Criminal Law Commons^™

A Business Doing Pleasure: Combating Sex Trafficking By Decriminalizing Sex Work, Annalise Leonelli

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

On the night police officers pounded on Yang Song’s door, she ran to the balcony of her fourth-floor apartment, which overlooks 40th Road in Flushing, Queens. Four years earlier, she had arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport with a dream of opening a restaurant. After a waitressing job failed, as well as a short-lived Chinese fast-food venture, she took a massage therapy course. There, she learned about a “lucrative opportunity” on 40th Road.

Flushing’s underground sex economy has been notorious for years. In fact, massage parlor arrests across the United States consistently lead back to addresses in Flushing. Because …

Justice For All? Impeding The Villainization Of Human Trafficking Victims Via The Expansion Of Vacatur Laws, Sarah Devaney

Pepperdine Law Review

It is common for human trafficking victims to acquire a criminal record as a result of the activities they are forced to engage in whilst being trafficked. Once these victims become survivors, their criminal record hinders them from wholly reacclimating to society. The current state of human trafficking laws provides little to no relief for human trafficking survivors in regard to alleviating their criminal records. Accordingly, human trafficking survivors are perpetually victimized by the United States criminal justice system. This Article explores the current state of human trafficking laws and their enduring effect on survivors. Specifically, the Article examines California’s …

Disaggregating Slavery And The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

FIU Law Review

International law prohibits slavery and the slave trade as peremptory norms, customary international law prohibitions and crimes, humanitarian law prohibitions, and non-derogable human rights. Human rights bodies, however, focus on human trafficking, even when slavery and the slave trade—and not human trafficking—are enumerated within their mandates. International human rights law has conflated human trafficking with slavery and the slave trade. Consequently, human trafficking has subsumed the slave trade and, at times, slavery prohibitions, increasing perpetrator impunity for slavery and the slave trade abuses and denying full expressive justice to survivors. This Article disaggregates slavery from the slave trade and slavery …

Failed Interventions: Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, And The Criminalization Of Survival, Alaina Richert

Michigan Law Review

Over the last decade, state legislators have enacted statutes acknowledging the link between criminal behavior and trauma resulting from domestic violence and human trafficking. While these interventions take a step in the right direction, they still have major shortcomings that prevent meaningful relief for survivor-defendants. Until now, there has been no systematic overview of the statutes that require courts to consider a defendant’s history of trauma in the contexts of domestic violence and human trafficking. There has also been no attempt to explore how these statutes relate to each other. This Note fills those gaps. It also identifies essential elements …

Early Survivor Voices And Primary Sources. Modern Slavery: A Documentary And Reference Guide By Laura J. Lederer, Sandra Morgan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Increasing Case Traffic: Expanding The International Criminal Court's Focus On Human Trafficking Cases, Nadia Alhadi

Michigan Journal of International Law

Human trafficking falls within the jurisdictional competence of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) as one of the article 7 crimes against humanity, whether committed in an atmosphere of conflict or in times of relative peace. Despite the ICC’s jurisdiction, as well as the globally pervasive nature of peacetime trafficking in particular, the ICC has not yet heard a human trafficking case.

Accountability at the international level, however, is crucial, and the ICC’s oversight has the potential to fill gaps in the current anti-trafficking regime. This note explores this potential, and then examines whether the text of the Rome Statute or …

Up To The Task: Utilizing Collaboration To Combat Trafficking In Persons, Claire Schalin

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

In this article, I will define trafficking and dispel some common myths that people believe about trafficking. This section will explain trafficking’s many forms and will demonstrate how trafficking can be a stationary crime rather than one requiring movement. Next, I will give a history of the legislation surrounding trafficking and common approaches to curbing the trafficking problem including arguments on both sides of decriminalization. In this section, I will present a country comparison on how different countries approach traffickers and victims of trafficking in their efforts to reduce trafficking in general. In addition to analyzing how varying countries address …

Plata O Plomo: Effect Of Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations On The American Criminal Justice System, Mark M. Mcpherson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Human Trafficking And Pornography: Using The Trafficking Victims Protection Act To Prosecute Trafficking For The Production Of Internet Pornography, Allison J. Luzwick

Northwestern University Law Review

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) was passed to “combat trafficking in persons, a contemporary manifestation of slavery whose victims are predominantly women and children, to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.”1 Since the passing of the Act, federal courts have construed the statute broadly to achieve this stated purpose. One way in which the TVPA has been underutilized, however, is in prosecuting pornography cases. Pornography enjoys wide latitude under the law, protected by a vast net of First Amendment protections. While these protections may preserve freedom of speech, they do nothing …

Remembering An Abolitionist, Ambassador John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017), Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A memorial for Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017). Ambassador Miller believed modern-day slavery, encompassing sex trafficking and forced labor, requires a principled global offensive that the United States is morally obligated to lead. In the four formative years he led the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 2002 to 2006, John Miller set the office’s course as diplomatically aggressive and programmatically creative. He made the annual Trafficking in Persons report more than a bureaucratic submission, putting daring heroes at the center, and insisting on compelling …

New Uri Journal Explores Sexual Exploitation, G. Wayne Miller, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Dignity, Vol 1, Issue 1, 2016, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Expert Workshop Session: Regulatory Framework, Ashley Ferrelli, Eric Heath, Eulen Jang, Cory Takeuchi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Holding On To Clarity: Reconciling The Federal Kidnapping Statute With The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Benjamin Reese

Michigan Law Review

In recent decades, the international community has come to recognize human trafficking as a problem of epidemic proportions. Congress responded to this global crisis in 2000 by passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and has since supplemented that comprehensive enactment. But, in light of the widespread use of psychological rather than physical coercion in trafficking cases, a long-standing split among federal courts regarding the scope of the federal kidnapping statute raises significant concerns about the United States’ efforts to combat traffickers. In particular, the broad interpretation adopted by several circuits threatens effective enforcement of statutes designed to prosecute traffickers, …

Reconsidering Federal And State Obstacles To Human Trafficking Victim Status And Entitlements, Amanda J. Peters

Amanda J Peters

Federal and state anti-trafficking laws describe the victim in the process of criminalizing the act of human trafficking. Nearly half of all states adopt the federal definition of victim, which requires proof of forced, defrauded or coerced labor, whereas the other half narrows this definition thereby limiting the number of victims qualifying for state victims services. Using this definition, victims must prove their status before they can access victim entitlements. Even when victims prove their status, they may be denied traditional crime victim benefits like restitution and Crime Victim Compensation funds. In this way, their victim status may be rendered …

Gender Based Violence As A Continuum Of Human Rights Violations In Russia And The Czech Republic, Alena Lebron

Dissertations and Theses

Gender-based violence can take various forms – physical, sexual, psychological, and economic. Violence against women is a global public health problem and not only violates human rights, but also hampers productivity, reduces human capital, and undermines economic growth. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, human trafficking for sexual exploitation and domestic violence have become a significant problem in post-communist countries. The fall of the Soviet Union also shaped national gender policies in post-communist countries. Despite the common challenges they face, success in implementing anti-trafficking procedures and measures against domestic violence varies from country to country.

According to …

Economic Migration Gone Wrong: Trafficking In Persons Through The Lens Of Gender, Labor, And Globalization, Dana Raigrodski

Articles

This Article argues for an economic analysis of human trafficking which primarily looks at globalization, trade liberalization, and labor migration as the core areas that need to be explored to advance the prevention of human trafficking.

Part I briefly examines the prevailing criminal law enforcement framework regarding human trafficking—both at the international level and in the United States—which stems out of viewing human trafficking as primarily a threat to global security and an underground industry of transnational criminal enterprises. It argues that while criminalization no doubt helped bring much needed attention (and resources) to human trafficking, the narrow criminal law …

Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

How does transnational legal order emerge, develop and solidify? This chapter focuses on how and why actors come to define an issue as one requiring transnational legal intervention of a specific kind. Specifically, we focus on how and why states have increasingly constructed and acceded to international legal norms relating to human trafficking. Empirically, human trafficking has been on the international and transnational agenda for nearly a century. However, relatively recently – and fairly swiftly in the 2000s – governments have committed themselves to criminalize human trafficking in international as well as regional and domestic law. Our paper tries to …

Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

In 2000, the international community formally launched the modern movement to combat human trafficking with the United Nations' adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol). With the Trafficking Protocol, the international community created a new cornerstone upon which to build a global initiative to combat this modem form of slavery. As the first major international treaty on human trafficking in half a century, the Trafficking Protocol represented a significant step forward. One hundred forty-seven countries are now party to the …

“Exploitation Creep” And Development: A Response To Janie Chuang, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In her article Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law, Janie Chuang insightfully describes transformations in the discourse on trafficking as it shifted from sex trafficking to human trafficking, and as human trafficking came to be understood as forced labor, and now modern day slavery. With each of these transformations, the United States government, self-anointed “global sheriff” of anti-trafficking efforts, deepened its emphasis on a prosecution-oriented strategy focused on individual perpetrator accountability. As an alternative trajectory, Chuang identifies and convincingly argues for a labor-rights approach that takes into consideration the structural causes of exploitation in the labor market, …

Article 4 Of The Echr And The Obligation Of Criminalizing Slavery, Servitude, Forced Labour And Human Trafficking, Vladislava Stoyanova

Vladislava Stoyanova

This article addresses the interaction between international human rights law and national criminal law as exemplified and revealed in relation to the abuses of slavery, servitude, forced labour and human trafficking (THB). First, I point out the mismatch between the interpretative techniques of international human rights law and national criminal law. The reportedly low numbers of prosecutions and convictions for abuses against migrants has gathered increasing attention. As a reaction it has been suggested that the definitions of THB and of slavery, servitude and forced labour (where the latters have been specifically criminalized) have to be expansively construed. These suggestions …

The Crisis Of A Legal Framework: Protection Of Victims Of Human Trafficking In The Bulgarian Legislation, Vladislava Stoyanova

Vladislava Stoyanova

The Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings reported that in Bulgaria no adult victim of human trafficking received any assistance and that no adult victim was granted a reflection period. A close examination of the Bulgarian legislative framework could explain this unpromising picture. In this article, I develop three arguments in relation to the Bulgarian legislation on protection of trafficked persons. First, in some respects, Bulgaria has failed to fulfil its international obligations. Second, the national legal framework regulating the conditions under which trafficked person are assisted and protected is surrounded by legal …

The Crisis Of A Definition: Human Trafficking In Bulgarian Law, Vladislava Stoyanova

Vladislava Stoyanova

This article develops two arguments. First, at a national level in Bulgaria, the human trafficking framework is inoperable for identifying abuses worthy of consideration. By comparing the Bulgarian criminal law definition of human trafficking with the international law definition, I argue that the national criminal law definition is overly inclusive. This state of the Bulgarian criminal law makes it difficult to undertake a realistic assessment of the problem. Second, I submit that because the focus in Bulgaria has been exclusively directed towards the crime of human trafficking, the fact that the abuses of slavery, servitude and forced labour as such …

Human Trafficking Post 9/11 Policy And Practice Beyond Cutting The Tail Off The Snake, Alexandra Caitlin Rice

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The U.S. Department of State estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 14,500 to 17,500 of which are trafficked into the United States. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA) was created to combat human trafficking in the country, and as a result created the T-visa to provide immigration relief to non-citizen victims of trafficking. In this work I analyze U.S. government efforts to combat trafficking in the twelve years following implementation of the VTVPA. I expand my analysis beyond T-visa distribution data to incorporate interviews with high-level government …

Women And Children Last: The Prosecution Of Sex Traffickers As Sex Offenders And The Need For A Sex Trafficker Registry, Geneva Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Sex trafficking is a moral and legal tragedy that affects thousands in the United States and abroad. The U.S. State Department estimates that human traffickers bring between 14,500 and 17,500 persons annually into the United States for various avenues of exploitation, including involuntary servitude and forced prostitution. Human traffickers are highly organized into criminal syndicates that reap exponential profits exploiting vulnerable women and children. Individual states struggle to prosecute traffickers and must rely on federal prosecution of trafficking enterprises. International cooperation with local law enforcement is essential in combating trafficking, especially in the sex trade. This Article proposes that an …

Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres

Michigan Journal of International Law

In 2000, the international community formally launched the modern movement to combat human trafficking with the United Nations' adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol). With the Trafficking Protocol, the international community created a new cornerstone upon which to build a global initiative to combat this modem form of slavery. As the first major international treaty on human trafficking in half a century, the Trafficking Protocol represented a significant step forward. One hundred forty-seven countries are now party to the …

Through The Looking Glass: Finding And Freeing Modern-Day Slaves At The State Level, Michelle L. Rickert

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article delves into the interaction between federal and state laws prohibiting human trafficking. The article advocates for comprehensive human trafficking laws at the state level, including police training, victim aftercare, forfeiture, and prosecution as essential elements. It looks comprehensively at the existing state laws prohibiting human trafficking. Additionally it examines the five existing models for state law and suggests benefits and potential improvements for each model. The article concludes y advocating a holistic law prohibiting human trafficking in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Human Trafficking For Sexual Exploitation At World Sporting Events, Victoria Hayes

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Many members of the international community fear that world sporting events, such as the Olympics and the World Cup, create surges in human trafficking for sexual exploitation, causing women and girls to be exploited for commercial sex while the rest of the world celebrates athleticism and sport. These fears have sparked heated debate about the measures hosting countries should take to prevent human trafficking at these events and the role prostitution policies play in combating human trafficking. In the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics in Canada and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, politicians in both countries proposed legalizing …

Developing An Effective Criminal Justice Response To Human Trafficking: Lessons From The Front Line, Anne T. Gallagher, Paul Holmes

Anne T Gallagher

Trafficking in persons now affects all regions and most countries of the world. Over the past decade, there has been increasing acceptance of the need for an effective, internationally coordinated response. However, the practical difficulties in realizing this goal are considerable. No country can yet lay claim to genuine, extensive experience in dealing with trafficking as a criminal phenomenon. Most are developing and adapting their responses on the run, often under strong political pressure, and principally through trial and error. While communication between national agencies on this issue is improving, there is still very little cooperation or cross-fertilization of ideas …

State Legislation And Human Trafficking: Helpful Or Harmful?, Stephanie Richard

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Human trafficking is the modern day form of slavery. Despite the fact that thousands of people are trafficked into the United Sates each year, the majority of U.S. citizens are not aware of the nature and extent of this problem. In 2000, the U.S. government passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) to combat this grave human rights abuse. This federal legislation takes a comprehensive approach to addressing the problem of human trafficking in the United States by acknowledging that effective prosecution cannot occur without safeguards and benefits for trafficking victims. To this end, the VTVPA enumerates …