking, it's all head games. That's
really messed up, but I guess considering the sorts of people that would be
involved in something like this I shouldn't be surprised.

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M_Grey
Exactly, it's all about breaking people so they won't even try to fight or
escape. Drugs, abuse (physical and psychological torture really), and simply
killing the ones who don't perform. It's... unbelievably brutal, and the only
ways to fight it are education, and probably a legal framework and oversight
for prostitution.

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toomuchtodo
And brutal punishments for those who are found guilty of human trafficking.

~~~
_nalply
Won't help.

It's a populist request, but a majority of experts, the criminologists, are
convinced that the death penalty for example is not a deterrent.

A source (one of many):
[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-
do-n...](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-
believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent)

~~~
mgarfias
Devils Advocate here (I don’t personally believe in the state run death
penalty): Maybe its not about deterrent as it is getting an abhorrent person
out of society permanently?

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gambiting
The argument against that is that lifetime imprisonment serves the exact same
goal, and gets rid of the nasty issue of killing people who are found innocent
20 years later, as it sometimes happens. If I recall correctly, the process of
actually executing the death penalty is so expensive it's not even cheaper
than lifetime imprisonment anyway.

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sbierwagen
Note that this of course wasn't a _GPS tracker_ , it was a standard
implantable RFID chip, as used in pets and livestock. Transmission range on it
is a couple centimeters. It can't be used to track people from a distance.

GPS trackers have big antennas and large batteries:
[https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-
Tracker/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Tec-STI-GL300-Portable-
Tracker/dp/B00JG8KCLO/) But if you tell your victim that a RFID chip is a GPS
tracker, and they believe you, then it largely accomplishes your goals.

~~~
rtkwe
It's not at all surprising that the woman would believe it was a GPS tracker
if told though which makes it nearly as effective as actually having a tracker
implanted in her. TV and movies love their impossibly tiny GPS trackers.

~~~
M_Grey
Yeah, when you're being drugged, raped, beaten, starved, threatened with
death, moved around... threats like "we put a tracking chip in you, we can
find you anywhere, anytime," must be absolutely terrifying. Especially since
I'm guessing the average victim of human trafficking isn't an electrical
engineer.

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reacweb
"But here’s the challenge: you’ve got to convince doctors and nurses that they
are the ones uniquely placed to break the cycle of violence." If health care
is used to fight human traffic, human traffic victims will not have any more
access to health care. I do not see how this would help victims.

~~~
M_Grey
The problem is deeper that that really. Doctors and nurses are already
expected to detect and report a huge host of issues, ranging from child and
spousal abuse, to malingering and drug-seeking behavior. This, in addition to
increasing workloads, increasing pressure of lawsuits and debt, and decreased
time to spend on each patient.

At some point you're asking a doctor to spend maybe a third of the 10-15
minutes they might get with a patient to run with a checklist to which the
answers will virtually always be "no", regardless of circumstances. In the
same way that this rarely detects or interrupts cycles of violence in more
traditional abuse models, it would fail to do so here.

Doctors and nurses can only function this way when they're part of a
functional system, and they are not. We can't keep making demands of them, we
need to start offering resources and support, preferably diverted from the
obscene profits behind our swollen healthcare costs.

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Ginden
I don't like euphemism "human trafficking". Terms like "slavery" and "slave
trade" are better at describing reality.

~~~
bitwize
"Human trafficking" has one advantage: it can be very broadly defined at law,
allowing police, prosecutors, and legislators to look good and like they're
"cracking down" as they aggressively prosecute people for relatively innocuous
activity compared to actual forced prostitution. For example, you arrange an
encounter with a prostitute at a hotel and on top of the usual fee, you pay
for her cab fare to the location. It doesn't matter that the prostitute chose
this line of work and is not doing it under force or duress. You have
"transported" a person for "commercial sexual activity" and are guilty of
human trafficking in Massachusetts, a state widely praised for its
"comprehensive" human-trafficking legislation. That's a five-year mandatory
minimum sentence and a mandatory sex offender registration.

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WillyOnWheels
About a month ago Trump mentioned in a speech that he would end human
trafficking, but I haven't read anything more about it.

