Citation

Fry LJ. Int. J. Crim. Justice Sci. 2008; 3(2): 71-83.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the use of "trafficking hotspots" is a useful approach in the quest of identifying factors that predict human trafficking at the country level. The paper builds upon earlier studies by Bales (2007) and Fry (2010, in press) that attempted to identify the factors which predicted trafficking based on the classification of countries on the basis of origin, transit, and destination sources of human trafficking. This study uses the database constructed by the Global Program Against Trafficking of Human Beings (GPAT), sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to assess the trafficking hotspots question. The paper begins by discussing the definition of human trafficking, covers international agreements, data collection issues, reviews the literature, including the papers presented by Bales and Fry and then describes the present study. The results indicated that the notion of trafficking hotspots has some efficacy in the quest to identify the factors that predict human trafficking. The conclusion was that research in the area needs to be supplemented by additional data collection and that future research should be guided by the identification of hotspots at the country or regional level.