Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking


Book Description

The domestic sex trafficking of minors is a problem of growing concern yet little critical attention. This book analyzes the forces behind the sex-trafficking industry in the United States and provides a much-needed reference for practitioners. It adopts a holistic approach, pursuing a nuanced exploration of these young people's experiences, their treatment, and outside efforts to combat sex trafficking. The book features interviews with service providers and experts, and incorporates recent research, thereby mapping the complex factors associated with young people's involvement in trading sex and the social connections that facilitate their behavior. It considers the experiences of both those who "choose" sex work and those who are forced into it by circumstances or third parties, and it discusses the networks of friends and close acquaintances who introduce newcomers to the trade. In addition, it takes a hard look at how local and federal responses to trafficking increase young people's vulnerability to trading sex. Urging policymakers and practitioners to move beyond the simple framework of "rescuing" victims and "punishing" villains, this book calls for policies and programs that focus on the failure of social and cultural systems and respond better to the young people caught in this web.




Sex Trafficking of Children Online


Book Description

This book addresses child sex trafficking in the era of digital technology. As a global problem, human trafficking frequently victimizes the most vulnerable: children. Offenders often use the Internet as a vehicle for criminal activities, including acts to sexually exploit them. With Internet access growing exponentially, more children are online every day, increasing their risk of becoming involved in sexual exploitation or being treated as a commodity. Inconsistent law among countries and the lack of adequate cooperation across borders make combating this issue increasingly difficult. Using a human rights approach, this book offers alternative solutions and recommendations, including establishing a legal protection framework to fight practices that sexually exploit children in cyberspace. In addition, it promotes multi-stakeholder collaboration in the context of corporate social responsibility to prevent and combat these offenses. This book explores the intersection of children’s human rights, online sex trafficking, and international legislation. It provides helpful insights for lawmakers, legal practitioners, scholars, law enforcement officers, child advocates, and students interested in human rights law, criminal law, and child protection.




Human Trafficking


Book Description

Human Trafficking: A Treatment Guide for Mental Health Professionals is an educational and clinical resource for health care practitioners from any discipline who may encounter sex- or labor-trafficked persons. The book's editors direct the Baylor College of Medicine Anti-Human Trafficking Program in Houston, and in the last year, they have identified close to 100 trafficked persons in their hospital's small inpatient psychiatry unit--a rate that appears to be growing. Their extensive experience has made them uniquely qualified to pen this guide, which is singular in delivering the background knowledge and frontline clinical strategies providers need to identify, relate to, and treat these psychologically wounded, yet resilient patients. Each chapter begins with a compelling clinical case to bring the often-horrifying conditions these patients have endured into focus and to contextualize the pertinent research, assessment, and treatment information that follows. The chapters address epidemiology and screening, general and specific management principles in different settings, and specific topics such as managing concomitant substance use disorders, issues pertaining to children, advocacy, confidentiality and reporting requirements, psychotherapeutic principles, cultural issues, and trafficked persons' accounts of their own experiences with the health care system. Designed to enlighten and instruct, Human Trafficking: A Treatment Guide for Mental Health Professionals is a wake-up call and a wise and worldly companion for clinicians serving this overlooked population.




Other Dreams of Freedom


Book Description

Yvonne C. Zimmerman offers a groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between freedom and sexual regulation in American approaches to human trafficking.




Raised in Pimp City: The Uncut Truth About Domestic Human Sex Trafficking


Book Description

"You pimp! You trafficker! You should be skinned alive and burned at the stake! How could you possibly exploit another sexually for your own sick financial gain? They were prostituting minors! How could they be so sick? Prison, yes prison should be where we hide you forever for the destruction of human life that you caused. Stopping you means stopping the human sex trafficking epidemic! If we incarcerate you we can stop modern day slavery!"I heard these words as I watched a group of my mentees go through their case in federal court. With RICO conspiracy charges hanging over their heads, they were presented as gang members that trafficked girls for the benefit of the gang. I knew these allegations were false. I knew these young men personally. They were not pimps and definitely not "traffickers," a new word to me that I had never heard before until now. A word that I had to learn the meaning of fast. How did I know that they weren't "traffickers"? I quickly found out that for many years of my life I myself was a trafficker.I sat in the courtroom silent, not able to speak my first-hand knowledge of "the game." Regardless of whether I knew my mentees were innocent or not, these were charges they could never shake. I listened as law enforcement experts testified from their expertise. Ha! What did they know? These were people who had never spent a single day in the subculture of pimping and prostitution. They had no clue what that life was really like and if they did they were lying on purpose to continue the mass incarceration of young black and brown lives. Yeah, that had to be it.Entering the anti human sex trafficking movement as a former pimp and trafficker, I knew I would be alone. My past will not be taken well by many, but what other option do I have, stay quiet? Should I not educate people about domestic human sex trafficking and the pimping culture I was raised to believe was my only way of success? I can't stay quiet! I can't go off and live a normal life, glad to have survived the game. Out of 8 of my closest friends I am one of 4 still alive. The only way to help end this cycle of death and incarceration is to teach the truth from my perspective. All sides of this problem must be at the table because so far only a portion of the story is being told. This portion of the story still doesn't truly reflect the lived realities of the many women survivors that I know and love. Staying quiet is not an option for me - I'm willing to die to save future generations from this trap. This was no "game" we were playing. It was an illusion. An illusion that was pressed upon me and my entire peer group as we grew up in San Diego, California. Pimp City.To all who want to truly want to help fight human sex trafficking and sexual exploitation this book is needed in your arsenal.This is not a "how to" book on pimping. This is also not a book about human sex trafficking in general. This book presents a deeper understanding of the mind-frame and make-up of those involved in human sex trafficking. This book specifically deals with the pimping and prostitution subculture that has risen from impoverished communities across the United States, communities in cities like mine. This subculture can affect your family no matter what social or economic class you come from. Do you want to learn the truth so that we can really deal with the problem? Here's your opportunity.




Sex Trafficking in the United States


Book Description

This book is a comprehensive and accessible overview of sex trafficking in the United States, examining its underlying dynamics and sharing key research findings. Andrea J. Nichols examines the backgrounds and experiences of survivors, traffickers, and buyers, showing how social and structural dynamics affect trafficking in the United States. She details common risk factors for victimization, emphasizing weak social institutions and safety nets. This book’s intersectional approach foregrounds the ways social oppression and marginalization contribute to heightened vulnerability, accounting for the roles of race, ethnicity, citizenship status, sexuality, gender, age, and disability. Nichols introduces readers to the theoretical and political perspectives that shape research and policy on sex trafficking, considering abolitionist, neoliberal, feminist, criminological, and sociological viewpoints. She assesses the outcomes of policies relating to commercial sex and analyzes a variety of responses to sex trafficking, including in social services, health care, and the criminal legal system, as well as activism. Nichols reflects on how service providers, activists, and everyday people can effectively advocate for and with survivors of sex trafficking and offers recommendations for practice and policy. Sex Trafficking in the United States is essential for understanding the dynamics of sex trafficking and its underlying sources. This second edition is thoroughly revised and updated, integrating the most up-to-date research.




Confronting Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Minors in the United States


Book Description

Every day in the United States, children and adolescents are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Despite the serious and long-term consequences for victims as well as their families, communities, and society, efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to these crimes are largely under supported, inefficient, uncoordinated, and unevaluated. Confronting Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Minors in the United States examines commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States under age 18. According to this report, efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to these crimes require better collaborative approaches that build upon the capabilities of people and entities from a range of sectors. In addition, such efforts need to confront demand and the individuals who commit and benefit from these crimes. The report recommends increased awareness and understanding, strengthening of the law's response, strengthening of research to advance understanding and to support the development of prevention and intervention strategies, support for multi-sector and interagency collaboration, and creation of a digital information-sharing platform. A nation that is unaware of these problems or disengaged from solutions unwittingly contributes to the ongoing abuse of minors. If acted upon in a coordinated and comprehensive manner, the recommendations of Confronting Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Minors in the United States can help advance and strengthen the nation's emerging efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the United States.




Human Trafficking


Book Description

Human Trafficking: A Comprehensive Exploration into Modern Day Slavery examines the legal, socio-cultural, historical, and political aspects of human trafficking and modern-day slavery in the United States and around the world. The goal of this text is to provide an accurate understanding of all forms of human trafficking and current responses to this crime.




Preventing Child Trafficking


Book Description

How can a public health approach advance efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to child trafficking? Child trafficking is widely recognized as one of the critical issues of our day, prompting calls to action at the global, national, and local levels. Yet it is unclear whether the strategies and tools used to counter this exploitation—most of which involve law enforcement and social services—have actually reduced the prevalence of trafficking. In Preventing Child Trafficking, Jonathan Todres and Angela Diaz explore how the public health field can play a comprehensive, integrated role in preventing, identifying, and responding to child trafficking. Describing the depth and breadth of trafficking's impact on children while exploring the limitations in current responses, Todres and Diaz argue that public health frameworks offer important insights into the problem, with detailed chapters on how professionals and organizations can identify and respond effectively to at-risk and trafficked children. Drawing on the authors' years of experience working on this issue—Diaz is a doctor at a frontline medical center serving at-risk youth, victims, and survivors; Todres is a legal expert on legislative and policy initiatives to address child trafficking—the book maps out a public health approach to child trafficking, the role of the health care sector, and the prospects for building a comprehensive response. Providing readers with advice geared toward better understanding trafficking's root causes, this revelatory book concludes by mapping out a "public health toolkit" that can be used by anyone who is interested in preventing child trafficking, from policymakers to professionals who work with children.




The Seductions of Quantification


Book Description

We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we reveal. With The Seductions of Quantification, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators on human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Although such numbers convey an aura of objective truth and scientific validity, Merry argues persuasively that measurement systems constitute a form of power by incorporating theories about social change in their design but rarely explicitly acknowledging them. For instance, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries in terms of their compliance with antitrafficking activities, assumes that prosecuting traffickers as criminals is an effective corrective strategy—overlooking cultures where women and children are frequently sold by their own families. As Merry shows, indicators are indeed seductive in their promise of providing concrete knowledge about how the world works, but they are implemented most successfully when paired with context-rich qualitative accounts grounded in local knowledge.