Human Trafficking In Kant's Categorical Imperative

While these victims are held captive, physical as well as psychological trauma is being inflicted on them. Victims of sex trafficking are stripped entirely of their rights, freedom, and humanity. This can leave emotional as well as physical scars on the victims. Erin Weaver says that in most cases, the person is physically branded with a tattoo, marking them as property. The recovery for someone who has suffered through trafficking is often difficult but not impossible. The victims, however, are not the only ones suffering from trafficking. Whole communities are often affected by this sort of activity. While trafficking is going on, the slaves are forced to entertain as many as 20-40 men daily and protection is rarely used. You can imagine how quickly diseases are spread. Men take these sicknesses home to their wives or partners and soon the whole community is going to be suffering from illnesses.

The moral theory that would be best used to rule human trafficking as immoral would be Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Kant’s theory states, “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Meaning if it is something that everyone would not be comfortable with, it would be considered immoral and if it’s something everyone would be comfortable with then it would be moral. In the case of human trafficking everyone would have to consider whether they would like to be sold for sex, or if it were their kids or family members in the place of the victims, to determine if it would be acceptable. The people paying for these services would have to consider if they were the ones performing these acts or if it were their own children and usually just that thought gives people a different perspective and they will without a doubt change their stance on the issue. Of course, you will get an occasional pervert who would not mind either way, but majority would not be okay with it and would rule human trafficking

immoral.
In a world where human beings are used as sex slaves, no one wins. It does harm to the participators, the families, the communities, and most of all, to the Victims. If everyone contributed to ending this, it could change lives, bring healing, and make someone’s existences easier. Human Sex trafficking is an increasing issue that people are failing to acknowledge and because of that these victims are not getting the attention or help that they desperately need. As big as this issue is people aren’t putting enough effort into helping victims or stopping this act altogether. There are many things that the community alone can do such as bringing awareness to the issue, the more people realize it’s an issue the more they will begin to sympathize for the victims and will do more to try and prevent it. In addition, a way that would slowly but surely bring an end to this would be instead of incarcerating the victims they should focus on getting them the help they need and when they feel safe enough they will give you information on their owners that can hopefully lead to their arrest and when other people who are involved in this business start noticing that more actions are being made against them it can dramatically decrease the amount of people involved because they fear the consequences they may face. Another thing that would also get these sex traffickers to think twice about continuing their business is creating a harsher penalty for them and also since they do make a lot of money in this industry they can easily get bailed out so increasing their bond will make it harder to get bailed out and when or if they do decide to pay the bond a certain percentage should go towards a half way home for victims who are seeking refuge from being sexually exploited and also for treatment since the majority of these victims are forcefully drugged. Today when they are incarcerated they only get 30 years in a low security institution which is nothing considering what they do to these children and women against their will. Increasing the amount of time they should be in jail is perfect in a sense that the longer they are put away the better off society will be since they wouldn’t be out and about ruining the lives of innocent people.