Every year, thousands of Chinese women travel to Asia and the United States in order to engage in commercial sex work. In Selling Sex Overseas, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer challenge the current ...sex trafficking paradigm that considers all sex workers as victims, or sexual slaves, and as unwilling participants in the world of commercial sex. Bringing to life an on-the-ground portrait of this usually hidden world, Chin and Finckenauer provide a detailed look at all of its participants: sex workers, pimps, agents, mommies, escort agency owners, brothel owners, and drivers. Ultimately, they probe the social, economic, and political organization of prostitution and sex trafficking, contradicting many of the 'moral crusaders' of the human trafficking world.
What do most people, or at least most Americans, think of when they hear, see, or read the term "organized crime"? What do they know about it? And from whence do they get their information? What ...about law enforcement practitioners, prosecutors, judges, and politicians? And, what about academics and journalists, the folks who study and write about organized crime? Agreeing upon a commonly accepted definition of just what is organized crime has been a continuing problem for both research and policy. The discussion that follows addresses various dimensions of this problem, looks at the implications, and makes certain recommendations.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Criminal justice education has a checkered past, but a potentially very bright future. That past and that future, with the present sandwiched in between, are laid out here. My prime goal is to pose ...an agenda for teaching and learning about crime, law and justice in the 21st century. This is an agenda that seeks to insure quality, while dramatically expanding the scope and depth of criminal justice education.
In the sex trafficking literature, the term “trafficker” is often used to refer to all the various actors who are involved in the business of transnational sex work. It thus includes those who ...recruit women in the source countries; those who transport victims across international borders; and those who manage and exploit the women in the various commercial sex venues in the destination countries. In this paper, we will look at some of the people who fall into these categories of being “traffickers.” Our goal is to better understand the many people who are facilitating transnational commercial sex. We will explore their background characteristics, the reasons for their involvement in sex trafficking, their roles and functions in the business, and the nature of their relationships with the women who sell sex. We will also discuss the issue of whether, and to what extent, organized crime groups are involved as traffickers in the transnational sex trade. Our discussion is drawn from face-to-face interviews with commercial sex workers, and with sex ring operators and a variety of government officials.
This paper examines how the trafficking issue has been defined by various stakeholders, the public and governments, and how these various definitions of the problem may have influenced current ...trafficking policies. Has the issue of trafficking become politicized and its definitions "stretched" by stakeholders? Have special interest groups, and sometimes governments as well, exploited the trafficking problem to support particular agendas? Are the victims of trafficking always the primary concern, or are other issues pushed forward at their expense? To address these questions, we examine the different approaches to trafficking and the data used to support the various claims and positions.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Despite their importance in assessing the impact of policies, outcome evaluations—and in particular randomized experiments—are relatively rare. The rationalizations used to justify the absence of ...outcome evaluations include such assertions as “we know our programs are working,”“they can't possibly harm anyone,” and “if they only help one kid they're worth it.” Using preliminary results from a systematic review of nine randomized experiments of the Scared Straight, or prison visitation program, the authors show that a popular and well-meaning program can have harmful effects. They use these results to argue for more rigorous evaluations to test criminal justice interventions.
Prostitution reemerged in China in the 1980s and has become rampant ever since then—attracting enormous attention and academic interest. This article examines the history of prostitution in China, ...from its roots to the causes of its resurgence. It also examines China’s legal responses and policies and their limited effectiveness in containing the growth of the sex industry. In considering the possible relationship between prostitution and human trafficking, this article intends to improve our understanding of the link between the sex industry and sex trafficking, and to push for empirical studies on Chinese women working as prostitutes.
An emerging transnational crime problem, human trafficking occurs in almost every part of the world. But as a transit, source, and destination nexus for immigration, Turkey is particularly vulnerable ...in this regard. Turkey attracts many foreigners who choose to come there for geographical, historical, economic, and political reasons; some of these persons are victims of human trafficking. This article examines the problem of trafficking for sexual exploitation in Turkey and specifically examines victims' characteristics and their decision-making processes. Two primary data sources were used: police-recorded victim interviews (N = 430) and formal interviews with key personnel working for the prevention of human trafficking in Turkey (N = 18). The majority of victims come to Turkey from countries of the former Soviet Union. Most of the victims interviewed here were single, and the majority had only a primary or secondary school education. These victims reported that they had jobs at home, but most were low-level jobs. The victims were thus attracted to Turkey by job opportunities in the domestic and entertainment sectors. They preferred Turkey instead of the even more developed countries of the West because of the availability and ease of transportation from their countries of origin. The large sex industry in Turkey is able to absorb women who are brought there through the use of various means of deception. It is interesting that despite experiencing previous exploitation and victimization, almost one fifth of the victims reported looking for further opportunities to reenter and to work again in the sex business in Turkey.
