Anti-Trafficking Review
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A Formidable Task: Reflections on obtaining legal empirical evidence on human trafficking in Canada
Get PDFThis article explores the experiences, challenges and findings of two empirical research studies examining Canada’s legal efforts to combat human trafficking. The authors outline the methodologies of their respective studies and reflect on some of the difficulties they faced in obtaining empirical data on human trafficking court cases and legal proceedings. Ultimately, the authors found that Canadian trafficking case law developments are in their early stages with very few convictions, despite a growing number of police-reported charges. The authors assert it is difficult to assess the efficacy and effects of Canadian anti-trafficking laws and policies due to the institutional and political limitations to collecting legal data in this highly politicised subject area. They conclude with five recommendations to increase the transparency of Canada’s public claims about its anti-trafficking enforcement efforts and call for more empirically-based law reform
Monitoring and Evaluation of Human Trafficking Partnerships in England and Wales
Get PDFIn the United Kingdom, human trafficking and, more recently, modern slavery has been pushed up the political and policy agenda. At the same time, partnership working has been promoted at international and national levels in order to encourage a more holistic response to trafficking. This article examines the nature of the evidence collected to monitor and evaluate the activities and outcomes of organisations involved in a number of human trafficking partnerships in England and Wales. Underpinning this analysis is the ‘4 Ps’ approach to tackling human trafficking: Prevention, Protection, Prosecution and Partnership. Based on interviews with a variety of actors working in different partner bodies, limitations of evidence in relation to both monitoring activities as well as evaluating outcomes emerged. These relate to inadequate data collection, lack of robust methods of data collection, untested assumptions, the complexity of gathering evidence which reflect human welfare oriented goals, and the sharing of evidence between partner organisations. A key finding is that current data and methods of data collection are inadequate for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of anti-trafficking initiatives and partnerships. Another key finding is the way in which partnerships challenged received outcomes and expanded their focus beyond victims of trafficking or criminal justice goals. Finally, I explore whether criminal justice outcomes can be leveraged to foster deterrence, by interrogating what evidence might be needed
Global Trafficking Prevalence Data Distorts Efforts to Stop Patterns of Human Trafficking
Get PDFFor everyone engaged in efforts to stop the exploitation and harm associated with human trafficking, it always sounds helpful to know how many people are being exploited in particular places and where they come from. Finding out should help us assess whether efforts to cut down these numbers are effective or not
Investments in Human Trafficking Prosecutions are Indispensable
Get PDFResponse to ATR Debate Proposition: ‘Prosecuting trafficking deflects attention from much more important responses and is anyway a waste of time and money
How to Stage a Raid: Police, media and the master narrative of trafficking
Get PDFThe article analyses a UK police raid in 2005 on a West Midlands massage parlour called Cuddles. This raid to rescue victims of trafficking reflects a state approach that, despite police claims to the media, is not victim-centred. In publicising the raid, the police and media participate in discriminatory practices that reproduce a master narrative of trafficking and cause harm to the women the state purports to protect. This article examines details of the Cuddles raid and its aftermath that are obscured in the official account and offers an alternative interpretation of raid photographs circulated by the media. Findings suggest the rights of women targeted in raids are disregarded and the harm they experience dismissed in order to amplify the state’s anti-trafficking agenda. Bringing a fuller story to the fore reveals that raids tell subjugated stories and create spectacles that can challenge the master narrative of trafficking disseminated to the British public
Two Birds with One Stone? Implications of conditional assistance in victim protection and prosecution of traffickers
Get PDFProtection of victims and prosecution of traffickers are established as core principles in international and national anti-trafficking policies. In this article, we discuss the dilemmas of linking protection of victims (a term that includes social protection) to their cooperation with authorities, using Norway as a case. Our analysis of the Norwegian case is based on interviews with victims of trafficking, social workers, police and prosecutors, and examination of court decisions on cases of trafficking. The linking of protection and prosecution is anchored in international conventions and directives. While this is often framed as a mutual advantage for both protection and prosecution, in reality both goals may suffer. We discuss how the goal of prosecution affects assistance available to different groups of victims. It creates unequal access to assistance and different preconditions for well-being and predictability, depending on how useful their information about traffickers is perceived to be, and police capacity to investigate. We then move on to discuss how the incentive of protection for cooperation is interpreted and dealt with in the justice system. Victims who receive assistance and have a chance of getting permanent residence permits in exchange for their testimonies are considered to be less reliable and credible witnesses. This also brings into question how victims of trafficking are understood and constituted as witnesses. We discuss these issues in light of a broader literature on gender, law and victimhood
My Experience is Mine to Tell: Challenging the abolitionist victimhood framework
Get PDFThis article is an analytical auto-ethnography of an art exhibit on trafficking into the sex industry in New York City in 2015. The analysis is informed by my own experience as a formerly trafficked person, and by other women’s own interpretations of their lived realities as trafficked or as migrant workers in the Japanese sex industry. This paper challenges the abolitionist movement’s unidimensional interpretation of all women engaged in sex work as victims trafficked in the sex industry; and introduces the concept of ‘secondary exploitation’, where these representations are framed and repackaged for consumption by opportunistic actors, while arguably further stigmatising and marginalising already vulnerable women
‘It’s All in Their Brain’: Constructing the figure of the trafficking victim on the US-Mexico border
Get PDFThis article is a qualitative reflection on a series of human trafficking awareness meetings held in a city on the US-Mexico border. It argues that along this border, representations of the human trafficking victim go beyond the stereotypical notions of the virginal female youth, target of sexual exploitation and violence. Rather, characterisations reflect a specific set of cultural and historical forms which further frame victims as inherently foreign, a proxy for Mexican, despite the ethnic similarities connecting communities on both sides of the US-Mexico divide. References to Mexican origin in this part of the United States have historically been used as part of an attempt to articulate social and ethnic difference, often despite sharing a common ethnic past. In the context of American anti-immigrant sentiments, Mexicans are described not only as inherently foreign, or as lacking government-sanctioned immigration status, but also as innately uncivilised, uneducated, hypersexual, criminal and pathological. On the US-Mexico border these characterisations become further complicated by the immediacy of Mexican border cities and their ongoing struggles amid the war on drugs.Collectively, the tropes of crime, violence and inherent pathos historically associated with Mexico and its people have seeped into the construction of the human trafficking rhetoric on the border, and have been quickly and effectively disseminated, despite the absence of empirically-informed indicators. Furthermore, while this practice is reflective of the efforts through which historically Mexican nationals have been othered along the US-Mexico border, in the current context of globalised fears over migrants and national security, human trafficking constructions become another tool of US border control and migration governance
The Prosecution of State-Level Human Trafficking Cases in the United States
Get PDFIn an effort to combat human trafficking, the United States federal government and all fifty states passed new laws that criminalise human trafficking and support the identification and prosecution of human trafficking perpetrators. Despite the passage of these laws, only a small number of human trafficking cases have been prosecuted in the last fifteen years. Guided by the notion that prosecutors seek to avoid uncertainty when making decisions to pursue criminal prosecution, we explore how human trafficking crimes are indicted under these newly defined state laws. Using a sample of cases from twelve US counties and interviews with police, prosecutors and court personnel, we examine the factors that influence the decision to prosecute crimes investigated as human trafficking in state court. This research informs our understanding of why so few human trafficking cases are prosecuted and why human trafficking suspects are rarely convicted of trafficking offenses
The Prominent Role of National Judges in Interpreting the International Definition of Human Trafficking
Get PDFAlthough there has been much discussion of the scope of the concept of human trafficking in international literature, the part played by national courts in interpreting definitions based on the international definition of human trafficking in the UN Trafficking Protocol has received little attention. When a judge interprets an offence, he or she clarifies or adds new meaning to it. The space for this is even greater when the underlying definition is broadly formulated, as in the case of the international definition of human trafficking. This article demonstrates that, although this international definition establishes the outer parameters within which conduct must be made a criminal offence, domestic courts still have room to flesh out the definition in national contexts. The role of national judges needs more consideration in today’s discourse on the legal definition of human trafficking