Yesterday morning, police and other departments ran a joint sweep through Yuen Long and arrested 13 women, ages 21 to 45, on suspicion of soliciting. Standard stuff. Vans, some paperwork, a line in the police log. It happens every few weeks somewhere in this city and it barely makes anyone blink.

Here's the bit nobody in that press release wants to say: this is a supply problem, not a crime wave. You clear thirteen women off one street corner in Yuen Long, and by next month there are thirteen more, because the actual business, the flats, the middlemen, the money, never gets touched. The enforcement targets the visible and disposable end of the chain. The women get a record. The landlord renting the flat upstairs at market rate does not.