What accounts for the success of illicit businesses in the 21st Century?
This paper focuses on sex trafficking as a successful illicit business in the 21st century and argues that it is successful because it is difficult to detect, it reaps high profits, and is assisted by corrupted law enforcement. After clarifying the definition of “sex trafficking”, the paper outlines the operational structure of selecting, enslaving and profiting from trafficked victims. Secondly, the paper presents the organisational factors shaping trafficking operations, including the emergence of globalisation that has increased the demand for transnational trafficking, as well as the exploitation of younger and diverse ‘product’ to fulfil an evolving market’s expectations, such as child pornography and juvenile sex tourism. Finally, the corruption embedded in law enforcement agencies that facilitate further trafficking is explored, as well as the failure of uncorrupted law enforcement to support and prosecute traffickers due to untailored legislation and complicated procedures. As the organisational components of the sex trafficking industry includes not only the recruiters and traffickers but also unlawful law enforcement, each component will be examined as critical parts for the success of the business.
Article 3 of the United Nations Palermo Protocol defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation” . This paper will focus on sex trafficking as a subcategory of human trafficking.
Sex trafficking is not a recent illicit business; however, its complexity and regional impact has increased exponentially over the past 15 years. Human trafficking is estimated to be the “third biggest criminal activity worldwide, behind drug and weapons trafficking” , as well as the “second largest source of illegal income for organised crime” . Although sex trafficking is a global problem, the business models of trafficking varies between socioeconomic groups. For the purpose of this paper, the sex trafficking industry is condensed to the United States and its direct impacts on interrelated countries, such as the child sex tourism industry in South-East Asia, as well as the predominate origin countries that aim to fulfil the United States’ sex demands. Trafficking in the United States originates predominately from Asia, Mexico, and “states of the former Soviet block” , with an estimated “14,500 to 17,500 people annually trafficked into the United States” to fulfil the demand of a rampant sex industry. The United States’ demand heavily involves illegal pornography, where an “estimated $6 billion is generated annually” on child pornography. This paper will address the impact of this demand, and how the demand has facilitated the normalisation of deviance to the point of child sex tourism becoming accepted in the ‘white-collar’ population.
Sex trafficking generates an ‘unlimited’ return of profit in comparison to narcotics or weapons; traffickers can exploit their victims for a considerable period of time and continue to generate profit, whether through pornography, sex tourism or sexual abuse. For this reason, the operational structure of sex trafficking must be complex and efficient to generate the greatest returns without heightened risk of prosecution. Therefore, the recruitment, initiation and degradation of trafficking victims is a well-rehearsed and tailored operation, supported and hidden by corrupted law enforcement in order to exploit victims and transport them to the United States without detection.
For the purpose of this paper, we will examine Elizabeth Kelly’s grouping of traffickers as the organisational structure of sex trafficking. She categorises traffickers in four respective roles; the “organisers, the middlemen, the business operators and the aides” . This essay will utilise the four roles as the overarching hierarchy for trafficking to occur.
The first step in the trafficking operational cycle is recruitment, conducted by the ‘middlemen’. There are multiple ways to recruit victims; in Mexico, Mexican traffickers called ‘coyotes’ take advantage of the “desperate situations of poverty and hardship” and contact victims through advertisements, attracting educated women who are seeking better quality of life in an industrialised country . As these women cannot afford the transportation costs to get to richer nations like the United States, they agree to “debt bondage” where traffickers agree to pay to pay those costs provided the women agree to repay out of future earnings. While the initial intention of victims is to utilise their education in a higher socio-economic capacity, and thus enter into debt bondage contracts voluntarily and willingly, the belief of obtaining legitimate jobs and study opportunities is skewed; it is merely a farce to remove victims from the familiarity of a home country and family. Moreover, women already engaged in prostitution, such as those from Ukraine, may be offered higher wages for doing similar work in a wealthier nation, using debt bondage as their financial means of travelling to that nation . Alternatively, trafficker recruiters in Southeast Asia (in particular Thailand and the Philippines ) seek out poor families and offer to purchase their daughters, with the reward of money to help out the remaining family members and giving their impoverished daughter a better life in a first-world country . Most, if not all of the daughters are minors who will be initiated into the child sex tourism industry as sex slaves . It is exceedingly simple for Thailand traffickers to target children; 2.5 million Thai children are living “below the poverty line” and are isolated from not only “mainstream society”, but its “social, economic, health, educational and legal support mechanisms” . When traffickers visit families who are desperate for any form of monetary relief, one less mouth to feed and the promise of ongoing cash returns will create a irrefutable business deal.
Once recruited, women will be induced by middlemen into a state in where they are dependent on traffickers for psychological and physical wellbeing . In Ukraine this is done through “emotional, psychological or physical abuse” , where victims are “threatened, beaten and raped” . Victims are controlled by humiliating photos of themselves undertaking degrading acts, as well as the confiscation of legal identification documents and “threats to harm family members” . Furthermore, there are documented cases in Eastern Europe of women being “mutilated and murdered” as punishment for “refusing to engage in ‘prostitution’” . Similarly, in Mexico, women also experience “high levels of violence” and psychological trauma through solitary confinement, gang rapes, and death threats .
Children are the easiest to initiate into the trafficking industry; due to their age and physical vulnerability, they are unlikely to resist, nor do they have the physical capability to do so. Internationally, the addition of narcotic addiction is an effective method in enforcing dependency on the traffickers and is often used to induce child victims into sexual exploitation . Gaining an element of control over victims is the first key step to exploiting women in the sex industry and maximising the most profit. Victims who are compliant and unresisting are easier to smuggle, and therefore the stages of recruitment and initiation must be effective in stripping victims of their liberty. It is harder to detect victims if they ‘vanish’ from their communities, and consequently the success of trafficking increases if the numbers nor identities of trafficked women can be monitored and rescued.
The demand for trafficking victims is dictated by the business operators: that is, the “brothel, nightclub owners and pimps” who provide organisers with ‘orders’ for specific numbers and ethnicities of victims. With the assistance of globalisation, transnational movement of victims provides “maximisation of profits” through “supplying fresh product for the sex industry to market to buyers” . The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime tracked an individual who was “kidnapped from a village in Nepal, trafficked to India and sold for $1,000, then trafficked to the United States and sold for $20,000” . By using “well-tested routes used to smuggle narcotics, arms and other illegal goods” , traffickers can easily mimic and profit from scenarios similar to above. Furthermore, specific markets who desire younger victims can obtain them through globalised systems; European traffickers present “younger and more attractive prostitutes belonging to different ethnic groups” , with 20% of German trafficking victims “aged between fifteen and eighteen” . As aforementioned, children are the easiest targets for middlemen to obtain and initiate, and through globalisation they can earn the most profit for traffickers, either locally or internationally. Moreover, United States ‘customers’ can obtain a plethora of child pornography, supplied by countries such as “Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden” for a $6 billion demand . Globalisation tools such as the Internet has expanded the demand for child pornography and at the same time increasing the difficulty for authorities to detect the origin country or individual responsible .
While children can be utilised in the child pornography industry for the United States, up to two million children are reported to be selling their bodies on the streets . Child sex tourism is defined as “tourism organised with the primary purpose of facilitating the effecting of a commercial-sexual relationship with a child” . In this case, the demand is not explicitly through business operators, but international child sex tourists who travel from “wealthy, economically developed Western nations” , including the United States. Consequently, the supply is found through marketplaces in Thailand and the Philippines, where pimps exploit child victims through “flesh peddling them” , earning revenue by tailoring their ‘products’ towards rich businessmen. Child sex tourism is a “billion-dollar global industry” , sustained by a demand for underage sex partners: sex tourists cannot seek the specific sexual desires in their home country and therefore travel to engage in such activities. Apart from the reality that the child sex tourism services are cheap and readily available, child sexual abuse is “perceived as less severe if the crime was committed outside [the home country]” . The success of the child sex tourism marketplace illustrates the impact of globalisation; the demand for overseas sex tourism from Western countries is easily and cheaply supplied by Thailand and the Philippines. It is important to note that globalisation has provided the avenue for illicit businesses such as sex trafficking to supply the above demand; without trafficking means it is extremely unlikely the child sex tourism industry would exist.
Trafficking victims are initiated into exploitation through middlemen, and the trafficking industry has increased in profit due to business operators, but without the use of aides, that is “corrupt government officials and police” , the success of sex trafficking would be negatively affected. Consequently, the estimated figures of victims range from 4 to 27 million as it is extremely difficult to detect what is hidden by government and law enforcement, especially on a global scale. From 2001 to 2006, the Department of Justice only convicted 40 traffickers with human trafficking crimes and the Department of Health and Human Services assisted a mere 179 trafficking victims with basic human resource requirements . As a result of the inability to confirm specific identities and locations of victims, it is difficult to prosecute traffickers. Furthermore, corrupt police and government officials are actively involved in “facilitating the trafficking of victims” , through providing protection to brothel owners where trafficking occurs in “exchange for bribes” . Corrupt law enforcement also reduces recruitment costs through returning escaped victims back to traffickers, as well as turning a blind eye when traffickers transport and recruit new victims . Therefore, once a victim is recruited and enslaved in the system, they cannot escape, nor can they report their exploitation, giving traffickers free passes to maintain their activities and increase the frequency of trafficking as there are less precautions and risk entailed in reaping illicit rewards in grander and globalised scales.
Trafficking victims also will rarely seek help as legitimate law enforcement authorities are not trained adequately to recognise trafficked sex workers as victims; rather, they can be convicted as criminals or stereotyped as consensual sex workers . These women can be “penalised and more likely to be arrested, fined and even imprisoned than the pimps who often control them or the men who buy them” . By utilising the illicit transportation system in immigrating trafficking victims into the United States, trafficking victims are classed as illegal entrants if they manage to escape the trafficking ring, and consequently cannot obtain continued presence through a visa or file a claim in the courts against their traffickers, providing another loophole for traffickers to exploit. Finally, even with recent allowances for victims to seek basic benefits and support through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorisation Act , victims must still manoeuvre through complicated systems to receive an investigation into their trafficking, including technical applications and active cooperation with law enforcement to assist in the potential prosecution of their trafficker. The lack of trust in local law enforcement coupled with the traumatisation of trafficking results in many victims choosing not to take their trafficker to trial as their stress and fear prevents action. The sex trafficking industry therefore is difficult to shut down, as there is insufficient prosecution against traffickers and protection for victims to make a lasting, if any, impact against the expanding crime.
Without extensive legislation, legitimate and active law enforcement and protection against recruitment of children and women into the trafficking system, the profitability and reach of sex trafficking will be impossible to control and terminate. Globalisation has been the demanding factor for increased variety, volume and violation of victims to supply an ever-growing international sex industry. With well-tested methods of recruitment, transport and exploitation, the sex trafficking ‘business’ will continue to be successful and profitable. Dramatic and proactive efforts by the global community are required to prosecute trafficking rings and prevent millions more women and children from being trafficked; although it may already be too late.