This month, Vanessa Bouché, associate professor of political science, penned a commentary for the Fort Worth Business Press where she shared that efforts to reduce sex trafficking through massage industry regulation have failed.
"The Texas Legislature must understand the nature of the illicit massage industry,” she writes. “This industry is not comprised of small, independent businesses operating in isolation. It is a well-networked international criminal syndicate.”
She asserts that while regulation of the massage industry has increased, the illicit massage industry has also grown. While not at all the cause of the problem, the fact remains that lawmakers are barking up the wrong proverbial tree.
“While increased scrutiny on these businesses is not necessarily harmful, it is an inefficient and ultimately ineffective use of time and resources,” she writes. “This is a vast criminal network; treating each ‘massage parlor’ as a discrete entity in a regulatory context will only marginally move the needle. Ultimately, these ‘massage parlors’ will adjust to the new regulatory context and continue their criminal acts.”