Purchasing sex will soon be a felony in NC. That’s a game-changer | Opinion
Last week, North Carolina became the second state in the country to make the purchase of sex a felony.
Anti-human trafficking advocates across the state have been actively educating legislators since January 2023 about the need to change solicitation of prostitution from a misdemeanor to a felony. On June 28, Gov. Roy Cooper signed House Bill 971 into law. A provision in the bill makes solicitation of prostitution a felony effective Dec. 1, 2024.
That’s a valuable tool in the demand reduction arsenal. Demand reduction is a strategy to prevent sex trafficking by reducing the number of potential sex buyers.
Human trafficking is a business. Like any business, if there is a demand for a product (bodies to be used for sex), a supplier (trafficker) will make that product available, even if force, fraud and coercion are necessary.
Since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, the United States has had a mechanism with which to charge the “supplier” or trafficker. It’s taken longer for many in the movement to realize that the real “cause” of sex trafficking is the buyer.
How can we reduce demand for commercial sex? First, we must understand that sex buyers are not all the same. On one end of the spectrum are the buyers who have purchased sex once while they were on spring break because all the other guys did it. On the other are sex buyers whose behavior is compulsive.
Education may change the behavior of someone who buys sex while on vacation or when the opportunity presents itself. Many times, this buyer thinks the person “chose” to be a prostitute, really likes sex and that he’s “helping” her because she needs the money.
Effective education would include a sex trade survivor who could debunk the myths of full consent and/or the idea that most people who sell sex do so because they enjoy it. This person could share their actual experience, including stories of extreme abuse and violence by the traffickers and sex buyers.
When some buyers learn the circumstances that brought a person to prostitution, they often decide not to purchase sex in the future.
For the compulsive sex buyer, no amount of education will change his behavior. Long term, intense counseling may help. But if the buyer is not willing, imprisonment may be the only way to stop the behavior.
For the many who lie in the middle of the sex-buying spectrum, multiple tools may be helpful. Certainly, they need to be educated. For many, the threat of a legal consequence may reduce their desire to purchase sex. The risk of arrest and public shame may deter them. That’s the logic behind the “demand reduction strategy” to end human trafficking.
That’s the reason for the change in North Carolina’s solicitation of prostitution statute. Because solicitation of prostitution has historically been a misdemeanor, law enforcement has lacked incentive to pursue that charge. The reverse sting operations necessary to arrest sex buyers are extremely expensive, requiring many hours of planning and training and extra layers of personnel for safety of the officers involved. If the operation is a success, the result is a handful of misdemeanors that will often be reduced or dismissed.
Some law enforcement agencies pursue these operations in spite of those circumstances, believing the potential reduction in demand is worth the effort, despite the cost. Many others believe the return on investment is not significant enough.
Now that solicitation is a felony in our state, law enforcement officers have more incentive to plan operations to arrest the sex buyers.
When law enforcement personnel, district attorneys and judges have been educated about this change, we expect the number of charges for the purchase of sex to increase dramatically. And if the criminal justice system delivers the appropriate consequences, demand for commercial sex will decrease in North Carolina.
Less commercial sex equals fewer sex trafficking victims. And that’s how demand reduction strategies work.
Pam Strickland is founder and CEO of NC Stop Human Trafficking and co-founder of the North Carolina Demand Reduction Task Force. She lives in Farmville.
