Combating Sex Trafficking: A perpetrator-focused approach

Combating Sex Trafficking: A perpetrator-focused approach

Combating Sex Trafficking: A perpetrator-focused approach

Contemporary human trafficking includes forced labor, slavery, and sex trafficking. The global sex trafficking of women and girls is organized and “industrialized.” Operating within and across national borders, it is comprised of legal and illegal business establishments engaging in a range of sexual exploitative activities, from generally legal acts, such as stripping and producing pornography, to generally illegal acts, such as producing child pornography, distributing obscene materials, and prostitution. Some of these activities, such as prostitution and lap dancing, are legal or unregu- lated in some counties and states in the United States or in counties around the world.

This paper focuses only on the sex trafficking of women and girls. It formulates a new approach to combating sex trafficking that serves as a complement to the victim-centered approach that has been widely adopted in law and policies in the United States and around the world. Many of the tools for a perpetrator-focused approach already exist or have been enacted by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration from 2000 to 2008. The foundation exists for a successful, far-reaching global movement to advance the human rights and status of women and girls by ending their commercial sexual exploitation.

This paper will briefly summarize the contemporary anti-sex traffick- ing movement, including the theoretical analyses and contributions of feminist nongovernmental organizations, conservative and faith-based groups, and the administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush. It will describe the victim-centered approach to combating sex trafficking first developed by the Clinton administration and implemented by the Bush administration. The factors creating a demand for victims will be described. The paper will analyze how the victim-centered approach has failed to focus attention on the perpetrators of sex trafficking crimes. A new approach called the perpetrator-focused approach will be presented. It broadens the discussion beyond the Trafficking Victims Protection Act definition of sex trafficking to include other sex trafficking crimes.

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