Citation

Fry LJ. Int. J. Comp. Appl. Crim. Justice 2010; 34(1): 201-212.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis)

DOI

10.1080/01924036.2010.9678823

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The stated purposes of this paper are twofold: 1) to build upon Bales' (2007) earlier paper regarding the factors that predict human trafficking by adding transit countries to the analysis, which included origin and destination countries; and, 2) to demonstrate the efficacy of using the Global Programme Against Trafficking (GPAT) database sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in ongoing trafficking research, especially when the country is the unit of analysis. Bales (2007) and this research used different sets of measures, with some overlap. So it was not surprising that the results were mixed. Both Bales (2007) and this study identified governmental corruption and the percentage of the population under fourteen years of age as the two top predictors of trafficking from a country. This study identified the percentage of the population under fourteen as the primary predictor of trafficking through transit countries, a category Bales did not include in his study. Bales reported that the proportion of the country's population over 60 years old and corruption were the two strongest predictors of trafficking to a destination country. By way of contrast, this study found that the Human Development Index and the total population measure were the strongest predictors of trafficking to a destination country. Overall this study suggested the need to conduct more research with the data currently available in sources like the GPAT before making global policy recommendations.

Keywords: Human trafficking

Language: en