If slavery is outlawed everywhere, yet the modern slave trade — otherwise known as human trafficking — appears to be on the increase, where are the police?
According to the DCAF Report, the answer is that law enforcement in nation after nation is oftentimes complicit in trafficking, pocketing bribes for looking the other way, “losing” vital travel and citizenship documents, and in some cases actually working directly with criminal elements to facilitate the movement of human beings across national and international borders.
“. . .(T)here is no question that human trafficking could not occur on the scale it does were it not for the complicity and collusion of corrupt officials with criminal gangs,” writes law enforcement expert Leslie Holmes in the DCAF report.
Holmes, who has extensively investigated police-crime relationships in eastern and southern Europe, concedes that the lack of hard data (e.g. corruption prosecutions) limits the ability of governments and law enforcement agencies to gain a clear picture of the extent of police complicity in trafficking. But it is there, he writes, and growing in scope due significantly to the “opportunity” for low-paid border guards, immigration bureaucrats and public prosecutors to get into the action — and quick profits — trafficking in human beings generates. As Holmes frequently reminds readers, trafficking has historically been a low-risk, high reward enterprise with relatively easy entry for unscrupulous individuals (including siblings, parents and relatives of victims). And the reason risk is low, he writes, is that law enforcement in many nations has traditonally turned a blind eye to the growing business of trafficking.
How does corruption play out? Corrupt police can become directly involved by helping create and shield a trafficking scheme or by colluding with traffickers by alerting them to upcoming raids or assisting gangs in regaining control of victims who’ve escaped. Indirectly, police and government officials can aid traffickers simply by refusing to investigate trafficking incidents.
Here’s a description from Holmes’ study of the many ways corrupt police have enabled human trafficking to flourish:
One Thai trafficker claimed that another trafficker had paid Thai police some US$12,000 in bribes in return for their “turning a blind eye” to the fact that he had been caught with some 300 passports. Other cases from Thailand indicate that police there have also extorted bribes from applicants for US visas whose passports are counterfeited or else have been illegally modified (usually through changing the photograph). Yet another way in which the police can be involved in trafficking is in alerting owners of brothels, karaoke bars and other locations in which there are trafficked women to impending raids; there have been allegations against police officers in New Orleans (US) for this form of involvement1 Some police officers are only “grass-eaters” (i.e. they will accept bribes if offered). But others are more predatory—“meat-eaters”—and will seek revenge on traffickers who do not pay the bribes the officers demand. Thus, some members of the Mexican “Grupo Beta” police team were allegedly demanding between $200 and $500 per time during the 1990s to allow human traffickers and people-smugglers to take people across the border with the US, and would not only imprison (for two to three days) traffickers who refused to pay, but would also sell their human “cargoes” to other traffickers for $50 per person.
Not an encouraging picture, and Holmes is blunt in claiming that fundamental, structural reform is required. Two ideas he suggests:
One, national governments would be wise to implement aggressive, zero-tolerance anti-corruption laws not just to crack down on bribes and other forms of illicit official behavior, but also to build trust among countries that can lead to joint cooperative counter-trafficking initiatives. Examples of transnational cooperation are already underway. The European Law Enforcement Agency (EUROPOL) is mandated to support the member states of the European Union in combating trafficking, and works with agencies like the Organization for Migration (IOM) on collecting and exchanging data on migration patterns within EU countries. In Scandinavia, counter-trafficking benefits from high levels of homogeneity and trust. Networking among officials from the region is relatively smooth due to deep institutional ties at all levels and in all policy fields, similar laws and traditions, and the small size of the countries that allows officials to quickly get to know their counterparts.
Second, Holmes (and other authors in the DCAF report) believe that as global awareness of human trafficking increases, philanthropists and government policy makers should direct their investments to raising law enforcement capabilities, anchoring their support to firm timetables of progress in securing arrests and prosecutions. Coherent counter-trafficking strategies, Holmes concludes, must begin with bolstering the capacity — and the will — of crime fighting organizations to take on the task of battling the traffickers in their midst.
Next: The victimization of human trafficking victims
Posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 12:44 pm in News.
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