The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade

192 The state as pimpProject Respect, 2004). Women are brought in on tourist visas.The traffickers then apply for refugee status for the women, which isusually not forthcoming, and set the women to work in legal brothelsin debt bondage during the period of time, 18 months, that the applicationstake to process. The existence of legalized brothels makestrafficking relatively trouble free. It is estimated that 300 women aretrafficked for prostitution to Australia each year, and 1,000 womenare held as ‘sex slaves’ in the country at any one time. Most traffickedwomen are from South Korea, Thailand and China. Whilethe number of women from South Korea has recently risen, therehas been a fall in the number of women trafficked from Thailand(ibid.). Women who are recruited by traffickers are told on arrivalthat, because the industry is legal, they have no grounds to complainto police about their conditions of ‘employment’ (Fergus, 2005).The existence of tolerated as well as legalized sex industries createsthe significant problem of the corruption of police, officials andpoliticians. When police are not involved in regulating prostitutionthe practice of corruption moves from the police to local councilofficials. The sex industry constantly bucks against any legal restrictionsthat exist to contain its growth, such as limits on the rangeand size of businesses, restrictions on advertising for workers andclients, and zoning restrictions. In Nevada, for instance, brothels arelegal outside the city of Las Vegas, in smaller cities and in countrysideareas, but not in the big city itself. Strip clubs are legal, however, andprostitution operates through these venues. Politicians are bribed tooppose bye-laws that create a statutory distance that should existbetween strippers and the male buyers in order to prevent prostitutionin the clubs. They are bribed to vote in particular ways onzoning laws that affect the sex industry (Farley, 2007). Council officialscan be corrupted in legalized environments also. Thus in Sydneya corruption inquiry was told in 2007 that Wade Fryar, employed byParramatta Council, took bribes of cash and sexual services while heheaded a team that enforced council policies on the use of premisesas brothels (ABC News, 2007a). One witness said she paid Fryar upto $500 per month to warn her about council inspections becauseshe feared her business would be closed down. He took bribes fromat least 12 illegal brothels.Police corruption is also endemic in tolerated and legalized prostitution.When prostitution is de facto illegal, but in fact tolerated,as has traditionally been the case in male dominant states prior tode jure legalization, police corruption is rampant (Frances, 2007).