Assessing Convicted Traffickers: Negotiating Migration, Employment and Opportunity through Restricted Networks

Published date01 March 2018
AuthorROSE BROAD
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12241
Date01 March 2018
The Howard Journal Vol57 No 1. March 2018 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12241
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 37–56
Assessing Convicted Traffickers:
Negotiating Migration, Employment
and Opportunity through Restricted
Networks
ROSE BROAD
Lecturer in Criminology, Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice,
University of Manchester
Abstract: This article presents a rare insight into convicted ‘traffickers’ and draws on
research undertaken using risk assessment data from criminal justice sources relating to
those convicted for trafficking offences in the UK between 2004 and 2008. Analysis of
these data identified conflicts between the dominant understanding of trafficking and the
group of people ultimately convicted for this activity. It is argued that there is a need
to contextualise the response to this group with knowledge of their backgrounds often
including the structural barriers experienced through migration. Developing an aware-
ness of these offending pathways is important in understanding the nexus between the
movement and exploitation of victims and the structures that control access to employment
and income as well as for developing effective interventions for those involved in these
offences.
Keywords: criminal justice; human trafficking; migration; modern slavery
The lack of knowledge and understanding of those held responsible for
human trafficking offences has contributed to a particular construction of
the problem which has been termed the ‘dominant discourse’ (Doezema
2005, 2010) through which traffickers are held:
responsible for everything from illegal immigration to moral chaos, a dangerous
‘law unto themselves’, infecting ‘our’ community with violence and disease. They
strike at the institutions of the state and the market . . . with their immoral sexuality
and rampant criminality. (Berman 2003, pp.54–5)
This article explores themes emerging from criminal justice constructions
of traffickers drawing on quantitative risk assessments, pre-sentence re-
ports and interviews with criminal justice professionals. These themes are
situated in frameworks of offender management and the potential opera-
tion of parallel systems of justice (Aas 2014). By analysing the assessment
37
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2018 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Howard Journal Vol57 No 1. March 2018
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 37–56
outcomes of this group, it is argued that the drivers of these crimes require
a distinct understanding and specific intervention including considera-
tion of the significance of barriers faced during, and as a result of, some
people’s migration journeys. The article concludes by considering that in
responding to this group of offenders, although it is necessary to develop
effective, needs-based tailored interventions it is also necessary to ask ques-
tions about the wider context of facilitative conditions and inequalities that
provide the opportunities for these activities.
Since the renewed focus on human trafficking in the 1990s, commenta-
tors have acknowledged the lack of information and research focused on
traffickers (Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group 2013; Broad 2015; Choi-
Fitzpatrick 2016; Home Office 2014; Salt 2000; Surtees 2008). Building
a clearer picture of those involved in trafficking is crucial for develop-
ing more effective response strategies (Parmentier 2010) and for under-
standing how to manage convicted traffickers (Gotch 2016). Research on
perpetrators has often been reliant on victim perspectives (Surtees 2008)
and these perspectives are important in building systems of adequate sup-
port and understanding how better to respond to victims’ needs. However,
commentators have concluded that victims’ accounts are limited in terms
of understanding traffickers (Goodey 2008; Surtees 2008) by virtue of the
way in which traffickers operate, particularly those perpetrators who have
little direct contact with victims.
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced in the UK following crit-
icism made of the legislative structure preceding this legislation which had
prosecuted trafficking for sexual exploitation under the Sexual Offences
Act 2003 and trafficking for labour exploitation under the Asylum and
Immigration Act 2004 (see Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group 2013). The
term ‘modern slavery’ has largely replaced human trafficking in UK policy
discourse and has been criticised for bringing conceptually diverse activi-
ties under the umbrella of slavery, such as forced labour (see Balch 2015).1
For the purposes of this article the term ‘human trafficking’ will be used
as the prosecutions were made prior to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, re-
ferring to people convicted under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the
Asylum and Immigration Act 2004.
Despite the shift in terminology and legislation from human trafficking
to modern slavery in the UK, the dominant discourse continues to obscure
the complex circumstances which can contribute to decisions to exploit
others: ‘the moral complexity of the different actors is similarly expunged.
New abolitionist stories do not feature “traffickers” who are themselves
poor women, or victims who aspire to become “traffickers”’ (O’Connell
Davidson 2015, p.205). However, these discourses are essentially lacking
empirical evidence, leaving criminologists and services charged with the
management of these people presented with various representations of
the ‘trafficker’ but lacking a clear evidence base to understand them (Choi-
Fitzpatrick 2016).
That human trafficking is an exploitative, inhumane and degrading ac-
tivity resulting in multiple harms for victims is not disputed. However,those
responsible for such offences are easily interpreted as ‘other’ (particularly
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2018 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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