Abstract
Few studies have examined Internet sex trafficking through the lens of law enforcement working these cases. The purpose of this research is to explore the dynamic nature of policing sex trafficking in the online environment. The qualitative data was drawn from interviews with police investigators and detectives who work sex trafficking cases in two urban cities in Texas. The results suggest that the nature of sex trafficking has significantly evolved since the advent of social media, including the strategies for recruitment of workers and clients, making enforcement easier with some aspects and much more difficult with others. Additionally, law enforcement interviewed believe domestic sex trafficking is a much greater issue in their metropolitan area than international sex trafficking.
Highlights
Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes worldwide, leading the United Nations (2014) to pass a resolution in 2014 on its enforcement and some to call it a “global epidemic” (Morris, 2019)
Though this study interviewed most of the law enforcement who work sex trafficking in two large metropolitan cities, our sample size was small, and we did not interview other stakeholders in this industry, like nonprofits who work with victims
This sentiment is prevalent among sex trafficking victims
Summary
Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes worldwide, leading the United Nations (2014) to pass a resolution in 2014 on its enforcement and some to call it a “global epidemic” (Morris, 2019). While human trafficking includes forced labor, slavery, and other exploitive activities, one of the largest segments of trafficking is sex trafficking, generating approximately $99 billion of the $150 billion annually of all human trafficking (Children’s Rights, n.d.; International Labour Organization, 2014). In the United States, sex trafficking constituted 71 percent of reported human trafficking incidents in 2017 (U.S Department of Defense, 2019). In 2018, the U.S Department of Justice prosecuted 230 human trafficking cases, with 213 of those prosecutions involved sex trafficking (U.S Department of State, 2019). Kara (2009) equivocates sex trafficking to modern-day slavery with three steps in common: acquisition, movement, and exploitation
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