criminalising purchase

Americans will be familiar with the hunt-the-needle-in-the-haystack approach of the State and Justice Departments in looking for victims of human trafficking. Jerry Markon exposed the hiatus between the actual evidence and the claims in an article in the Washington Post. The resources utilised for the yield obtained resembled the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

The equivalent in the United Kingdom is the Police and UK Human Trafficking Centre operations known as Pentameter. This week's release of figures from the second operation triggered off the predictable moral panic and demand for more funding to combat this terrible menace. When Benjamin Disraeli decried the mesmerising effects of numbers "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" he may have been considering this sort of agenda driven political spin.