NCJ Number
202716
Date Published
May 2003
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This paper summarizes the presentations at a 2003 thematic workshop on trafficking in human beings sponsored by the Institutes of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Program Network (PNI); a critical overview of the evidence-base on trafficking in human beings is also presented.
Abstract
The Swedish Public Prosecutor provided a practical overview of a successful prosecution of a case that involves trafficking in humans. Tools required for a successful prosecution are appropriate legislative change, the ability to track information over the Internet to provide digital evidence, location of the bookkeeping to provide information on where the money went and who were the buyers, and locating the victims and securing their statements. Four regional overviews of trafficking in humans were presented at the workshop. These overviews indicate that the volume of trafficking in humans has increased rapidly due to the demand for prostitution in the destination countries and the poor social and economic conditions in the source countries. Two increasingly popular means of controlling victims is through addiction to drugs and debt. Regarding North America, the available evidence suggests that Canada is both a destination and transit country for the United States. The six key components of an appropriate response to human trafficking were identified as follows: legislation, enforcement, prosecution, penalties, victim programs, and public awareness and accountability. Methodological issues discussed were imprecise estimates, disparity in estimates, one-dimensional focus of the research, conceptual problems, comparative research, and reliability and validity of data. This paper notes that the workshop identified significant gaps in knowledge about human trafficking; there is little systematic data on the components that compose the illicit market. Systematic work must define key concepts and develop workable measures; document the methodologies used to produce estimates and then develop standards and norms of best practice; develop methodologies for data collection that could be applied across communities and countries to provide comparative data; and improve the quality of data through the exchange of information on data collected, the methods, and analytical tools used. 9 references