Routledge Handbook of Human Trafficking
Page 106
The ‘business process’ of human trafficking
Generally, trafficking in human beings involves the following material steps: recruitment, facilitation (transport, housing), exploitation, and control. These steps can be executed by one and the same person, but also by cooperatives in which the members have different roles. Analysis of one Romanian court case identified the following actors. To begin with, the ‘leader’ is responsible for coordinating the activities of the other members of the group. This role may be combined with that of the ‘exploiter’, who decides where and how the victims will work, and who threatens those who do not obey instructions. The exploiter may also be one of the leader’s trusted lieutenants. The ‘recruiter’ is responsible for searching for and persuading victims with job offers. In this case, the recruiter was a person with a large social network. In other cases, recruiters may be responsible for setting up recruitment agencies to attract prospective victims. A specific role is that of the ‘trainer’. Trainers are tasked with teaching new victims how to practice their jobs. In cases of sexual exploitation, the trainers might be ex-prostitutes or other victims. ‘Drivers’ may be responsible for transporting victims from one country to another, but also for driving the victims from their temporary homes to their workplace. ‘Accommodators’ are responsible for logistical matters, such as finding places to stay and work. ‘Administrators’ may be employed to take care of necessary paperwork. ‘Money collectors’ may collect the earnings of the victims. Finally, ‘guards’ may be responsible for controlling the victims and preventing them from seeking help. Of course, one person can take on combinations of these roles. A driver may also collect money and guard the victims, for example. Although all members of the group contribute to the trafficking operation, the extent to which they exploit the victims directly differs with their role.
Recruitment
The first step is recruitment of the victims. The traffickers must ‘find’ the persons they want to exploit. Usually this involves gaining the trust of the prospective victim and drawing an attractive picture of the type of work on offer, the working conditions, and the salary, which will later turn out to be (partly) false.
Case studies in Romania, for instance, reveal that the ‘lover boy method’ is the most common method of recruitment for sexual exploitation.10 He and the victim start an intimate relationship in which he creates trust by giving affection and gifts and may also promise to marry the girl. The next step is to persuade the girl to work as a prostitute, for instance by pretending that he has financial troubles and is threatened by (criminal) debt-collectors.11 In the Netherlands, the ‘lover boy method’ is also an important method to recruit Dutch women.12
The advent of the Internet has offered traffickers new opportunities to contact prospective victims. Latvian observers, for example, note that women are increasingly recruited via social network websites.13 It is often clear to the prospective victim from the start that she is to work as a prostitute, but she may also be deceived by being offered work as, for instance, an au pair, a dancer, or housekeeper.
These findings are mirrored in destination countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands. Traffickers often use social media to attract potential victims, for example by offering jobs within the sex industry.14 In one Dutch case, a member of a criminal group simply placed advertisements on the Internet and in local newspapers in Poland offering work in a brothel operated by his girlfriend.15 Cases of human trafficking investigated or prosecuted in Sweden reflect that over 90% of victims knew that they were to work as prostitutes.16 The majority of the presumed victims agreed to this, and no coercion or deceit occurred. Apart from financial incentives, victims may also fall for a trafficker showing friendship and affection in online chats.
Victims of labour exploitation are mostly recruited via job offers presented to them directly by middlemen involved in the trafficking network, via ads in local newspapers or on social media, and via people in their social network.17 In Romania, for example, traffickers sometimes approach one prospective victim with an attractive job proposal and indicate that the offer is available to others as well. Logically, the person will then approach his relatives, friends, and neighbours and unknowingly take on the role of a ‘recruiter’ himself.
The involvement of recruitment agencies is, for instance, observed in Latvia and Sweden. In Latvia, the poor economic situation makes people accept work in circumstances that are close to slave labour. Traffickers may deceive vulnerable persons by presenting a rosy picture of the work, housing, and wages. In Sweden, trafficking for labour exploitation mainly occurs in the restaurant and construction sectors, as well as in seasonal labour such as berry picking.18 For example, restaurant owners with foreign backgrounds are often interested in employing relatives and acquaintances from their country of origin.19 Most berry pickers from Thailand, for instance, come from the same district.20
Victims of forced begging often originate from South-Eastern European countries, and from the Roma community in particular. In Romania, for example, it may also concern elderly persons, or persons with disabilities, minors, and persons who already beg voluntarily.21 Social relations play a key part: most victims have a kinship or a friend relationship with the traffickers.22 The recruiters will target (extended) family, neighbours, and friends.23 Traffickers in Romania and Bulgaria sometimes contact parents who are living in poverty to sell or hire out their sons and daughters and exploit them for theft, begging, or prostitution.
Finally, people who are forced to commit crimes are usually not ‘recruited’ as such, but instead the trafficker exploits a situation of (financial) dependency. In Belgium, for example, illegal immigrants from Albania were forced to commit burglaries to pay for the next stage of their trip.24
Facilitating activities
The steps following recruitment may include transport to the destination where the actual exploitation is to take place, and organising accommodation for the victims. Both steps may include additional activities, such as arranging travel documents.
Within the EU, prospective victims of sexual exploitation usually travel by car or with low cost airlines. Forged identity papers are not necessary unless victims are underage and destined to work in legitimate sex businesses in countries where prostitution is legal, such as the Netherlands and Germany. In cases of labour exploitation, traffickers transport the workers by mini-bus, or they travel on their own with long-distance bus lines, although in an example from Romania, traffickers on shorter distances also used trucks in which the victims are seated on the floor.25 The workers may pretend to be tourists when travelling to non-Schengen countries such as the UK.26 In cases of forced begging involving minors, the parents or other adults, preferably women, accompany the children, although they may also travel by themselves. The parents or caretakers must sign papers allowing the trafficker to travel abroad with the children, but these documents may also be forged.27
If the prospective victims originate from outside the EU, entering the Union may require a visa. In these cases, traffickers may misuse recruitment agencies or set them up themselves to attract prospective victims and acquire visa and work permits. In Sweden, Asian recruitment agencies usually act as intermediaries for Thai berry-pickers.28 The traffickers sometimes acquire fake passports or travel documents belonging to look-alikes to circumvent visa requirements. In most cases, the prospective victims must travel to an agreed address in Sweden themselves.
Victims of sexual exploitation may stay in hotels, in apartments (usually together with other victims), or at their ‘workplace’, such as a brothel or a bar. Victims of labour exploitation may live in private houses in which they rent a room, but also in less favourable conditions, for example, in converted stables or in barracks that are overcrowded and lack sanitary provisions.29
Exploitation
The next step in the ‘business process’ is the exploitation of the victims. This section addresses the circumstances in which traffickers exploit their victims. The
methods used to make the victims perform the intended activities are outlined below, under the subsection headed ‘Control’.
The locations for sexual exploitation depend to some extent on country-specific characteristics. In Italy, for example, the victims usually work on the streets or in private apartments, whereas in the Netherlands and Germany, window prostitution, clubs, and brothels are more common. In Greece, the UK, and the Czech Republic, indoor prostitution is most common; while in France, both street level and indoor prostitution occurs.30 Traffickers may also have to make arrangements to attract customers, for instance by advertising on the Internet. In the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, the trafficker must register the victim with the tax authorities and the Chamber of Commerce.
A common feature of sexual exploitation is the fact that the traffickers confiscate a large portion of the money the victim earns. In a Dutch example, Romanian women working in the Amsterdam Red Light District were allowed to keep only €200 per week, whilst earning as much as €1, 000–1,500 per week.31 Traffickers also charge all sorts of ‘costs’, for instance for food and housing, and sometimes even for the ‘protection’ provided by the gang members who were actually supervising the victims to prevent them from escaping or contacting the police.32 Other aspects of exploitation are poor working conditions, such as having to work long hours and not being allowed to refuse customers.
In cases of labour exploitation, payment may also be less than agreed, and usually the traffickers will charge high prices for food, housing, necessary documents, and invent all sorts of other costs to deduct from the victim’s wages. Delayed payments are also common, and sometimes wages are withheld entirely.33 These victims are also confronted with long working hours, with insufficient breaks and food. Furthermore, they may have to work in unsafe conditions, without proper tools or protective gear. Victims of forced begging work on the streets from 8–16 hours per day.34
Control
As noted above, particularly in cases of labour exploitation, the victim initially agrees to work for the trafficker, and may continue to do so voluntarily even when payment is lower than agreed and working conditions are harsh. However, victims may also have to be ‘persuaded’ to perform activities against their will. In practice, three methods are used to achieve control over a trafficking victim: creating loyalty, creating a situation of dependency, and using coercion and violence.
Manufacturing loyalty is particularly important in the recruitment stage. The ‘lover boy’ method depends on this to a large extent. Another example is underage trafficking victims who comply with the situation out of loyalty to their parents or family members.
Second, creating a situation of dependency is an important tool to control the victims. This is less risky than the use of force and violence, because the victim will be less inclined to go to the police or to seek help from others. Manufacturing or taking advantage of an existing financial debt is an effective method, but blackmail is also possible. The trafficker may start with ‘helping’ the prospective victim with settling a debt or solving another problem, and then demand favours in return. He may also construct a financial debt himself by financing travel, housing, and food in advance, and then demand that the victim cooperate until the debt is settled.
Finally, threats and violence are used to control victims. Traffickers mostly use these methods when the victim does not want to continue with the work. Victims of sexual exploitation may be confronted with threats against family members back home, or threats to sell them to another more violent criminal group, but physical violence is also common. ‘Bodyguards’ may watch them at all times to prevent escape or the victim contacting outsiders, and traffickers may also confiscate mobile phones and travel documents. In cases of labour exploitation, traffickers often also take the victims’ travel documents, for example by pretending that this is necessary to prepare employment contracts, and then refuse to return them. Forcing the victims to work excessive hours may also help to prevent them establishing social contacts or searching for other jobs.35 The trafficker may also claim to have corrupted the local police, stating that searching for help will only put the victim in a worse position. Sometimes regulations work in favour of traffickers. In Sweden, for example, a residence permit for a foreign worker requires him or her to stay with the same employer for at least two years. Workers may therefore be afraid to complain about the working conditions because doing so could get them deported.
Skills and connections
THB not only involves a material business process but also people who are willing and able to execute one or more parts of it. As explained above, this refers to both ‘what you know’ and ‘who you know’.
When we look at the criminal skills necessary for human trafficking, the most specific one is the ability to control the victims. Traffickers may learn these skills from their involvement in other (violent) crimes, or they may have been victims of trafficking themselves. In one example, a female trafficker had been a prostitute herself, before she met an Italian citizen with a criminal record together with whom she started to exploit Romanian victims in Italy.36 However, other methods of control, such as creating a situation of financial dependency, hardly require specific knowledge.
The necessity for other skills depends on how the business process is organised. Placing advertisements online does not require any skills, but recruiting prospective victims via one’s social network calls for being attentive and reflective, for example; and setting up a recruitment agency requires at least some knowledge of that type of business. Other facilitating activities, such as money laundering and preparing falsified travel documents, also entail specific knowledge. Generally, however, we conclude that in terms of skills, the trafficking process can be organised in such a way that practically everybody who does not oppose exploiting other human beings can engage in it.
Finally, we take a closer look at the necessity of ‘criminal relations’ in order to be able to organise the trafficking process. The conclusion presented in the previous section also applies here: it is perfectly possible to organise the trafficking process without any criminal connections. Independent, small-scale traffickers may be able to arrange all the necessary aspects themselves. Even if, for example, prostitution is illegal, pimps may simply have women find customers on the street.
Criminal relations may, however, be necessary to acquire falsified travel or identity documents and illegal firearms, for example. ‘Legitimate’ facilitators may be required for setting up fake recruitment agencies, to arrange housing, to find workplaces, and to take care of paperwork.
Traffickers: specialists or generalists?
Empirical information from the Netherlands
There is little research available on the question whether traffickers are mainly specialists, or generalists who at the same time combine exploitation with other types of illegal activities. In this study, a limited empirical analysis of the Dutch case law published online in the database rechtspraak.nl was conducted. We collected 254 cases handled by the courts of first instance from April 2010 to September 2014.37 Table 42.1, below, presents the results of the analysis of the case law.
The results show that by far the largest number of cases concern trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. There were relatively few cases of labour exploitation; only one case of forced begging; and five cases in which a person was forced to commit other crimes in which both trafficking and those other illegal activities occurred. When it comes to sexual and labour exploitation, however, criminals, or the members of the criminal group, predominantly specialise in trafficking, and do not at the same time commit crimes unrelated to this activity.
Table 42.1 Combination of THB with other crimes in the Netherlands (254 cases)38
Type of trafficking Combination with other criminal activities Percentage
* * *
Sexual exploitation None 87.0%
Social security fraud 0.8%
Drug trafficking/production
2.0%
Property crimes 1.2%
Sexual and labour exploitation 0.4%
Labour exploitation None 4.3%
Human smuggling 1.6%
Tax fraud 0.4%
Forced begging/crimes None 0.4%
Cannabis cultivation 1.2%
Fraud 0.4%
Property crimes 0.4%
Total 100%
These findings are comparable to the findings of other Dutch studies. Since 1998, organised crime groups active in the Netherlands – this includes both indigenous and foreign-based groups – have been studied extensively in the Organised Crime Monitor.39 Over the years, researchers collected the files of large-scale investigations for their study, and the latest edition of the Monitor comprises 150 cases.40 Only one of these concerned a group that combined sexual exploitation with another illegal activity, the trafficking of cocaine from the Netherlands to Italy. Verhoeven et al. studied the files of 12 criminal investigations of sexual exploitation in the Amsterdam Red Light District. Here, none of the perpetrators were involved in other crimes.41
It must be noted that these results may be biased by the choices of public prosecutors and the police during criminal investigations. For example, if the case of THB is clear-cut, the opportunity principle allows the authorities not to include other crimes in the investigation or the indictment. Especially petty crimes committed by ‘lover boys’ (see below) may thus not become visible in the court rulings. Vice-versa, if THB is difficult to prove, focusing on another crime may also produce a conviction and be more efficient, because this will end exploitation as well. However, the percentage of ‘generalists’ is so low and consistent over the years that it is unlikely that the outcome would be fundamentally different if the opportunity principle did not apply. Further research in countries that apply the legality principle, which requires that all crimes that come to the attention of the authorities be investigated and prosecuted, could add to this discussion.