Don’t call it slavery

Editor - Regarding Joel Brinkley’s “Enslaved, by definition,” Jan. 13:
Finally someone has noticed that the deliberate conflation of
prostitution and human trafficking hurts everyone involved.

The reality is even worse than Brinkley’s admirable column suggests.
Pending House reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act
wrongly calls all prostitution “sex trafficking” and makes “inducement
into prostitution” a federal crime. It would also force the Justice
Department to stretch its resources for fighting child sexual

In the Windy City, prostitutes sleep with police more often than get arrested by them
article by Carolyn O'Hara

Another dispatch on the Freakonomics effect: University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt (Mr. Freakonomics himself) and his collaborator Sudhir Venkatesh, a Columbia University sociologist who previously worked with Levitt to measure the average wages of street-level drug dealers (pdf), have teamed up to study the economics of street prostitutes in Chicago.

WASHINGTON, DC (November 7, 2007) - Today, the release of Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, a report authored by Douglas Kirby, PhD, a leading researcher in adolescent health, confirmed, once again, that the $1.5 billion federal and state investment in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is a waste of taxpayer money.

Kids Dying From Drugs And Alcohol: It's All About Supply And Demand

Science Daily — A third of deaths among young people in developed countries such as Canada are caused by alcohol and illicit drugs. That’s according to a new paper—coauthored by University of Victoria psychologist and Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia (CARBC) at the University of Victoria director Dr. Tim Stockwell—published in the medical journal The Lancet.

Boys of 15 forced into sex trade
Ciara Leeming
10/ 4/2007

MORE than 60 young men - some under 16 - are being exploited by the sex trade on the streets of Manchester. Experts warn that vulnerable teenagers are being groomed and forced into prostitution.

Texas reviews scandal-plagued juvenile prison system

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

March 26, 2007, 8:02 PM CDT

HOUSTON -- The sentences of many of the 4,700 delinquent youths now being held in
Texas' juvenile prisons might have been arbitrarily and unfairly extended by
prison authorities and thousands could be freed in a matter of weeks as part of
a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued juvenile system, state officials say.

Jay Kimbrough, a special master appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to investigate

Untitled I
I am a wonderful unique special spirit
Only I can make myself happy
I will learn to make myself happy
I know now that I struggle with the things I go through
Only to make me stonger
I can find this happy place within myself- The flamez
have rizen now I shall rise within the flamez and
break free from all the barriers
and i SHALL RIZE
My tears are heavy with life that is locked up, a prisioner of the past
which can not be forgotten, the flames burn through those walls
I can be in the moment
I know that the struggle makes us stonger and nothing

Give prison inmates free needles, agency suggests to Yukon gov't
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 | 1:18 PM CT
CBC News

Outreach workers have asked the Yukon government to consider providing free needles for inmates at a new prison in Whitehorse, in order to curb the spread of HIV and hepatitis C.

The Blood Ties Four Directions Centre, a Yukon agency for people with HIV and hepatitis C, argues that it makes economic sense to include prevention programs as it looks into redeveloping the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.