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Research on gender-specific penal reform programs critique their failure to prioritize the socio-economic recovery of criminalized women. This paper draws on these insights to examine the Women's Refuge Court (WRC), a human trafficking court for adult women criminalized for prostitution and drug offences in Ohio. Using ethnographic research, I illustrate the WRC's rejection of bootstrapping and emphasis on material resourcing as a penal reform strategy. I argue that the WRC's prioritization of socio-economic recovery derives from fears over the status decline of the impoverished white women who predominate as defendants. Court officials rely on evangelical Christian imaginings of prostitution as 'modern day slavery' to frame participants as 'trafficking victims'. I identify the WRC's response as a racially specific form of gender responsive programming called carceral restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctions are among the most frequently used foreign policy tools to address human rights violations, but they can be highly politicized. Since the early 2000s, human rights sanctions have been increasingly triggered by standardized rankings of states' performances. While research on economic statecraft suggests that coercive measures based on cross-national assessments may be less influenced by strategic considerations, scholarship on rankings highlights how standardized performance indicators can also be political. This paper investigates whether sanctions based on standardized human rights assessments are also influenced by senders' strategic political and economic interests. Empirically, we examine the case of United States human trafficking sanctions that combines universal rankings in the first stage and country-specific sanctions waivers in the second. The analysis leverages novel data on all Trafficking in Persons (TIP) rankings by the US State Department and presidential sanctions waivers from 2003 to 2018. Despite the TIP report's reputation as a reliable indicator, we find that both stages in the process of imposing human trafficking sanctions are driven by strategic attempts to minimize the economic and political costs of sanctions for the US. These findings have broader implications for the reputation and effectiveness of other human rights rankings by the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statues are in the news. Controversies are swirling around the slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol, Confederate generals, soldiers and leaders in the United States, and the sculpture in honour of Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green in North London. In some cases, the attacks have been physical as well as verbal, and such moves have provoked counter‐moves in defence of certain statues or statues of a certain kind. People are paying attention to and reflecting on monuments that they might normally pass by without a glance or thought. Nor has the conversation simply been about the authorised and unauthorised relocation or dismantling of statues: there has also been considerable enthusiasm for erecting new ones. In this paper, I argue that it is healthy to have such debates and important in a functioning democracy. However, before we can consider why some statues and monuments have become so controversial, and how best to resolve the controversies, we first need to understand the many different reasons why statues might be erected in the first place, and why they might continue to be valued and preserved. We also need to consider secondary intentions in their creation, and other social functions they might serve, whether intended or not. We need to reflect on the who, how, where and when of statues before we can understand their defacement or destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to widespread belief, human trafficking operations are characterized by significant costs, particularly monitoring costs, and diseconomies of scale. How do traffickers achieve high capacity in their operations? This paper is an empirical in-depth study of the structure and activities of a large-scale human trafficking ring operating between Nigeria and Europe. It is based on a set of novel data sets that was manually coded and analyzed using network analysis techniques, and it shows that high trafficking capacity is associated with a high level of externalization of activities. Offenders mostly act as independent agents, in a similar way to contractors. The trafficking ring does not appear to be run along ethnic or family lines, but what does emerge is a rather clear division of labour and role specialization. Finally, this paper contributes to the broader debate on coordination in illegal settings and puts into question the idea that transnational crime is invariably best fought transnationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents research that analysed data regarding offenders convicted for trafficking offences in the United Kingdom. The paper identifies three themes relating to women's involvement in trafficking activity. First, women perform lower level roles in trafficking that render them more susceptible to detection. Second, previous experiences of victimization have often provided pathways into offending for these women. Third, convicted female traffickers are frequently involved in intimate relationships with male traffickers. A more responsive approach to female traffickers, it is argued, would acknowledge the role of previous victimization, show greater understanding of the power dynamics between co-defendants and would need to be supported by policy conversant of the intersections between economic and sexual exploitation, gender inequality and global inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative action in response to the organ trade has centred on the prohibition of organ sales and the enforcement of criminal sanctions targeting 'trafficking' offences. This paper argues that the existing law enforcement response is not only inadequate but harmful. The analysis is based on empirical data gathered in Cairo, Egypt, among members of the Sudanese population who have either sold or arranged for the sale of kidneys. The data suggest that prohibition has pushed the organ trade further underground increasing the role of organ brokers and reducing the bargaining position of organ sellers, leaving them exposed to greater levels of exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) appropriates Islamic tradition to justify sexual slavery, most notably the eschatological prophetic report "the slave girl will give birth to her master." Contrary to the public discourse that constantly emphasizes the "medieval" nature of ISIS, I demonstrate that the movement has developed a modern interpretation of the tradition. The medieval Muslim scholars that the ISIS author quotes argue that the report should be read broadly and not be used in legal discussions or to expand slavery. In contrast, the ISIS author contends that the saying should be interpreted to mean the revival of slavery and justifies taking Yazidi women as sex slaves. The ISIS author thus presents a new understanding of the report, one that is unique within the history of Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the protection available to victims of transborder trafficking using two mechanisms in Canada: the assistance program for victims of trafficking and refugee law. It argues that the two mechanisms should be viewed as parts of a larger protection framework, connected by a common referral system whereby a trafficked person could obtain information and legal advice on both options at the time of their initial contact with the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the status of human trafficking in Europe is presented. It explains the differences between human smuggling and trafficking. It discusses why many women and children are being trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation. It highlights how women and children are being trafficked from Eastern to Western Europe, and how authorities, non-governmental organizations and international organizations are collaborating to address this problem.

Using the case of anti-trafficking policy in Ohio, this paper examines the emergence and impact of localized policy efforts against the global phenomenon of human trafficking. We argue that the manner in which human trafficking is characterized by international and national policymakers has engendered flawed policy approaches. Specifically, we find that local actors have replicated wholesale the discourse and policy frames developed and adopted by international organizations and national governments. While well intentioned, current characterizations and the subsequent policies have uniformly failed to stem the time of human trafficking even at the local level. Therefore, we examine the human security approach as an alternative means to describe and frame human trafficking and suggest that such a political discourse has the potential to prescribe more effectual policies against human trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates whether globalization can improve women's rights. Using panel data from 150 countries over the 1981-2008 period, I find that social globalization positively affects women's economic and social rights. When controlling for social globalization, however, economic globalization does not have any effect on women's rights. Despite the positive effect of (social) globalization on women's standing in a country, (marginalized) foreign women, proxied with inflows of human trafficking, are not beneficiaries of such 'female-friendly' globalization effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marinova, Nadejda K. and Patrick James. (2012) The Tragedy of Human Trafficking: Competing Theories and European Evidence. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00162.x This paper explores an issue that is both domestic and international: whether legalization of prostitution leads to an increase in human trafficking. For both theory and public policy, this is an important query to answer, with implications beyond the cases in question. The principal domains of investigation are Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. These states subscribe to UN, EU, Council of Europe and OSCE agreements and are located in the same geographic region, yet have adopted opposite approaches to prostitution. The Netherlands and Germany legalized prostitution in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Sweden outlawed it in 1999 and imposed criminal penalties for the purchase of illicit sex. The preceding characteristics make these states ideal for a comparative exercise in the context of competing perspectives on human trafficking and legalized prostitution. We find that legalization leads to an increase in trafficking. The dynamics of trafficking are also associated with numerous factors, among which the most critical are government efforts specifically targeting the activity in the field of law enforcement. Implications for theory and public policy are offered, along with ideas about future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human trafficking is an old, but increasingly complex, phenomenon. In an age of globalization and transnationalism, demand for cheap labour and services fuels a trade deeply rooted in different cultural and historical contexts. Human traffickers share those roots with their respective diasporas the world over. This paper examines the case for an empirical investigation, and gender-sensitive analysis, of the connections between crime networks engaged in international human trafficking and their respective diasporas in countries of transit and destination. It proposes a typology to assist research into, and analysis of the extent to which, and how, diasporas may play a part in the processes that constitute the cross-border trade in human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]