U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 

The Exploitation of 

Trafficked Women 

by Graeme R. Newman 

Problem-Specific Guides Series 

No. 38 

www.cops.usdoj.gov 
Got a Problem? We’ve got answers! 

Log onto the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing website 

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Center for Problem-Oriented Policing 

www.PopCenter.org

• Web-enhanced versions of all currently available Guides 

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resource in problem-oriented policing. 

Supported by the Office of Community Oriented Policing 

Services, U.S. Department of Justice. 
Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 

Problem-Specific Guides Series 

Guide No. 38 

The Exploitation of

Trafficked Women

Graeme R. Newman 

This project was supported by cooperative agreement 

#2003CKWX0087 by the Office of Community Oriented Policing 

Services, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions contained herein 

are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official 

position of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific 

companies, products, or services should not be considered an 

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of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement 

discussion of the issues. 

www.cops.usdoj.gov 

ISBN: 1-932582-59-2 

February 2006 

About the Problem-Specific Guides Series i 

About the Problem-Specific Guides Series 

The Problem-Specific Guides summarize knowledge about 

how police can reduce the harm caused by specific crime 

and disorder problems. They are guides to prevention 

and to improving the overall response to incidents, not 

to investigating offenses or handling specific incidents. 

The guides are written for police—of whatever rank or 

assignment—who must address the specific problem the 

guides cover. The guides will be most useful to officers 

who: 

• Understand basic problem-oriented policing principles 

and methods. The guides are not primers in problemoriented policing. They deal only briefly with the initial 

decision to focus on a particular problem, methods to 

analyze the problem, and means to assess the results of a 

problem-oriented policing project. They are designed to help 

police decide how best to analyze and address a problem 

they have already identified. (A companion series of ProblemSolving Tools guides has been produced to aid in various 

aspects of problem analysis and assessment.) 

• Can look at a problem in depth. Depending on the 

complexity of the problem, you should be prepared to spend 

perhaps weeks, or even months, analyzing and responding 

to it. Carefully studying a problem before responding helps 

you design the right strategy, one that is most likely to 

work in your community. You should not blindly adopt the 

responses others have used; you must decide whether they 

are appropriate to your local situation. What is true in one 

place may not be true elsewhere; what works in one place 

may not work everywhere. 
ii The Exploitation of Trafficked Women Underage Drinking

• Are willing to consider new ways of doing police 

business. The guides describe responses that other police 

departments have used or that researchers have tested. 

While not all of these responses will be appropriate to 

your particular problem, they should help give a broader 

view of the kinds of things you could do. You may think 

you cannot implement some of these responses in your 

jurisdiction, but perhaps you can. In many places, when 

police have discovered a more effective response, they have 

succeeded in having laws and policies changed, improving 

the response to the problem. 

• Understand the value and the limits of research 

knowledge. For some types of problems, a lot of useful 

research is available to the police; for other problems, 

little is available. Accordingly, some guides in this series 

summarize existing research whereas other guides illustrate 

the need for more research on that particular problem. 

Regardless, research has not provided definitive answers to 

all the questions you might have about the problem. The 

research may help get you started in designing your own 

responses, but it cannot tell you exactly what to do. This 

will depend greatly on the particular nature of your local 

problem. In the interest of keeping the guides readable, 

not every piece of relevant research has been cited, nor has 

every point been attributed to its sources. To have done so 

would have overwhelmed and distracted the reader. The 

references listed at the end of each guide are those drawn 

on most heavily; they are not a complete bibliography of 

research on the subject. 

• Are willing to work with others to find effective 

solutions to the problem. The police alone cannot 

implement many of the responses discussed in the guides. 

They must frequently implement them in partnership with 
About the Problem-Specific Guides Series iii 

other responsible private and public entities including other

government agencies, non-governmental organizations, 

private businesses, public utilities, community groups, 

and individual citizens. An effective problem-solver must 

know how to forge genuine partnerships with others 

and be prepared to invest considerable effort in making 

these partnerships work. Each guide identifies particular

entities in the community with whom police might work to 

improve the overall response to that problem. Thorough 

analysis of problems often reveals that entities other than 

the police are in a stronger position to address problems 

and that police ought to shift some greater responsibility to

them to do so.

The COPS Office defines community policing as 

“a policing philosophy that promotes and supports 

organizational strategies to address the causes and reduce 

the fear of crime and social disorder through problemsolving tactics and police-community partnerships.” 

These guides emphasize problem-solving and police-community 

partnerships in the context of addressing specific public 

safety problems. For the most part, the organizational 

strategies that can facilitate problem-solving and policecommunity partnerships vary considerably and discussion 

of them is beyond the scope of these guides. 

These guides have drawn on research findings and police 

practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, 

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and 

Scandinavia. Even though laws, customs and police 

practices vary from country to country, it is apparent that 

the police everywhere experience common problems. In 

a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected, it is 

important that police be aware of research and successful 

practices beyond the borders of their own countries. 
iv The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

The COPS Office and the authors encourage you to provide 

feedback on this guide and to report on your own agency’s 

experiences dealing with a similar problem. Your agency 

may have effectively addressed a problem using responses 

not considered in these guides and your experiences and 

knowledge could benefit others. This information will be 

used to update the guides. If you wish to provide feedback 

and share your experiences it should be sent via e-mail to 

cops_pubs@usdoj.gov. 

For more information about problem-oriented policing, visit 

the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing online at www. 

popcenter.org. This website offers free online access to: 

• the Problem-Specific Guides series 

• the companion Response Guides and Problem-Solving Tools 

series 

• instructional information about problem-oriented policing 

and related topics 

• an interactive training exercise 

• online access to important police research and practices. 
Acknowledgments v 

Acknowledgments 

The Problem-Oriented Guides for Police are very much a 

collaborative effort. While each guide has a primary 

author, other project team members, COPS Office staff 

and anonymous peer reviewers contributed to each guide 

by proposing text, recommending research and offering 

suggestions on matters of format and style. 

The principal project team developing the guide series 

comprised Herman Goldstein, professor emeritus, 

University of Wisconsin Law School; Ronald V. Clarke, 

professor of criminal justice, Rutgers University; John 

E. Eck, professor of criminal justice, University of 

Cincinnati; Michael S. Scott, clinical assistant professor, 

University of Wisconsin Law School; Rana Sampson, 

police consultant, San Diego; and Deborah Lamm 

Weisel, director of police research, North Carolina State 

University. 

Cynthia Pappas oversaw the project for the COPS Office. 

Stephen Lynch edited the guide. Research for the guides 

was conducted at the Criminal Justice Library at Rutgers 

University under the direction of Phyllis Schultze. 

The project team also wishes to acknowledge the members 

of the San Diego, National City and Savannah police 

departments who provided feedback on the guides' format 

and style in the early stages of the project, as well as the 

line police officers, police executives and researchers who 

peer reviewed each guide. 

Contents vii 

Contents 

About the Problem-Specific Guides Series ................................. i

Acknowledgments ....................................................v

The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women ............................... 1

Related Problems ................................................. 4

Extent of the Problem .............................................. 5

The Four Stages of Human Trafficking ................................. 7

Recruitment .................................................. 10

Transportation ................................................. 11

Delivery/Marketing............................................. 12

Exploitation................................................... 13

Factors Contributing to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women .................. 15

The Market for Commercial Sex ...................................... 15

Customer and Trafficker Attitudes .................................... 16

Divided Public Attitudes ............................................ 18

Organized Crime .................................................. 19

Attractive Locations ............................................... 20

Understanding Your Local Problem ....................................... 23

Asking the Right Questions ......................................... 23

Police and Community Awareness................................. 24

Marketing .................................................... 25

Venues ...................................................... 25

Incidents, Offenders, and Victims ................................. 27

Current Responses to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women ............ 28

Measuring Your Effectiveness ....................................... 29
viii The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women .................... 31

General Considerations for an Effective Response Strategy ................ 31

Preparatory Responses for Identifying the Problem ....................... 33

Specific Responses to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women ............... 40

Enforcing Laws Against Traffickers and Men Who Purchase Sex ........ 40

Reducing Demand.............................................. 44

Making the Local Environment Inhospitable to Exploitation of 

 Trafficked Women .......................................... 46

Responses With Limited Effectiveness ................................ 50

Appendix A: 

Summary of Responses to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women ............... 53

Appendix B: 

Schematic Representation of Relationships among Exploitation, Trafficking,

Migration, Smuggling, Labor, and Consent ................................. 59

Endnotes ............................................................ 61

References .......................................................... 65

About the Author ..................................................... 75

Recommended Readings ............................................... 77

Other Problem-Oriented Guides for Police .................................. 81
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 1 

The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked 

Women 

This guide begins by describing the problem of exploiting 

women who have been trafficked into the United States, 

and the aspects of human trafficking that contribute 

to it. Throughout the guide, the word “trafficked” shall 

mean internationally trafficked, unless otherwise stated. 

Additionally, the guide’s focus is on the final period in 

the process of trafficking at which women are further 

exploited by those into whose hands they are passed. 

This is the point at which human trafficking becomes 

a problem for local police and so the guide identifies a 

series of questions that can help analyze local problems 

related to trafficking. Finally, it reviews responses to the 

exploitation of trafficked women and examines what is 

known about the effectiveness of these responses from 

research and police practice. 

Concern about the exploitation of women who have 

been trafficked into the United States derives from the 

international issues of human trafficking and slavery.§ 

The characteristics of international human trafficking, 

including the profits, resemble those of the international 

drug trade.1 In the United States, until the passage of 

the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, 

human trafficking was approached as an immigration 

problem, which meant that police viewed trafficking 

as a federal rather than a local responsibility. The 

TVPA clarified the definition of human trafficking—a 

§ The trafficking of women within 

the United States is an old concern, 

dating back at least to the Mann Act 

of 1911, which criminalized taking 

persons across state lines for the 

purpose of prostitution. This law 

was directed towards prostitution 

in particular, without regard to 

immigration issues. 
2 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

particularly difficult problem, as will be seen below— 

and introduced a number of important protections for 

trafficked individuals (see Box 1). The TVPA defines two 

forms of severe human trafficking: 

a. “...sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is 

induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the 

person induced to perform such an act has not attained 

18 years of age.” 

b. “...the recruitment, harboring, transportation, 

provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or 

services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion 

for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, 

peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.”2 

Because some 70 percent of internationally trafficked 

women end up in the sex trade, the effect of the TVPA 

is to define many such women as crime victims rather 

than criminals. Whether pressed into forced labor or 

prostitution, the exploitation of these individuals is 

continued upon entry into the United States, whether in 

the same hands of those who trafficked them, or whether 

passed on to others who profit from commercial sex or 

cheap, often forced, labor. 

The TVPA does not require that a trafficked person be 

actually transported anywhere; it simply requires that 

the victim’s freedom be constrained by force, fraud or 

coercion. The focus of this guide, however, is on those 

women who are transported into the United States for 

the purposes of commercial sex or forced labor. The 

operational elements of forced labor, such as occurs in 

domestic service, agriculture, and sweatshops,3

 are similar 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 3 

to those of forced prostitution: in both cases women 

may be kept in slave-like conditions, exploited for their 

labor and are physically and mentally abused. They also 

share the same trafficked experience: a system built on 

fraud, coercion, and false promises, which is meant to 

ensure that the women remain under the control of their 

traffickers from the moment they are recruited continuing 

indefinitely through forced labor or the commercial sex 

trade.4 

Box 1: 

THE TRAFFICKING VICTIM PROTECTIONS ACT 2000 (TVPA)5 

1. Established a task force comprising the U.S. Secretary of State, the Secretary of 

Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Director General of 

the CIA, and the Attorney General. 

2. Required the establishment of programs designed to increase public awareness 

of human trafficking, including sex trafficking, forced labor and domestic 

servitude. 

3. Required an annual report from the U.S. Department of State on human 

trafficking around the world. 

4. Threatened economic sanctions against countries that failed to act against 

trafficking. 

5. Substantially increased punishments for offenses involving involuntary servitude 

and extended definitions to include traffickers or others who knowingly benefit 

from human trafficking. 

6. Defined victims of severe forms of trafficking and gave them refugee status. 

7. Removed the threat of deportation for those trafficked into the United States 

illegally, provided these victims cooperated with law enforcement. 

8. Provided protection for victims in federal custody and provided government 

housing, detention centers, shelters, medical care, and other services 

commensurate with victim status. 

9. Deemed victim consent irrelevant in determining trafficked status. 
4 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Related Problems 

Exploiting internationally trafficked women is only 

one of a number of problems that are related to, or 

are examples of, human trafficking. Other related 

problems not directly addressed by this guide include: 

• trafficking in children, sale of babies, and illegal 

adoptions 

• kidnapping of children 

• child pornography 

• sex tourism 

• trading in body parts 

• smuggling of immigrants 

• identity theft (see Problem-Specific Guide No. 25, 

Identity Theft) 

• street prostitution (see Problem-Specific Guide 

No. 2, Street Prostitution) 

• serial murder of prostitutes 

• illegal employment of aliens 

• domestic trafficking for forced labor 

• juvenile runaways who are drawn into prostitution 

• stalking (see Problem-Specific Guide No. 22,

Stalking)

• domestic abuse of mail order brides 

• homeless citizens who are trafficked for forced 

labor 

• domestic trafficking of women and juveniles. 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Wormen 5 

Extent of the Problem 

Statistics concerning human trafficking are necessarily 

unreliable because of the clandestine nature of the 

activity and the difficulties in defining it.6

 The U.S. State 

Department estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 

persons were trafficked across national borders worldwide 

between April 2003 and March 2004. Eighty percent of 

these were female, 70 percent of whom were trafficked 

for sexual exploitation.§ In 2003, between 14,500 and 

17,500 were trafficked into the United States.7

 Most 

originate in poorer countries, where human trafficking has 

become a significant source of income;§§ these include 

states in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Commonwealth 

of Independent States of the former Soviet Union, and 

Central and Eastern Europe. Most women are trafficked 

to developed countries, with the United States being the 

most popular country of destination.8

 Human trafficking 

is reportedly as highly profitable a business as are arms 

smuggling and drug trafficking.9 

In fiscal year 2003, the number of victims certified or 

eligible for refugee benefits under TVPA was just 151.10 

When this figure is compared to the estimated 14,500 

females who were trafficked into the United States 

in 2003, it becomes clear that either the estimates are 

enormously exaggerated or trafficking victims are simply 

hidden from view. The answer is probably somewhere 

in the middle. Those who exploit trafficked women 

work hard at keeping their activities hidden from the 

authorities by constantly changing the locations and 

telephone numbers of their businesses and by isolating 

trafficked women from the public. In addition, because 

the requirements for meeting the TVPA are quite narrow, 

§ Sixty to seventy-five percent of 

trafficked women in prostitution 

have been raped; 70 to 95 percent 

have been physically assaulted (U.S. 

State Department 2005). 

§§ In some countries, the sex trade 

has become an important economic 

development strategy and source 

of income, with profits amounting 

to 14 percent of gross domestic 

product (Raymond and Hughes 

2001). 
6 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ While sweatshop workers may 

be hidden from the community, 

exploited women in the sex trade 

are not hidden in the same way, 

since their services are often openly 

advertised. They are only hidden 

in the sense that the public turns a 

blind eye to their existence. 

§§ Historically, trafficked women 

have been looked upon as 

transmitters of HIV and AIDS, 

rather than as victims of the disease. 

Measures, including forced HIV 

testing and medical examinations, 

have been implemented in order 

to protect the customers and 

the larger community—not the 

trafficked victims themselves 

(HumanTrafficking.com 2004). 

§§§ In some communities, up to 86 

percent of sex workers are infected 

with HIV (Willis and Levy 2002). 

the collection of the appropriate information concerning 

the victim may take considerable time and resources. 

Thus, an important response for local police is to locate 

and identify trafficking victims who are hidden§

 in their 

communities. 

Trafficking causes serious trauma to exploited women and 

adds to existing public health problems. Trafficked women 

in the sex trade are so isolated from the community that 

their clients and handlers physically abuse them with 

impunity, subjecting them to repeated rape and assault. 

They also deny them prenatal care or medical care in case 

of pregnancy, infections or injury, and force them to have 

abortions. Having no recourse, the women are forced 

to comply with client demands, the majority of whom, 

research has shown, refuse to use condoms.§§ Thus, the 

spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted disease 

is more likely.§§§ Furthermore, women are induced into 

heavy alcohol and drug use as a means of ensuring their 

continued dependency on their traffickers.11 Needless to 

say, their illegal status makes it difficult or impossible for 

trafficked women to receive the social and health benefits 

that might otherwise be available to them.12 They are 

understandably reluctant to seek medical attention for fear 

of being turned over to immigration authorities. 

Because they are out of sight of the authorities (though 

often in plain view of local communities), sweatshops and 

other forms of forced labor invariably fail to meet health 

and safety regulations. Sub-standard housing and working 

conditions are associated with increased illness and injury 

in these populations.13 In addition to being beaten and 

starved, women may be made to work long hours without 

breaks, or forced to work in hazardous or polluted 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 7 

environments. Even in locations where the presence and 

employment of undocumented immigrants is known, 

enforcement of health, safety, and labor regulations is at 

best sporadic.14 Language and cultural limits may prevent 

victims from understanding and appreciating both the 

risks in the workplace and the use of preventive measures. 

Injury and death rates of foreign workers have been shown 

to be higher than normal in some work environments.15 

The illegal status of trafficked women also makes them 

ready victims of other crimes. For example, undocumented 

immigrants are often easy and lucrative robbery targets, 

because those few who manage to earn any money at all 

are often fearful of opening bank accounts, lest their illegal 

status be discovered. And when victimized, many are too 

fearful to report the incident to the police.16 Furthermore, 

traffickers in the sex trade tend to concentrate their 

activities in immigrant communities that are often 

neglected by local government, which results in a higher 

incidence of crime.17 

The Four Stages of Human Trafficking 

Table 1 displays the typical stages of human trafficking 

and the techniques used at each stage. These techniques 

are listed as examples and may differ depending on the 

particular recruiting locality (“catchment area”) and the 

constraints or opportunities that may arise in moving 

humans across borders. Depending on the organizational 

sophistication of the traffickers, the third or even the 

fourth stage of exploitation may be directly linked to the 

initial stage of recruitment; that is, recruiters who are 

organizationally linked to the delivery end of the process 
8 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

may select women specifically for particular tasks, such 

as domestic servitude, escort services, brothels that 

specialize in providing very young women, or cheap labor § Fees to traffickers and recruiters 

range from $2,000 to $47,000 and for garment industry sweatshops. Although the extent to 

often vary by countries of origin: which all stages of trafficking are linked is unknown, it is e.g., $40,000 to $47,000 for Chinese 

women, $35,000 for Korean women, usually assumed that where gangs or criminal syndicates 

and $2,000 to $3,000 for Mexican are involved, considerable linkage exists. 

women (Raymond and Hughes 2001). 

§§ In the Philippines, overseas 

workers are required to send back 

a percentage of their wage as a 

condition of permission to travel 

abroad (Gatmaytan 1997). The 

Dominican Republic depends on 

more than 100,000 women working 

abroad as a source of foreign 

exchange (Wijers and Lap-Chew 

1999). 

Table 1: The Four Stages of Human Trafficking 

Stage Strategies Techniques 

Select vulnerable women—usually 

poor, young, and uneducated—who 

are easy to trick and will believe 

• False promises of work and well paying 

jobs 

False promises of work visas and 

• 

• 

ONE 

Recruitment 

promises of future employment 

Hide behind an apparently legal 

business, such as an employment or 

travel agency 

Get client into debt§

 or find a debt-

• 

• 

passports 

Offer of safe passage to destination 

country 

Use person from victim’s culture to 

recruit 

• 

• 

ridden family 

• Traffic from countries that benefit 

Use of tourist visas without work visas 

Recruiter buys young girl for small sum 

• 

• 

from foreign exchange resulting 

from export of trafficked women§§ 

Offer services as “coyote” or 

smuggler 

• 

Arrange marriage to American men 

including serviceman 

Advertise for women needed for 

“housekeeping” work 

Kidnapping 

• 

• 

• 

• Trafficker convinces the woman he loves 

her 

• Pay for client travel, give loan 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 9 

Stage Strategies Techniques 

• Provide a service such as all • Document forgery 

TWO 

Transportation 

and entry 

• 

necessary documentation and 

travel arrangements 

Use a tourist or employment 

agency as a front 18 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Stolen passports and visas 

Bribery of border officials 

Transportation in concealed vehicles 

Provide recruits with tourist visas19 

• Provide guide service • Employers manipulate special visas 

• Search for weak points of entry • Handlers (e.g. “coyotes” on Mexico/U.S. 

into the United States border) guide individuals across borders 

or over difficult terrain,20 sometimes 

providing transportation 

• Make contact with clients using • Advertising in pornographic magazines 

standard marketing techniques and web sites and in the ethnic media 

THREE 

Delivery and 

marketing 

• Prearrange deals through legal 

or illegal businesses, such as 

domestic employment agencies, 

entertainment agencies, and escort 

• 

• 

Establish matchmaking web sites to 

advertise women 

Deliver to farm labor, sweat shops; 

domestic service agencies etc. 

services • Mail order brides and matchmaking 

• Market through organized crime camps 

rings for sex trade • Retention or confiscation of travel 

• Keep trafficked woman dependent documents 

on trafficker until delivery • Traffic women domestically by constantly 

moving them between cities and states 

to satisfy demand for new women and to 

keep the women isolated 

• Exploit alien status • Retention of passports and visas 

• Threaten violence against woman’s • Threaten to turn over to authorities 

FOUR • 

relatives in home country 

Use actual violence to ensure 

• Keep imprisoned in the place of 

employment 

Exploitation compliance and silence • Sex trade: forced prostitution, off street 

• Create and maintain debt prostitution, night clubs, exotic dancing, 

• Create and maintain alcohol and escort services 

drug dependency • Forced labor: bonded labor, virtual 

• Exploit ambiguities in and lax imprisonment, indentured labor, 

enforcement of sex trade laws coercion and violence; labor intensive 

• Keep in isolation manufacturing (e.g. clothing trade) or 

rural farm labor 

• Massage parlors, nail salons, employment 

agencies as fronts for illegal activity 

• Move from place to place 
10 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ In one excellent study of women 

recruited in the Philippines, all 

women stated that they had willingly 

agreed to be transported to the 

country of destination; some even 

paid the travel costs up front. 

All those interviewed, however, 

subsequently fell into heavy debt 

and became enslaved in the sex trade 

(Aronowitz 2003). 

§§ The United States is the number 

one importer of mail order brides 

and the number one importer of 

Philippine women. One company 

charges men a modest sum for its 

catalog of Russian women and holds 

a “mixer” in Russia to which U.S. 

men travel; the company charges the 

women a substantial amount, often 

their life savings, to travel to the 

mixer, the catch being that there are 

many more women at the mixer than 

there are men (Caldwell et al. 2001). 

§§§ Traffickers find marriage agencies 

and mail order bride services 

attractive because as legal businesses 

they can recruit women openly; they 

are also virtually unregulated (Lloyd 

1999-2000). However, the overall 

extent to which traffickers use such 

businesses is unknown (Hughes 

2004b:13). 

Recruitment 

Although there are many reported cases of kidnapping 

for trafficking purposes—as well as reports of parents 

selling their daughters to traffickers—it is likely that 

the majority of trafficked women are recruited through 

fraud, deception, and other enticements that exploit real 

social and financial needs.21 A typical human trafficking 

scheme begins not with violence or coercion but rather 

as a confidence game—the young woman is convinced 

by traffickers that a desirable job awaits her in a foreign 

country. At that point, she believes that she is going 

to voluntarily participate in a smuggling scheme, in 

which she will incur a debt in return for being brought 

into the destination country. In the case of individuals 

trafficked for forced labor, the victim may enter into a 

“contract” with the trafficker that is very much against 

her interests.§

 The woman may be enticed by the offer 

of a “loan” for travel to the United States or of aid in 

finding employment. The complicated interplay between 

trafficking and smuggling is very much at work here 

(see Box 2). Employment agencies are used as a front for 

these deceptions, as are agencies for mail order brides. 

Mail order bride agencies22,§§ exploit the blurred line 

between deception, trickery, and the voluntary attitudes of 

would-be brides.§§§ However, human trafficking charges 

under the TVPA must always involve forced labor or 

commercial sex of some kind. Abuses of mail order 

bride situations may or may not include these elements. 

Nonetheless, it is clear that numerous mail order bride 

agencies utilize the same kind of deception that traffickers 

do in luring foreign women to come to the United States. 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 11 

Transportation 

Research suggests that the main means of trafficking 

into the United States is by air.23 Most often, women 

are trafficked according to a previously planned route, 

often using the services of a tourist agency that may or 

may not be linked to trafficking. Trafficked women may 

be transported across borders with or without legitimate 

documentation. The use of forged or stolen passports and 

visas and the use of tourist visas are common.§

 Again, 

the interplay between smuggling and trafficking (see Box 

2) is evident at this stage of the process. In locations 

where borders are porous or stretch across inhospitable or 

isolated territory, smugglers may offer safe passage across 

established or known routes. In locations where border 

security is tight, traffickers may help individuals conceal 

themselves in trucks or trains in order to enter the country 

illegally. Military bases are also popular points of entry. 

§ One study found that over 50 

percent of trafficked women entered 

the Unites States with tourist visas 

and overstayed their visas (Raymond 

et al. 2001). 

Box 2: Trafficking vs. Smuggling 

Smuggling and trafficking are closely connected. Generally, smuggling does not 

involve coercion, but rather is performed at the request of the alien, who pays 

a fee for safe, albeit illegal, passage. In its simplest form, it involves only the 

second stage of trafficking: transportation. However, trafficked women who 

begin their trip voluntarily may become victims at the delivery stage, when 

their illegal status is exploited by those seeking cheap labor. If the smuggling is 

part of an organized activity, the smuggler may deliver the smuggled individual 

directly into the sex trade or another form of forced labor. In this case, the 

individual is both smuggled and trafficked.24 

Trafficking Smuggling 

• Crime or violation against a person • Unauthorized border crossing 

• Contains element of coercion • No coercion 

(cannot consent to enslavement) • Facilitated illegal entry of person 

• Subsequent exploitation and/or from one country to another 

forced labor • Smuggled persons seen as 

• Trafficked persons seen as victims criminals by the law 

by the law 
12 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Delivery/Marketing 

Both before and after a woman has reached the United 

States, her services can be marketed through standard 

outlets, such as advertising in personal columns; but 

by far the most effective marketing is via Internet chat 

rooms, bulletin boards, and the many web sites that offer 

matchmaking services for men and women.25 Where a 

prior arrangement has been reached, the trafficked woman 

is handed over to her intended employer once she reaches 

her destination. Forced prostitution may also be confined 

within particular ethnic communities, where men seek to 

purchase sex from women or young girls of their own 

ethnicity. This serves to further isolate trafficked women 

from the broader community.26 Recent research suggests 

that there is considerable trafficking of women between 

various U.S. cities. Frequent movement of women serves 

three purposes: first, it makes detection more difficult 

and removes the incentive for local investigative agencies 

to become involved; second, it provides a variety of 

women for customers; and third, it inhibits women from 

establishing ties to their communities.27 In cases where 

there is no delivery to a specific person or organization, 

the woman is technically not trafficked, but smuggled. In 

this case, if she is young, without family, and without the 

ability to speak English, she may end up in the sex trade, 

and her trafficked status will be difficult to determine by 

local police. 
The Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 1313 

Exploitation 

Trafficked women are extremely vulnerable, for three 

reasons. First, as illegal aliens, many women who do not 

know they have rights are fearful of seeking assistance 

from police or other service agencies. Second, women 

and their families are often in debt to the traffickers who 

exploit their labor. Third, should a woman’s situation, 

such as working in the sex trade become known back 

home, her family’s honor may be damaged. As a result, 

those who “employ” trafficked women have enormous 

control over them. In effect, conditions of employment 

become conditions of slavery.§

 However, the definition of 

exploitation is difficult, because trafficked persons—and 

even legal immigrants—often consent to exploitation in 

the hope that they can improve their circumstances by 

doing so.28 This creates a serious problem for local police, 

because victims may refuse to cooperate and may even 

resist attempts to improve their circumstances. 

In fact, the problem of definitions of the many activities 

involved in the trafficking of women is considerable. 

Only in recent years has a definition of human trafficking 

been agreed upon internationally. It was not until the 

passage of TVPA in 2000 that the U.S. Congress defined 

trafficking and its associated terms in an attempt to clarify 

the difficult overlap between smuggling, trafficking, 

coercion, consent, bondage, and exploitation. The 

extremely complex interplay among these terms as well as 

their links to other crimes is displayed in Appendix B. The 

definitions now accepted are reproduced in Box 3. 

§ In the pre-Civil War South, 

replacing a slave cost the modern 

equivalent of $40,000. Slaves in the 

twenty-first century can be purchased 

for as little as $90. For example, a 

family in Thailand was reported to 

have sold a daughter into the sex 

trade in order to buy a television set 

(Florida State University, Center for 

the Advancement of Human Rights, 

2003:14). 
14 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Box 3:

TVPA DEFINITIONS OF TRAFFICKING AND TRAFFICRELATED ACTIVITIES29

Severe human trafficking. (a) Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is 

induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to 

perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or (b) the recruitment, 

harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or 

services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of 

subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. 

Sex trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, 

provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex 

act. 

Involuntary servitude is defined as (a) a scheme, plan, or pattern intended to 

cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in 

such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or 

physical restraint or (b) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process. 

Peonage is defined as a status of involuntary servitude based upon real or 

alleged indebtedness. 

Debt bondage is defined as the condition of a debtor who has pledged his 

or her personal services in security for debt but whose services are not 

reasonably applied toward relieving the debt, or the length and nature of 

services are not limited and defined. 

Smuggling is having knowingly encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or 

aided any other alien to enter or try to enter the United States [illegally].30 
Factors Contributing to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 15 

Factors Contributing to the Problem of 

Exploiting Trafficked Women 

Understanding the factors that contribute to local 

trafficking problems can help frame local analysis, identify 

effective remedial measures, recognize key intervention 

points, and select appropriate responses. 

The Market for Commercial Sex 

Supply. The international proliferation of trafficking 

has created a supply of trafficked women that is so large 

that it drives the market. Countries that make no attempt 

to control human trafficking§

 use the trade as a means 

of importing foreign currency, especially U.S. dollars 

and Euros. This is achieved both by encouraging sex 

tourism in the originating country and by tacitly approving 

the exportation of women to wealthy countries.31 

Globalization has facilitated the movement of cheap labor 

from one country to another. Thus, even those women 

who are not trafficked into the sex trade add to the 

plentiful supply of undocumented migrant labor at best, 

sweatshop and forced labor at worst. 

U.S. Department of State 

§ The TVPA established a set of 

standards for countries to combat 

trafficking. Countries are rated 

annually according to these standards 

and allocated to one of three 

tiers: (1) full compliance; (2) some 

compliance; and (3) no compliance 

or no effort to comply. As of 2005, 

all countries are required by U.S. law 

to collect and publish prosecution 

and conviction statistics on human 

trafficking. Countries making no 

effort to combat trafficking are 

subject to various U.S. sanctions (U.S. 

Department of State 2004, 2005). 

Some countries are deemed by the U.S. government as 

making no effort to comply with the Trafficking Victims 

Protection Act. 
16 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ This is the rationale that underlies 

the Swedish legislation outlawing 

the purchase of sexual services. As 

its advocate says: “It is the market 

that is the driving force. Demand is 

defined by the services produced, not 

vice versa, which contradicts certain 

popular traditional market theories.” 

(Sven-Axel Mansson, interviewed by 

Maria Jacobson 2002). 

§§ There is some evidence of a 

growing demand by purchasers of 

sex for foreign women of various 

ethnic backgrounds. There is 

considerable evidence that men’s 

sexual expectations are driven 

by ethnic stereotypes and myths 

(Hughes 2004). 

§§§ Sex trade customers commonly 

report that it is none of their 

concern if prostitutes are trafficked 

or even imprisoned in the brothel. 

While some feel sorry for the 

prostitute’s situation and may even 

offer help, they nevertheless continue 

to purchase her services and expect 

the same services from trafficked 

as from non-trafficked prostitutes 

(Seabrook 2001). 

Demand. The demand issues surrounding trafficking 

for forced labor are simple enough: because illegal or 

quasi-legal businesses can gain considerable advantage by 

employing cheap labor, there will always be demand for 

such labor. The demand issues involved in trafficking for 

the sex trade are much more complicated and subject to 

considerable debate. Some argue that human trafficking 

for the sex trade is simply a response to a natural need; 

that is, men will be men. Others argue that this is a 

misconception, that rather than men’s sexual needs being 

such that prostitution must exist to fulfill them, the truth 

is that men’s sexual appetites respond to the opportunities 

offered them by the purveyors of prostitution.§

 (See also 

Response 9 for an elaboration of this point). In other 

words, it is the market—the trafficking in women—that 

creates the demand, not the customers. If there is 

a plentiful supply of vulnerable women and girls, a 

profitable business plan follows: offer the services of 

young women that cater to any customer preference at a 

competitive price and pay the women little or nothing.§§ 

Customer and Trafficker Attitudes 

The sex trade. The customers of the sex trade reveal 

callous attitudes towards the trafficked women they 

rent.§§§ In the case of prostitution—whether the prostitute 

is trafficked or not—men adopt the view that they “own” 

the prostitute for the period for which they have paid 

and believe that they have a right to do whatever they 

please, including physical and psychological abuse.32 The 

purveyors of prostitution, whether pimp or madam, 

do not demand compensation if the customer damages 

the woman. Indeed, they routinely abuse prostitutes 

themselves.33 Here again, profit is the key. Trafficked 
Factors Contributing to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women 17 

women in the sex trade quickly depreciate in value— 

particularly, where beauty and youthfulness are important 

to the customer. Youth and beauty are cheap to replace 

where there is a plentiful supply of trafficked women. 

Domestic servitude. Employers of domestic servants 

who are trafficked women display attitudes not so 

much indifferent as paternalistic. Interviews show that 

employers often treat the trafficked women in their service 

as children without rights, sometimes subjecting them 

to physical and mental abuse, and placing considerable 

restrictions on their movements, including low pay and 

little or no time off. In many cases, employers feel that 

they are doing the trafficked woman a favor by providing 

employment that would otherwise be unavailable to 

an illegal alien.34 In short, because the conditions of 

employment within households are invisible to the 

authorities, working conditions that would be important 

outside the household are seen as irrelevant.35 

Forced labor. Debt bondage is the most frequent type 

of coercion employed against women in labor trafficking 

situations. Rape and sexual assault are also frequently used 

by traffickers to “maintain” women in labor trafficking 

situations. Whatever the technique used to maintain 

debt bondage—whether on a rural farm or in an urban 

sweatshop—the obvious advantage to employing trafficked 

women is that they are cheap, thus increasing profit and 

competitive pricing. Money is saved in many ways. Because 

these businesses are operated on premises that are hidden 

from public view, they can dispense with health and safety 

compliance. Of course wages—if any—never match the 

minimum wage.§

 And in fact, wages are garnished to 

pay the “loans” that financed the trafficked individual’s 

transportation to the country of destination.36 

§ “Every floor is a rabbit warren of 

corridors and numbered doorways, 

a labyrinth of iron grilles and black 

wire mesh reminiscent of a reform 

school, or a prison. Behind every 

one of these forbidding doors 

is a garment shop, where mostly 

undocumented immigrant workers 

toil away with scissors, sewing 

machines and industrial irons for 

poverty-level wages for up to 12 

hours a day.” Description of a sweat 

shop in the south end of downtown 

Los Angeles (Gumbel 2001). 
18 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ The focus on the victimization 

of trafficked women has put 

the spotlight on all prostitutes, 

making it clear that the trafficked 

prostitutes are victims, not offenders. 

Thus, many now advocate that 

enforcement attention should be 

shifted to the purchasers of sex. The 

recent announcement by the U.S. 

Department of Defense that military 

personnel purchasing sex will face 

court martial is the first significant 

indication of this shift (Jelinek 2004). 

Divided Public Attitudes 

Prostitution. Sex trafficking of women involves 

commercial sex where the victim’s ability to legally 

consent to the sex act is negated through some form of 

force, fraud or coercion that is employed against her. 

There are widely differing views of prostitution and in 

general who is responsible for it.37 These often conflicting 

opinions affect community responses and the extent of 

police intervention. Public ambivalence is reflected in the 

incredible patchwork of state and local prostitution laws 

and ordinances, some punishing the purchase of sexual 

services, some punishing its sale, some targeting pimps 

and brothel owners, and still others criminalizing all of 

the above. The result is inconsistent enforcement by local 

police, who carry out well-publicized crackdowns from 

time to time. There is growing evidence that women who 

are trafficked into prostitution do not differ greatly from 

domestic prostitutes who have not been trafficked: neither 

group has chosen the profession voluntarily. Many report 

that they do not want to work as prostitutes, would leave 

the profession if they could, and that they were recruited 

into prostitution as girls or teenagers.38,§ Of course, those 

women who entered into the sex trade as minors, could 

not have done so voluntarily from a legal standpoint. 

Immigration. There are widely differing public views of 

immigrants, both legal and illegal. During economically 

difficult times, immigrants are often blamed for stealing 

jobs and committing crimes, even though there is no 

definitive evidence to prove either accusation.39 There is 
Factors Contributing to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women 19 

good reason, therefore, for trafficked women to perceive 

that they are not welcome in their country of 

destination. In contrast, there is a tradition in some parts 

§ Drug use is common in of the United States of public support for illegal aliens, prostitution, serving as another stemming from the aid given to political refugees from weapon to keep trafficked women 

Central and South America during the 1980s. There dependent on their pimps or 

managers and isolated from the continue to be a number of “sanctuary” states and cities outside world (Raymond and Hughes 

that have policies—and in some cases (e.g., Oregon) 2001). 

even laws—that prohibit state and local police agencies 

from using money or equipment to apprehend suspected 

violators of federal immigration law.40 Even many states 

and cities that are not designated sanctuaries do not 

report illegal immigrants to the authorities simply because 

immigration is seen as a matter for federal rather than 

local law enforcement. All these conflicting views result in 

one thing: they make it easier for traffickers to keep their 

victims isolated and out of sight of the authorities. 

Organized Crime 

Europol41 classifies trafficking networks into three groups: 

(1) Large scale mafia-like networks such as the Russian 

and Albanian syndicates that control about 60 percent 

of prostitution in Western Europe. These networks 

also traffic in drugs,§

 but more recently have turned 

to trafficking in women because the profit margins 

are higher. Highly organized from the recruitment 

to the exploitation stages, these groups are well 

connected financially and politically and are typically 

cruel and brutal in doing business. 
20 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

(2) Medium scale networks that specialize in trafficking 

women from a particular recruitment country to 

a particular destination country. These networks 

§ Military bases are magnets for usually arrange transportation and also own their own trafficked women. For example, as 

a result of the presence of 16,000 brothels in the destination country. 

U. N. soldiers in Cambodia between 

February 1992 and September 1993, (3) Informal “family” networks of individuals who the number of prostitutes in Phnom 

Penh reportedly increased from 6,000 have come together to reap the financial benefits 

to 20,000 (Ekberg 2004:1197). This of the opportunities provided by trafficking. These pattern is repeated around military individuals usually have legitimate jobs in other fields bases within the United States 

(Raymond and Hughes 2001). and operate trafficking businesses on the side. Much 

of the buying, selling, and delivery arrangements take 

place via the Internet. 

In general, these observations of the organizational 

aspects of trafficking have been confirmed for the United 

States.42 However, the degree to which trafficking is part 

of well established organized criminal organizations is 

unknown.43 

Attractive Locations 

Locations that provide cover for the deployment of 

trafficked women include the following. 

• Communities that tolerate red light districts, strip 

clubs, and late night bars and clubs. Where domestic 

prostitutes are plentiful, internationally trafficked 

women can blend in without drawing much attention. 

• Areas around military bases, where there is a constant 

supply of men willing to purchase sexual services, 

frequently from foreign women.§ 
Factors Contributing to the Exploitation of Trafficked Women 21 

• Old warehouse and manufacturing districts, where 

sweatshops can flourish out of sight of local 

communities. 

• Well-off suburbs, where residents employ domestic 

servants who may be trafficked. 

• Isolated rural areas, where trafficked women may be 

employed as seasonal farm laborers or be used to 

provide sexual services to male seasonal laborers. 

• Locations close to poorly patrolled border entry 

points or in immigrant communities that are neglected 

by local government.44 

• Areas with large immigrant or foreign-born 

populations that may frequent establishments set up in 

culturally familiar styles. 

Understanding Your Local Problem 23 

Understanding Your Local Problem 

The information provided above is only a generalized 

description of the exploitation of trafficked women. 

You must combine the basic facts with a more specific 

understanding of your local problem, especially the 

cultural issues that may face potential victims in your 

area. Carefully analyzing the local problem will help you 

design a more effective response strategy. The most 

difficult problem you will face is the clandestine nature 

of the exploitation of trafficked women, which is made 

possible by the isolation and separation of trafficked 

women from the local community. In the case of forced 

labor, the locations and situations of trafficked women 

will be hard to uncover, especially in the case of domestic 

servitude, which occurs within families that have, by 

right and tradition, a measure of privacy and separation 

from government. In the case of the sex trade, although 

trafficked women are hidden from public view, there 

is one point of weakness: sex traffickers must break 

the isolation they maintain in order for their trafficked 

women to service their customers. In fact, prostitutes 

are often hidden in plain view; their presence is usually 

well known in a local community. However, the public 

may not recognize or know that they are also trafficked 

women. 

Asking the Right Questions 

Some critical questions you should ask in analyzing 

your particular trafficking problem are listed below. 

The answers to these and other questions will help you 

choose the most appropriate set of responses later on. 

The main challenge is to locate the businesses and venues 

where trafficked women are hidden and to identify which 
24 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

women are trafficked and which are not. This may be 

particularly difficult in regard to prostitution, because 

many prostitutes are coerced either into or as part of 

their working conditions and may also be domestically 

trafficked. 

Police and Community Awareness 

• Are police aware of the problem of trafficked 

women? 

• Is the community aware of the problem of trafficked 

women? 

• Is there an active sex trade in your jurisdiction? If so, 

what forms does it take? Street prostitution? Escort 

services? Brothels, massage parlors, strip clubs, 

late night bars? Are foreign women encountered in 

brothel raids? 

• How much of the local sex trade involves recent 

immigrants or ethnic communities? 

• Is there a hidden or rumored sex trade? Are there 

known telephone numbers and addresses? 

• Is there a drug trade linked to the sex trade or to a 

particular locality? 

• Are there local businesses that benefit from the 

sex trade or forced labor? Employment agencies? 

Garment industry? Bars and strip clubs? Nail salons? 

Hotels? 

• Are there community organizations that specialize in 

caring for immigrants? 

• Are there known smuggling operations, routes or 

entry points in or close to your locality? 

• Does your department formally recognize the 

immigrant community and its problems? Have you 

attempted to develop collaborative partnerships to 

deal with such problems? 

• If there is a red light district? What are business and 

community attitudes toward it? 
Understanding Your Local Problem 25 

• Do local employers typically report job applicants 

who attempt to obtain work without proper 

documentation? 

Marketing 

• Do brothels advertise very young prostitutes with 

exotic foreign characteristics, and at very low prices? 

• How do brothel owners market their services? 

Phone numbers? Yellow pages? Word of mouth? 

Solicitations in bars and strip clubs? Street corner 

pimps? 

• Are any labor intensive products manufactured in 

your area? 

• Do advertisements in local newspapers and magazines 

offer menial jobs at unrealistically high wages? Are 

there notices or advertisements in ethnic media? 

• Are there local web sites or chat rooms that deal with 

sexual services? 

• Do advertisements for mail order brides appear 

in local newspapers and magazines, local free or 

community papers? Do the ads promise foreign 

women? 

• Do escort services advertise in the yellow pages? 

On the Internet? In other media? Does your agency 

monitor them? 

• Does the sports page of the local newspaper 

advertise massage parlors? 

Venues 

• Do massage parlors and brothels constantly move 

to different locations? What kinds of buildings or 

housing do they occupy? 

• Are there locations where bars or sexually oriented 

businesses cater to a particular immigrant or ethnic 

community? 
26 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

• Are there locations where legal businesses (massage 

parlors, nail salons) may be fronts for sex trafficking? 

• Are there farms that require low paid workers or 

seasonal labor? How do they find and recruit their 

workers? 

• Are there sweatshops in your area? Is there a garment 

district? 

• Are there industrial based businesses that employ low 

paid workers and how do they recruit them? 

• Are there employment agencies in your area? Do 

they place persons of foreign birth? Into what kinds 

of jobs? Do they place individuals who speak little 

English? 

• Are there travel agencies that promote matchmaking 

or sexual tourism? 

• Are there dating or escort services in your area that 

offer women of foreign birth? 

• Are there massage parlors in your area? If so, are they 

licensed or supervised by local health authorities? 

• Does your jurisdiction contain a run-down warehouse 

or manufacturing district? 

• Are there suburbs where domestic servants are 

routinely employed? 

• Is tourism a major business in your jurisdiction? Are 

there hotels, motels, or restaurants that suddenly 

appear to be employing foreign women as maids, 

waitresses, or kitchen help? 

• Do certain employers recruit workers from local 

homeless shelters? Are homeless persons transported 

to remote locations to work? 

• Are there bus stations where runaway teenaged girls 

tend to congregate? 
Understanding Your Local Problem 27 

Incidents, Offenders, and Victims 

• Have prostitutes been assaulted or murdered? If so, 

were they foreign-born? 

• Are there cases of drug use or dealing involving 

foreign women? Does drug dealing occur in locations 

close to areas where the sex trade is plied? 

• Are there local prostitutes who are unable to speak 

English? 

• Are prostitutes typically drug users? 

• Do hospitals report battered women who may be 

illegal immigrants? 

• Are there local or ethnic healthcare providers who are 

“off-line” from the normal healthcare system?45 

• What information is collected by officers and others 

concerning prostitutes? Is background information 

collected, such as age, country or place of birth, and 

where and how they were recruited? 

• What pricing system is employed in brothels? How 

much are prostitutes paid? 

• Who are the pimps and brothel managers? Where do 

they come from? 

• What are the backgrounds of the purchasers of sex? 

How do they find their “partners”? How do they 

reach the venue? Walk from local hotels? Drive from 

suburbs? 

• Are other crimes reported in the areas where 

prostitution or forced labor are located? 

• Are undocumented migrants frequent robbery 

victims? 

• Do incidents of domestic violence occur where the 

wife is an immigrant? 

• Do local domestic violence shelters care for 

immigrant victims? 
28 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ See Problem-Oriented Guide No. 

2, Street Prostitution, for additional 

questions that may also be relevant 

to women trafficked into the sex 

trade. 

§§ See the U.S. Department of 

Health & Human Services, Office 

for Minority Health for Culturally 

and Linguistically Appropriate 

Services (CLAS) standards at 

http://www.omhrc.gov/assets/pdf/ 

checked/finalreport.pdf. 

Current Responses to the Exploitation of 

Trafficked Women § 

• What is your departmental policy for dealing with 

prostitution? What is the prosecutor’s policy regarding 

prostitution-related offenses? What are the typical 

sentences handed out to those who are convicted? Do 

prostitutes and their clients complete those sentences? 

What effect, if any, does the imposition of a sentence 

have on subsequent involvement in prostitution? 

• What responses do police officers use, other than 

arrest and prosecution? Are any of these responses 

effective? 

• Are social, healthcare, or substance abuse treatment 

services available to prostitutes? Do prostitutes use 

these services? 

• What is your departmental policy on reporting illegal 

immigrants to immigration and customs officials? 

• Are specific officers allocated to identify trafficked 

women? 

• Do you have sufficient access to interpreters and 

cultural advisors?§§ 

• Is there a special vice squad? What are its duties? 

• Are assault cases and domestic violence situations 

considered as possible crime scenes in which human 

trafficking may be the real offense being perpetrated? 

• Have your victim service specialists been trained 

about human trafficking? Are they called to potential 

human trafficking crime scenes? Are they present 

when potential human trafficking victims are 

interviewed? 

• What foreign language capabilities does your unit 

have? Are there local universities, military personnel, 

or immigrant advocacy groups that could assist you 

with translation needs? 
Measuring Your Effectiveness 29 

Measuring Your Effectiveness 

Measurement will allow you to determine the degree 

to which your efforts have been successful and can 

also suggest how your responses can be modified to 

produce the intended results. Measuring the extent of 

your problem before you implement remedial responses 

will allow you to determine how serious the problem is; 

it will also give you a baseline against which to measure 

the effectiveness of the responses that you choose to 

implement. All measures should be taken in both the 

target area and the surrounding area. For more detailed 

guidance on measuring effectiveness, see the companion 

guide to this series, Assessing Responses to Problems: An 

Introductory Guide for Police Problem-Solvers. 

The following are potentially useful measures of the 

effectiveness of responses to the problem of the 

human trafficking of women. Their utility, however, will 

depend upon the specific conditions in your locality, and 

especially upon the particular aspect of trafficking that 

you choose to focus upon. For example, if you decide 

to focus on separating trafficked women from their 

handlers, the number of foreign women in the sex trade 

will probably drop. Your follow-up should show that 

these women have not been trafficked elsewhere and have 

been provided with the protections afforded them under 

TVPA. 

• Reduced number of trafficked women in the sex 

trade. Your initial success should uncover significant 

numbers of trafficked women. Your subsequent 

success should see a rapid decline in the numbers 

of trafficked women in the sex trade. 
30 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Increased number of trafficked women seeking 

help at health facilities and other community care 

groups, churches, or domestic violence shelters. 

Over time, this figure should decrease as fewer 

women require help. 

Reduction or elimination of brothels. 

Reduced number of escort services, massage 

parlors, and other fronts for the sex trade. 

Reduced number of rentals of local warehouses and 

run-down office buildings. 

Reduced total reported crime in target areas, 

compared to control areas. Keep in mind that 

changes may be due to other factors and that 

reported crime does not always correlate with actual 

crime. 

Reduced number of undocumented migrants 

employed in businesses. 

Reduced number of advertisements for domestic 

help. 

Reduced number of drug offenses in the area near 

the sex trade. 

Reduced number of assaults against women 

reported in local emergency rooms. 

Reduced number of domestic abuse cases that 

involve non-English speaking women. 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 31 

Responses to the Problem of 

Exploiting Trafficked Women 

Analyzing your local trafficking problem will give you 

a better understanding of the factors that contribute 

to it. Once you have analyzed your local problem and 

established a baseline for measuring effectiveness, you can 

consider possible responses to the problem. 

The following strategies provide a foundation for 

addressing local trafficking problems. These strategies are 

drawn from a variety of studies and police reports; several 

may apply in your community. It is critical that you tailor 

responses to local circumstances and that you can justify 

each response based upon reliable analysis. In most cases, 

an effective strategy will involve implementing several 

different responses, because law enforcement alone is 

seldom effective in reducing or eliminating the problem. 

Do not limit yourself to considering what police can do: 

instead, carefully consider who else in your community 

shares responsibility for the problem and can help address 

it. The cooperation of local businesses, community 

organizations, local service providers, and—where 

applicable—military bases will be essential. 

General Consideration of an Effective Response 

Strategy 

Although estimates vary, it is likely that at least one-third 

of prostitutes are either internationally or domestically 

trafficked women.46 The police response to trafficking 

in women will therefore likely be closely linked to 

its response to the sex trade. Many of the responses 

described in Problem-Oriented Guide No. 2 on Street 
32 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ A proactive approach to enforcement 

is necessary because very few cases will 

be reported to local police. “Physical and 

psychological control by the traffickers, 

fear of law enforcement, illegal 

immigration status, and language barriers 

are all factors in limiting the possibility 

of complaints.” (National Trafficking 

Alert System) 

Prostitution may therefore apply. However, from the point 

of view of human trafficking, some reconsideration of 

established police responses to prostitution is necessary. 

The response to the exploitation of trafficked women 

depends on attitudes—attitudes held by the public, 

stereotypes held by the purchasers of sex and users of 

forced labor, and police attitudes towards prostitutes. As 

far as the sex trade is concerned, from a human trafficking 

point of view, prostitution is primarily an exploitative 

activity perpetrated against prostitutes, both by their 

handlers and by the purchasers of sex. Prostitutes are 

therefore victims, not offenders. Although controversial, 

this view is crucial in responding to the problem of 

trafficked women, because those who traffic women for 

sex often use the women’s criminal designation as a means 

of exploitation and of keeping the women out of sight 

of the authorities. It may also provide a ready excuse 

for purchasers, who may believe that their culpability 

is lessened because the prostitutes are “just” illegal 

immigrants. In addition some researchers have argued 

that stereotypes of prostitutes and the failure to take the 

exploitative nature of prostitution seriously is stronger 

in the mostly male dominated field of criminal justice.47 

As far as forced labor is concerned, the public, including 

criminal justice personnel,48 find it difficult to believe that 

slave-like working conditions still exist in the twenty-first 

century, even in America. 

Both situations of exploitation make it very difficult to 

convince trafficked individuals to testify against their 

traffickers.§

 Although TVPA was designed to correct this 

problem, the number of individuals eligible for protection 

under the act is still very low, for two reasons: first, the 

definitions of eligibility for TVPA protection are quite 

restrictive; second, the police—often the first contact 

with exploited women—are neither trained to identify 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 33 

trafficked women nor to report them to the appropriate 

authorities according to TVPA requirements. Thus, 

educating police, prosecutors, and judges is central to 

solving the problem of exploiting trafficked women. 

In addition to the information provided in this guide, 

you can also draw on the resources offered by the U.S. 

Department of Justice,§

 the Department of State, and the 

Department of Health and Human Services to develop 

training courses that will introduce police to the ethnic 

and cultural issues embedded in this problem and to the 

skills necessary in interviewing and uncovering victims of 

trafficking. 

Besides training, there are a number of preparatory 

responses that should be undertaken before attempting 

any of the specific responses recommended below. 

These are clearly necessary, because it is not possible 

to reduce the exploitation of trafficked women without 

having the skills, training, and experience to identify the 

problem. You should consult the earlier section called 

Asking the Right Questions as you read the following, which 

describes the steps that should be taken to prepare for 

the responses that are directed specifically at reducing and 

preventing the exploitation of trafficked women. 

Preparatory Responses for Identifying the Problem 

1. Locating trafficked women. 49 Illegal immigrants 

are not necessarily trafficked, and trafficking victims 

are not always illegal immigrants. Thus, although 

brothels are commonly placed in migrant areas, police 

should not assume that they will always find trafficked 

women in those areas. In fact, exploiters may keep 

victims away from areas where their languages are 

spoken, even while catering to customers who speak 

those languages. The obvious place to begin looking 

§ In conjunction with the U.S. 

Bureau of Justice Assistance, the 

Institute for Intergovernmental 

Research (IIR) has developed a 

detailed instructional program for 

trainers who can then return to 

their departments and train local 

officers (SPOG 2005). For further 

information, visit the IIR web site at 

http://www.iir.com/.
34 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

for evidence of trafficking is with the vice squad, 

which will certainly have had contact with trafficked 

women, although unless they have been trained to 

look for them, they may not know it. Indicators of the 

presence of trafficked women and venues where they 

may be found include: 

• buildings with heavy on-premises security, such 

as barred windows, locked doors, and electronic 

surveillance 

• buildings in which women both live and work 

• nail salons, bars, and strip clubs that serve as 

fronts for prostitution 

• parks and recreation areas where nannies, au-pairs, 

and other domestic servants congregate 

• brothels that advertise only in foreign language 

newspapers or that restrict services to members 

only 

• advertisements for escorts or other sexual services 

• Internet web sites and chat rooms 

• workers in hotels, restaurants, domestic situations 

who cannot speak English 

• hospital emergency rooms and health and abortion 

clinics 

• ethnic healthcare providers 

• immigrant support groups 

• HIV/AIDS community groups 

• locations with large numbers of transient males, 

such as military bases, sports venues, conventions, 

and tourist attractions. 

If there are no visible signs of the sex trade in your area, 

you should investigate the informal network that exists in 

all localities. Word of mouth, whether from a bartender 

or a taxi driver, is a typical way of finding out about the 

underground sex trade. Remember, the purveyors of sex 

must advertise their services; if customers can learn about 

these services, so can you. 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 35 

2. Identifying trafficked women. Interviewing women 

to determine their immigration status requires training 

and skill. It is particularly difficult to overcome the 

deep-seated fear and distrust that many such women 

have of police and other government officials. And 

in fact, until the passage of TVPA this fear was well 

grounded, because women who were identified as 

trafficked were arrested and deported. Furthermore, 

many trafficked women are trained in what to say to 

police by their exploiters.50 They may also be fearful 

of reprisals by their exploiters for speaking to police, 

or anyone outside their organization for that matter. 

The following are indications of possible trafficking:51 

• workers who are frightened to speak, especially to 

police or other officials, including healthcare and 

social workers 

• the presence of very young prostitutes in brothels 

and massage parlors 

• workers who look sickly or who display signs of 

physical abuse 

• prostitutes who cannot speak English 

• women who are unable or unwilling to explain 

how they came into the United States or what they 

did before gaining entry 

• women who are closely supervised when taken to 

a doctor or hospital 

• women who are denied clothing other than those 

provided by a brothel 

• prostitutes whose legal representation is supplied 

by their trafficker, often as a means of controlling 

their testimony 

• women who appear fearful of collaboration 

between traffickers and police 

• women who do not know how their travel 

documents were obtained or where they are 
36 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

• women who paid a fee to obtain travel documents 

or make travel arrangements 

• domestic workers who appear frightened or 

apprehensive. 

3. Protecting trafficked women. How you deal 

with specific incidents of trafficking is important, 

not only to the welfare of the victim, but also to 

establishing relationships with other trafficked women 

and community groups that may be able to assist in 

solving the problem of trafficked women. Once you 

have identified trafficked women, you must protect 

them from their traffickers and inform them of their 

rights under TVPA. In cases of severe victimization, 

you should prevent the woman from returning to 

her home or workplace, because the risk is very high 

that the victim will be quickly trafficked to another 

location and will remain in constant threat of physical 

abuse. You can help the victim by doing the following: 

• Call the national hotline and report the case. 

• Obtain information from Federal and State task 

forces such as the Trafficking in Persons and 

Worker Exploitation Task Force. 

• Contact a local community group that specializes 

in protecting victims from abuse, such as a 

women’s shelter or a group that has a tradition 

of caring for immigrants. To help locate these 

groups, call The Office for Victims of Crime 

(OVC) (800.851.3420). The OVC provides a 

comprehensive list of victim services throughout 

the United States and the world. These groups 

can support trafficked victims until they attain 

certification under TVPA. 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 37 

• Arrange for medical assistance where necessary. 

• Obtain brochures and cards that inform the victim 

of her rights under TVPA. Many of these are 

available in several languages on the web, via the 

hotline, or from the National Trafficking Alert 

System (NTAS). 

• Contact the FBI or the Civil Division of the 

Justice Department and make sure that you 

speak to someone who is familiar with the rights 

afforded to victims under TVPA. 

• Ensure that members of your department are 

informed of the specific criteria for establishing 

whether a victim qualifies for continued presence, 

a T-Visa, or other protections under TVPA. 

There are ample materials and information 

available from many governmental and private 

organizations. For a good example of a clear and 

concise brochure that covers all the basic facts 

concerning trafficked persons, including how to 

establish immigrant status and how to determine 

eligibility for benefits, see Trafficking In Persons, 

published by the Texas Office of Immigration and 

Refugee Affairs (available at www.dhs.state.tx.us/ 

programs/refugee). Many states have developed 

similar brochures and information services. 
38 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Box 4: HELP FOR VICTIMS 

The toll-free Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force 

complaint line, at 888.428.7581 (voice and TTY), is staffed by personnel 

who have access to interpreters and can speak with callers in many 

languages. Located at the U.S. Department of Justice, it helps answer 

questions, takes a case forward, and refers to prosecutors. 

For translation assistance and other advice on identifying trafficking cases, 

call the National Trafficking in Persons Hotline: 866.US.TIPLINE 

Other Hotlines: 

• Department of Health and Human Services Hotline: 888.373.7888. 

Provides links to service providers working with trafficked persons 

across the country. 

• U.S. Office of Refugee Settlement: 202.401.4825 

• U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services: 

202.541.3385 

• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services: 410.230.2725 

• National Korean Hotline: 888.9.POLARIS 

• National Thai Hotline: 866.856.THAI 

• National Spanish Hotline: 888.80.AYUDA 

4. Working with service organizations. As noted, the 

chances of a trafficked woman revealing her status to a 

police officer are limited. She may, however, reach out to 

other groups or agencies. You should therefore: 

• work closely with and support community groups that 

provide refuge for battered women or that have an 

interest in taking care of immigrants 

• develop partnerships with local social service agencies, 

hospital emergency rooms, ethnic healthcare providers, 

and others who may provide services to sick or injured 

trafficked women. 

These can be important sources of information on identifying 

trafficked women and for supporting and assisting trafficked 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 39 

women once they are identified. Do not assume that these 

organizations are aware of the plight of trafficked women. 

The idea that something like slavery still exists in the United 

States is difficult for most people to believe. 

5. Educating the public about human trafficking. 

Public education through outreach programs and 

publicizing particular cases that have been successfully 

prosecuted through the media can raise awareness 

of human trafficking problems. Efforts to enforce 

laws against the exploitation of trafficked women, 

especially prostitution, will be severely limited without 

public support. Many of the responses below require 

money, resources, and changes in the local community 

environment. It will be difficult or impossible to 

accomplish these goals without community support.§ 

There are many web sites that provide posters, 

brochures, and other materials that can be useful in 

educating the public about human trafficking; many 

of these are available in multiple languages. However, 

probably the most effective means of publicity is 

informing the media when cases of human trafficking 

are discovered in your community or elsewhere. There 

are many such cases available on the web, such as those 

reported by the Palm Beach Post in Florida.52 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 

§ The learning module on Street 

Prostitution (available on the POP 

Center web site at http://www. 

popcenter.org/learning/) provides 

an excellent opportunity to learn 

how to respond to the problem 

of prostitution and emphasizes 

especially the role of community 

support in accomplishing the goals 

of problem-oriented policing. 

A search on the web for anti-slavery and anti-human 

trafficking web sites produces many promotional 

materials. 
40 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Specific Responses to the Exploitation of 

Trafficked Women 

There are three approaches to reducing or preventing the 

exploitation of trafficked women: 

• enforcing laws directed against exploiters, traffickers, 

and men who purchase sex 

• reducing demand for commercial sex and cheap labor 

• changing the environment so that it is inhospitable to 

traffickers and exploiters. 

Enforcing Laws Against Traffickers and Men Who 

Purchase Sex 

6. Adopting an unambiguous enforcement policy. 

Enforcement attitudes to the sex trade are currently 

in flux. At the international level, some countries such 

as Sweden argue that trafficked prostitutes are victims 

rather than offender and that the purchasers of sex 

should be punished, not the sex workers themselves. 

This view was first translated into law in Sweden 

in 1998, and has increasingly become policy of the 

U.S. Department of State, and the Department of 

Defense. It is too early to tell whether this approach 

will be translated into policy or law at the local levels 

of criminal justice, or whether it will contribute to the 

reduction of trafficking in women for the sex trade, as 

claimed by some early Swedish research (see Response 

8).53 Whatever policy your department adopts, it 

should be clear and unambiguous, leaving no room for 

ambivalent enforcement, such as occasional sweeps 

and raids (see Response 17). The success of any policy 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 41 

also depends upon training officers to understand 

the diverse ethnic and cultural issues outlined in the 

preparatory responses above, and the clarity with 

which the policy of enforcement is applied in that 

setting. 

Box 5: HELP FOR LOCAL POLICE 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families 

Campaign to Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking provides an excellent tool kit 

for police. This kit includes: 

• Tips for Identifying and Helping Victims of

Human Trafficking (pdf version)

• Screening Questions to Assess Whether a

Person is a Trafficking Victim (pdf version)

• Understanding the Mindset of a Trafficking

Victim (pdf version)

• Communicating with Victims of Human

Trafficking (pdf version)

• Health Problems Seen in Traffic Victims (pdf

version)

• PowerPoint Presentation for Health Care

Providers (ppt)

• Health Care Provider Poster (pdf) 

• Health Care Provider Brochure (pdf) 

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 

• Health Care Provider Pocket Card (pdf) 

You can download this entire kit at: 

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/campaign_kits/index.html#law 
42 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

7. Working with immigration and Labor Department 

officials. Developing a close working relationship 

with immigration officials is essential to the successful 

investigation and prosecution of human trafficking 

cases because the victim is always the key witness. 

It will also help in identifying trafficked women and 

in establishing their immigrant or refugee status. 

Unfortunately, there is a long history of conflict 

between local police and federal immigration officials 

in many parts of the United States. Even though local 

police have the legal and constitutional responsibility 

to enforce federal immigration law, they may lack 

the local authority to intervene or be concerned 

that enforcing immigration laws will damage their 

acceptance in local immigrant communities.54 As 

noted, some states and sanctuary cities have even 

passed laws forbidding police from enforcing 

immigration laws. Because the situation of trafficked 

women is complicated by their ambiguous status as 

both illegal aliens and crime victims, extensive policies 

and procedures must be worked out between local and 

federal officials, especially in terms of establishing 

the status of one who has suffered a “severe form of 

human trafficking” as defined by the TVPA. Without 

cooperation on both sides, a trafficking victim could 

be deported or detained for immigration related 

crimes, thus losing the valuable eyewitness testimony 

needed to prosecute traffickers. Indeed, in fiscal year 

2004, only 43 individuals were convicted of trafficking 

offenses under the TVPA by the U.S. Department of 

Justice.55 

When potential traffickers are encountered, their 

immigration status can often be verified if they 

have been issued an Alien Number (also known as 

an “A number”). ICE (Immigration and Customs 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 43 

Enforcement) maintains a 24/7 hotline (866.347.2423) 

for U.S. law enforcement officers (called the Law 

Enforcement Service Center) that can be called to see if 

a trafficker is already in the ICE system. If a trafficker 

is not legal, he or she can often be held on immigration 

charges (smuggling, transporting, or harboring 

illegal aliens) while a human trafficking investigation 

continues. 

Department of Labor (DOL) officials can also be 

crucial allies in combating the exploitation of women 

through forced labor. Federal officials from the Wage 

and Hour Division of DOL can walk onto a worksite 

and immediately demand to see the I-9 forms of all 

immigrant workers employed there (law enforcement 

officials might otherwise need a subpoena to see these 

same documents). The DOL Wage and Hour Division 

can also ensure that immigrant workers are paid what 

they are owed under the law and can help verify 

subsequent victim claims for legal compensation from 

their traffickers for lost wages and benefits. 

8. Using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt 

Organizations Act of 1996 (RICO). Because their 

labor costs are minimal and they do not comply with 

standard health and safety regulations, the owners of 

brothels and sweatshops who use trafficked labor have 

an unfair competitive advantage over their rivals. Thus, 

they are ripe for civil suits aimed at their bottom line. 

RICO can be especially effective in that regard, as it 

allows for treble damages. Originally enacted by the 

U.S. Congress to facilitate the prosecution of organized 

crime, a number of significant RICO cases have found 

against sweatshops that benefit economically from 

employing illegal immigrants or trafficked labor.56 This 

approach has been used successfully in prostitution 

cases as well.§ Additionally, as recommended in 

§ In 2001, police and state and 

federal prosecutors combined their 

efforts to prosecute a network 

of competing pimps. The men 

were convicted of extortion and 

involuntary servitude as well as 

forming a RICO conspiracy (de Baca 

and Tisi 2002). 
44 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

§ The enforcement of this law 

has proven very difficult, not 

only because of attitudes of law 

enforcement about prostitution, but 

also because of serious difficulty 

in interpreting the language of the 

law, which in many circumstances 

seems to leave open the possibility 

of prosecuting prostitutes. In some 

cases prostitutes have threatened 

to expose their clients unless they 

were paid more money. Others 

have questioned the Swedish 

government’s claim that prostitution 

by trafficked women has not 

increased at the same rate as other 

more liberal European countries 

(Kulick 2003). It is reasonable to 

conclude that there are no studies of 

sufficient scientific quality to support 

either side of the argument. 

Problem-Oriented Guide No. 2, Street Prostitution, 

strict enforcement of zoning laws, nuisance abatement 

ordinances, and business licensing regulations against 

properties that allow prostitution can serve to make 

your community inhospitable to exploiters and 

traffickers (See also Responses 13-16). 

Reducing Demand 

9. Punishing the purchasers of sexual services 

and not the sex trade workers. As noted above, in 

1998, Sweden passed a law prohibiting the purchase 

of sexual services. Although the punishment of 

commercial sex traffickers continued, the law made 

it clear that rather than being the sellers of sex, 

prostitutes were in fact the product that was being 

sold. Swedish authorities claim that as a result of the 

law the majority of sex purchasers have disappeared 

and that the number of women trafficked to Sweden 

has not increased, as it has in other Western European 

nations.57 Sweden found, however, that although 

the law had widespread public support, judges 

and prosecutors were slow to adopt the view that 

they should prosecute the buyers rather than the 

prostitutes. The Swedish police also opposed the law 

when it was originally enacted.§ 

Although U.S. laws that specify punishments for 

men who solicit prostitutes vary enormously, they 

usually impose fines, probation, community service, 

and publicity; in almost every case they constitute 

misdemeanors. Publishing the names of buyers of sex 

has been found to be effective—although there are 

some difficult legal issues involved58—and community 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 45 

service has been found to be more effective than 

fines or jail time (see the Problem-Oriented Guide 

on Street Prostitution). Some U.S. cities, such as Los 

Angeles, California and West Palm Beach, Florida, 

have introduced car confiscation programs for men 

who solicit prostitutes. Other programs combine these 

punishments with attempts to educate offenders about 

the social consequences of their acts (see Response 10). 

The extent to which these programs have been effective 

in reducing the prostitution of trafficked women in the 

United States has not been thoroughly researched, but 

early indications are that they may be effective.59 For 

example, in response to the recent announcement by 

the U.S. Department of Defense of a zero tolerance 

policy for military personnel who solicit prostitutes, 

Korea has announced that it will close all red light 

districts that are adjacent to U.S. military bases.60 

10. Changing the attitudes of prostitution customers. 

A number of cities have introduced “john schools,” in 

which men convicted of purchasing sex are educated 

about the damaging consequences that their behavior 

has on the lives of prostitutes. Various programs of 

this kind operate in cities such as Portland, Oregon 

and St. Paul, Minnesota. These may be applied to first 

time offenders only, as is the case in San Francisco, 

California, or to all offenders. In general, studies 

in the United States and Canada have found these 

programs to be very effective in reducing recidivism.§ 

When enforcement is focused on the buyers, the cost 

of providing sexual services is increased, because 

johns, fearful of getting caught, demand higher levels 

of security, such as private escorts to the place of 

§ “Of the 1512 men completing the 

First Offender Prostitution Program 

in San Francisco (from 3/95 

to 3/98), only 14 men had been rearrested for soliciting a prostitute 

anywhere in California” (Hughes 

2004a:40). 
46 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

business.61 However, commercial sex clients in ethnic 

or immigrant communities may display differences 

in their approach to purchasing sex. The cultural 

orientation of those from regions of the world where 

prostitution is either legal, tolerated, or encouraged 

may influence both their behavior and their response 

to arrest. 

11. Notifying those with influence over client 

conduct. Employers, schools, the military, convention 

organizers, and other individuals and groups can 

often exert significant informal influence over the 

conduct of the clients of prostitution. This influence 

can be leveraged by seeking third-party cooperation 

to discipline clients who come to police attention. 

This strategy is not intended merely to shame clients; 

rather, it is intended to change their behavior through 

disciplinary systems outside the formal justice 

system. Keep in mind, however, that some forms of 

discipline, such as termination of employment, can be 

severe. 

Making the Local Environment Inhospitable to 

Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

While focusing on the demand side of sexual exploitation 

shows considerable promise, it cannot on its own eradicate 

prostitution from your locality. This is because the alleged 

demand by men for sex is not really that strong. For 

example, in the United States, where about 16 percent 

of men report having paid for a sex act, only 0.6 percent 

admit to doing so on a regular basis.62 In other countries, 

particularly Latin and Asian countries, the percentage of 

men who admit to paying for sex is as high as 70 percent. 

It follows that the demand by men for sex is related 

to the opportunities and cultural norms that prevail 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 47 

in their respective environments. Therefore, reducing 

opportunities to buy sex by removing the sex trade 

from your area stands a very good chance of drastically 

reducing both prostitution and the exploitation of women. 

It can be argued that such a response will merely displace 

the activity. Although there has been no research on 

displacement of prostitution, research on the displacement 

of other crimes suggests that sometimes displacement 

occurs and sometimes it does not, depending on the 

particular crime and environment.63 It has also been 

found that other crimes may decrease as a result of 

successful efforts to thwart a specific crime (“diffusion of 

benefits”). The following responses are adapted from the 

Problem-Oriented Guide on Street Prostitution. We strongly 

recommend that you consult that Guide for further 

information. 

http://richmondthenandnow.com 

Making an area inhospitable for prostitution helps 

discourage the exploitation of trafficked women. 
48 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

12. Enforcing zoning laws, nuisance abatement 

ordinances, and business licensing regulations 

against the owners of properties used for § The Nassau County Police 

Department (New York) eliminated prostitution or forced labor. Prostitution markets 

illegal massage parlors by targeting depend on other businesses to support them. The 

property owners, in partnership with police and other enforcement agencies can exert the local county clerk, fire marshal, 

and building department (Goldstein pressure on those businesses by enforcing civil 

submission: http://www.popcenter. laws and business regulations. Zoning regulations 

org/library/goldstein/1995/95- that restrict the sorts of businesses that support 52.PDF). In 1999, similar results 

were achieved by the Chattanooga prostitution, such as adult entertainment, can be 

Police Department (Tennessee), effective. Zoning restrictions have been key in the which served eviction notices and redevelopment of Times Square in New York City, initiated building condemnations 

(Goldstein submission: http:// where prostitution has significantly declined.64 The 

www.popcenter.org/library/ police and private parties can file nuisance abatement goldstein/1999/99-07.PDF). actions against businesses that support prostitution or 

§§ In 1998, the South Mountain forced labor. You should get advice and support from 

Police Precinct (Arizona) identified legal counsel before pursuing these options.§ 

nuisance rental properties owned by 

absentee landlords as contributing 

to prostitution and drug dealing. 13. Warning and educating property owners about To alleviate the problem, landlords the use of their premises for prostitution or were required to attend seminars 

that detailed the debilitating effects forced labor. Many property owners unwittingly 

of property neglect and offered support street prostitution because they fail to training on property management. 

In combination with considerable appreciate how their business practices allow it 

community support and the release to flourish.§§ You can remind them of their legal 

of successful cases to local media, obligations and provide business owners and their the program led to a successful 

neighborhood revitalization employees with specific training to help them prevent 

(Goldstein submission: http:// their properties from being used for prostitution. www.popcenter.org/library/ It is also possible that owners of property that goldstein/1998/98-57.pdf).

house sweatshops may not realize that the workers 

are trafficked. You should make sure that they 

know the warning signs of trafficking. Developing 

training programs by partnering with businesses 

in entertainment districts should also assist in 

identifying trafficked women whether into forced 

labor or the sex trade. 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 49 

14. Establishing a highly visible police presence. A 

highly visible police presence, typically with extra 

uniformed officers, can discourage street prostitution 

and may discourage off-street prostitution as well. An 

extra police presence is expensive, of course, and is 

only effective if followed up with more permanent 

strategies; remember too that a heavy police presence 

can create the perception that an area is unsafe. 

Alternative methods for establishing a police presence 

include opening a police station in the area, such as 

in a storefront, a mobile office, or a kiosk, or affixing 

anti-prostitution warnings to police patrol vehicles. 

Private security forces can also be deployed to 

supplement a police presence. 

15. Redeveloping the local economy. The exploitation 

of trafficked women flourishes in substandard social 

and economic environments: street prostitution 

markets thrive under marginal economic conditions; 

run-down apartments in impoverished neighborhoods 

are often all that are available to illegal immigrants, 

who can afford only the cheapest housing; dilapidated 

buildings in old industrial areas are commonly used 

for sweatshops. Thus, it follows that economic 

redevelopment is often necessary to permanently 

eliminate prostitution markets and forced labor. 

The idea is that improved economic conditions 

will foster the establishment of new businesses 

that are less hospitable to prostitution markets and 

sweatshops. Although economic redevelopment 

usually cannot occur without a substantial investment 

of governmental and private resources, police can 

play an important role in bringing the need for 

redevelopment to the attention of the appropriate 

authorities.§ 

§ Working with local communities 

to change high risk areas using 

civil remedies, as suggested in 

Responses 13, 14, and 16, can be 

very complicated and is not always 

effective (Mazerolle and Roehl 1999). 
50 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Responses With Limited Effectiveness 

16. Legalizing or otherwise tolerating prostitution. 

There are two closely-related reasons usually 

advanced for legalizing prostitution. First, 

decriminalization puts buying and selling sex on 

the same footing as other commercial enterprises, 

thereby removing both the moral stigma and the 

well-known criminal justice issues that surround 

the policing of the sex trade. Second, when the 

sex trade is treated like any other business, it 

becomes subject to all the usual health, safety, and 

environmental regulations, thus protecting the 

health and welfare of the prostitutes. The latter 

was the rationale underlying the legalization of 

prostitution in New Zealand in 2004. There is 

evidence, however, that because compliance with 

health and safety regulations increases the cost of 

doing business, legal prostitution can create a black 

market sex trade populated by trafficked women. 

Legalization can also lead to an increase in the 

demand for the sale of sex,65 because as legitimate 

businessmen the purveyors of prostitution can use 

sales and advertising tactics to increase their market 

shares. A final issue, which is the crux of this policy 

debate, is the moral argument: that prostitution 

converts a woman’s body into a commodity, even if 

she does it willingly.66 Clearly, this debate involves 

deep philosophical questions that no single police 

department can solve on its own, at least not without 

lengthy consultation with civic and community 

leaders. 
Responses to the Problem of Exploiting Trafficked Women 51 

17. Punishing prostitutes. Although in most 

jurisdictions of the U.S. the prostitute remains 

criminally liable for her actions, the levels of 

enforcement or punishment that are applied against 

prostitutes vary enormously across jurisdictions 

and communities. The idea that prostitutes are 

both offenders and victims provides excuses either 

for inaction or for inconsistent and ineffective 

enforcement practices, such as sudden sweeps and 

raids—perhaps the most common police response 

(see Problem-Oriented Guide No. 2 Street Prostitution). 

Because of the highly vulnerable situation of a 

trafficked woman who is a sex worker, punishment 

will most likely drive her further into the clutches 

of her traffickers, ensuring that she will never 

cooperate with the police, making investigation and 

prosecution of traffickers that much more difficult. 

It will be necessary, therefore, for your department 

to have a clear policy on the levels of enforcement 

to be applied to prostitutes, and for the vice squad, 

should there be one, to be well trained in detecting 

the presence of trafficked women in advance of any 

crackdowns or raids. 

Appendix A 53 

Appendix A: 

Summary of Responses to the 

Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

The table below summarizes various responses to 

the problem of the human trafficking of women, the 

mechanisms by which they are intended to work, the 

conditions under which they should work best, and factors 

that should be considered before a particular response 

is implemented. It is critical that you tailor responses to 

local circumstances and that you can justify each response 

based upon reliable analysis. In most cases, an effective 

strategy will involve several different responses, because 

law enforcement alone is seldom effective in reducing or 

solving the problem. 

Response 

No. 

Page 

No. 

Response How It Works Works Best If... Considerations 

Preparatory Responses 

1. 33 Locating

WUDIÀFNHG

Police are 

trained in 

... police know their 

localities well and can 

Not all illegal immigrants 

DUHWUDIÀFNHGDQGYLFHYHUVD

women identifying

WUDIÀFNLQJ

obtain information 

from informal 

venues and networks 

marketing 

practices 

2. 35 Identifying

WUDIÀFNHG

women 

Police interview 

victims looking 

for signs of

WUDIÀFNLQJ

... police are well 

trained in interviewing 

YLFWLPVRIWUDIÀFNLQJ

and NGOs are 

brought into the 

interviews 

Victims may not talk to 

police because of fear of 

arrest or reprisals from 

captors 
54 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Response 

No. 

Page 

No. 

Response How It Works Works Best If... Considerations 

3. 36 Protecting

WUDIÀFNHG

women 

Police protect 

the victim from 

immediate 

violence, report 

the case to 

the national 

... police have a close 

working relationship 

with local community 

groups that can 

provide refuge 

Police must be skilled 

interviewers to overcome 

the victim’s fear of 

authorities 

WUDIÀFNLQJ

hotline, and 

inform the 

victim of her 

rights under 

TVPA 

4. 38 Working 

with service 

organizations 

You educate 

local 

community 

groups and 

health agencies 

concerning 

the plight

RIWUDIÀFNHG

... you gain their 

FRQÀGHQFHPDNH

use of their support 

services, and refer 

victims to them 

Requires long-term 

commitment to develop 

enduring partnerships; some 

community groups may be 

reticent to inform police 

of illegal immigrants in the 

community 

women so that 

they will help 

identify them 

and provide 

support 

5. 39 Educating the 

public 

Public support 

makes possible 

changes needed 

in enforcement 

and prevention 

RIWUDIÀFNLQJ

... you use available 

materials and sources 

concerning human 

WUDIÀFNLQJ

Outreach programs with 

schools and community 

groups and use of the 

media for publicity will help 

(QIRUFLQJ/DZV$JDLQVW7UDIÀFNHUVDQG0HQ:KR3XUFKDVH6H[

6. 40 Directing 

enforcement 

at pimps and 

purchasers 

Denies 

WUDIÀFNHUVWKH

opportunity 

to deploy 

WUDIÀFNHG

... you have the 

cooperation of both 

local government and 

the general public 

Depends on changing the 

DWWLWXGHVRISXEOLFRIÀFLDOV

towards prostitution 

women in your 

neighborhood 
Appendix A 55 

Response 

No. 

Page 

No. 

Response How It Works Works Best If... Considerations 

7. 42 Working 

closely with 

immigration 

RIÀFLDOV

Smoothes 

the process 

of protecting 

the victim 

and obtaining 

witness 

... carefully worked 

out policies and 

procedures are agreed 

upon by both parties 

&RQÁLFWLQJODZVDQG

practices work against local 

police enforcement of 

federal immigration law, 

especially in sanctuary states 

and cities 

testimony 

8. 43 Using RICO Lawsuits and 

ordinances are 

used to raise 

... you have close 

relationships with 

labor and business 

When lawyers become 

involved, expenses escalate 

the cost of 

doing business, 

thus pressuring 

sweatshops 

and brothels to 

organizations, as well 

as the prosecutor’s 

RIÀFH

relocate 

Reducing Demand 

9. 44 Punishing the 

purchasers of 

sexual services 

Serious 

punishments 

are used to 

deter men from 

buying sex 

... criminal justice 

personnel are 

committed to the 

view that the purchase 

of sex is a form of 

male violence 

Depends on the extent to 

which the public supports 

the policy 

10. 45 Changing the 

attitudes of 

prostitution 

customers 

Offenders 

submit to 

psychological 

and educational 

programs 

that teach the 

... judges and 

prosecutors are 

convinced of the 

effectiveness of these 

programs 

Studies have shown 

these programs to be 

very effective in reducing 

recidivism, although their 

effectiveness in overcoming 

ethnic or cultural values 

exploitative 

nature of their 

condoning prostitution have 

not been tested 

acts 
56 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Response 

No. 

Page 

No. 

Response How It Works Works Best If... Considerations 

11. 46 Notifying 

those with 

LQÁXHQFHRYHU

the purchaser’s 

conduct 

Creates 

meaningful 

consequences 

for the 

purchaser 

... purchasers 

DUHLQÁXHQFHGE\

informal social 

controls 

Some penalties (e.g., 

termination from 

employment) may be 

harsher than some believe 

is fair 

0DNLQJWKH/RFDO(QYLURQPHQW,QKRVSLWDEOHWR([SORLWDWLRQRI 7UDIÀFNHG:RPHQ

12. 48 Enforcing 

zoning laws, 

nuisance 

abatement 

ordinances, 

and licensing 

regulations 

against 

properties used 

for prostitution 

Restricts the 

availability of 

locations for 

sexual activities; 

discourages the 

use of motels 

and hotels for 

prostitution 

... sexual transactions 

or forced labor take 

place on properties 

subject to regulation 

Civil law processes can 

be cumbersome and 

are unfamiliar to police; 

requires support from 

government lawyers 

13. 48 Warning 

property 

owners about 

the use of their 

premises for 

prostitution or 

forced labor 

Increases 

property 

owners’ 

willingness 

to prohibit 

prostitution or 

forced labor on 

... forced labor 

takes place on those 

properties 

Some property owners may 

feel they are being unfairly 

accused 

their property 

14. 49 Establishing a 

highly visible 

police presence 

Discourages 

both 

prostitutes and 

clients from 

negotiations 

... followed by 

changes to the 

environment where 

street prostitution 

occurs 

Labor intensive; creates the 

perception that the area is 

unsafe 

15. 49 Redeveloping 

the area 

economy 

Promotes 

legitimate 

activity to 

displace 

illegitimate 

activity 

... improvements will 

substantially change 

the conditions that 

allow prostitution 

or forced labor to 

ÁRXULVK

Costly in the short term; 

potential displacement to 

more vulnerable areas 
Appendix A 57 

Response 

No. 

Page 

No. 

Response How It Works Works Best If... Considerations 

5HVSRQVHV:LWK/LPLWHG(IIHFWLYHQHVV

16. 50 Legalizing 

or otherwise 

tolerating 

prostitution 

Creates a black 

market for 

FKHDSWUDIÀFNHG

prostitutes 

Rests on debates concerning 

public morality, which 

police departments cannot 

solve on their own 

17. 51 Punishing Leads to 'ULYHVWUDIÀFNHGZRPHQ

prostitutes inconsistent 

and ineffective 

into the clutches of 

WUDIÀFNHUVPDNLQJ

enforcement investigation and 

SURVHFXWLRQGLIÀFXOW

Appendix B 59 

Appendix B: 

Schematic Representation of Relationships 

among Exploitation, Trafficking, Migration, 

Smuggling, Labor, and Consent 

PROSTITUTION 

LABOR 

TRAFFICKING 

CONSENT 

SALE OF CHILDREN 

OF MIGRANTS ETC. 

MIGRANT SMUGGLING 

MIGRANT ABUSE 

TRAFFICKING 

FOR 

TRAFFICKING 

FOR 

LABOR 

PEONAGE ETC. 

FORCED LABOR 

DOMESTIC ABUSE 

MIGRATION 

EXPLOITATION 

EXTORTION, ROBBERY 

MIGRATION 

RAPE, ASSAULT 

Adapted from UNESCAP (2003:27) 

Endnotes 61 

Endnotes

 1 Tiefenbrun (2002:136). 2

 U.S. Department of State (2005). 3

 Bales and Fletcher (2004). 4

 International Labour Office (2003). 5

 TVPA (2000). 6

 Salt (2000); Laczko and Gramegna (2003). 7

 U.S. Department of State (2004). How these figures 

were computed remains unclear. The number of 

women assisted as a result of TVPA is substantially 

lower, in the hundreds (Bales and Fletcher 2004:10).

8

 Kangaspunta (2003). 9

 Tiefenbrun (2002:139-141). 

10 U.S. Department of Justice (2004). 

11 MacPherson and Gushulak (2004).

12 Gushulak and MacPherson (2000).

13 Gushulak and MacPherson (2000).

14 Gumbel (2001); Bales et al. (2004).

15 Walter (2002). 

16 Stuart Police Department (2001). 

17 National City Police Department (2000). 

18 Ryf (2002:50). 

19 Human Rights Watch (2001). 

20 Guerette (2004).

21 Cwikel et al. (2004). Early exposure to trauma also 

increases the chances that a woman will be recruited. 

22 Stone (2004).

23 Raymond and Hughes (2001). 

24 Florida State University (2003). 

25 Hughes (2001).

26 Parrado et al. (2004). 

27 Raymond and Hughes (2001). 

28 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for 

Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) (2003). 

29 TVPA (2000). 
62 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

30 8 U.S.C. sec. 1227(a)(1)(E)(i).

31 U.S. Department of State (2004).

32 Anderson and O’Connell Davidson (2003).

33 Raymond and Hughes (2001); Hughes (2004a).

34 Wijers and Lap-Chew (1999); Zarembka (2000);

Anderson and O’Connell Davidson (2003). 

35 Human Rights Watch (2001); Anderson and O’Connell 

Davidson (2003). 

36 Bales et al. (2004).

37 Scott (2000).

38 Hughes (2004a).

39 See generally Freilich and Newman (2005). 

40 Seghetti et al. (2004).

41 Nordic Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender 

Research (2002). 

42 Raymond and Hughes (2001); Ryf (2002:20). 

43 Salt (2000).

44 Kansas City, Missouri Police Department (2004). 

45 Mackenzie et al. (2003). 

46 Raymond and Hughes (2001). 

47 Hughes (2004a).

48 Torrey and Dubin (2003). 

49 Hughes (2003).

50 National Trafficking Alert System (no date). 

51 Venkatraman (2003). 

52 See http://www.palmbeachpost.com/ 

moderndayslavery/content/moderndayslavery/. 53 Jacobsen (2002). 

54 Edwards (2003). 

55 SPOG (2005).

56 King (2003).

57 Ekberg (2004).

58 Persons (1996). 

59 Hughes (2004a).

60 Hughes (2004a). 
Appendix Endnotes 63 

61 Hughes (2004a:27).

62 Hughes (2004a).

63 Hesseling (1994).

64 Weidner (1999).

65 Raymond (2004).

66 Hughes (2004a); Ekberg (2004); Nordic Institute for

Women’s Studies and Gender Research (2002). 

References 65 

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68 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

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IRU:RPHQ·V6WXGLHVDQG*HQGHU5HVHDUFK 1: 22-15. 

Jelinek, P. “Anti-Prostitution Rule Drafted for U.S. 

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Kangaspunta, K. (2003). Mapping the inhuman trade: 

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Kansas City (Missouri) Police Department (2004). 

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Laczko, F., and M. Gramegna (2003). “Developing Better 

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:RUOG$IIDLUV 10(1): 179-194. 

Lloyd, K. (2000). “Wives for Sale: The Modern 

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Mackenzie, E., L. Taylor, B. Bloom, D. Hufford 

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70 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

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31-56. 
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Scott, M. (2000). Street Prostitution. Problem-Specific Guide 

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Services. 

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Stone, S. (2004). 0DLO2UGHU%ULGHV7DNLQJD/RRNIURP

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About the Author 75 

About the Author 

Graeme R. Newman 

Graeme R. Newman is a distinguished teaching professor at the 

School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University 

of New York. He has published works in the fields of the history 

and philosophy of punishment, comparative criminal justice, 

private security, situational crime prevention, and ecommerce 

crime, and has written commercial software. He was the CEO of 

a publishing company for 15 years and, in 1990, established the 

United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network. Among 

the books he has written or edited are Superhighway Robbery: 

Preventing Ecommerce Crime (with Ronald V. Clarke), and Rational 

Choice and Situational Crime Prevention (with Ronald V. Clarke and 

Shlomo Shoham). 

Recommended Readings 77 

Recommended Readings 

• A Police Guide to Surveying Citizens and Their 

Environments, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1993. This 

guide offers a practical introduction for police practitioners 

to two types of surveys that police find useful: surveying 

public opinion and surveying the physical environment. It 

provides guidance on whether and how to conduct costeffective surveys. 

• Assessing Responses to Problems: An 

Introductory Guide for Police Problem-Solvers, 

by John E. Eck (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services, 2001). This guide 

is a companion to the Problem-Oriented Guides for Police series. 

It provides basic guidance to measuring and assessing 

problem-oriented policing efforts. 

• Conducting Community Surveys, by Deborah Weisel 

(Bureau of Justice Statistics and Office of Community 

Oriented Policing Services, 1999). This guide, along with 

accompanying computer software, provides practical, basic 

pointers for police in conducting community surveys. The 

document is also available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs. 

• Crime Prevention Studies, edited by Ronald V. Clarke 

(Criminal Justice Press, 1993, et seq.). This is a series of 

volumes of applied and theoretical research on reducing 

opportunities for crime. Many chapters are evaluations of 

initiatives to reduce specific crime and disorder problems. 
78 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

• Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing: The 

1999 Herman Goldstein Award Winners. This 

document produced by the National Institute of Justice 

in collaboration with the Office of Community Oriented 

Policing Services and the Police Executive Research Forum 

provides detailed reports of the best submissions to the 

annual award program that recognizes exemplary problemoriented responses to various community problems. A 

similar publication is available for the award winners from 

subsequent years. The documents are also available at 

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.

• Not Rocket Science? Problem-Solving and Crime 

Reduction, by Tim Read and Nick Tilley (Home Office 

Crime Reduction Research Series, 2000). Identifies and 

describes the factors that make problem-solving effective 

or ineffective as it is being practiced in police forces in 

England and Wales. 

• Opportunity Makes the Thief: Practical Theory 

for Crime Prevention, by Marcus Felson and Ronald V. 

Clarke (Home Office Police Research Series, Paper No. 98, 

1998). Explains how crime theories such as routine activity 

theory, rational choice theory and crime pattern theory 

have practical implications for the police in their efforts to 

prevent crime. 

• Problem Analysis in Policing, by Rachel Boba (Police 

Foundation, 2003). Introduces and defines problem 

analysis and provides guidance on how problem analysis 

can be integrated and institutionalized into modern 

policing practices. 
Recommended Readings Appendix 79 

• Problem-Oriented Policing, by Herman Goldstein 

(McGraw-Hill, 1990, and Temple University Press, 1990). 

Explains the principles and methods of problem-oriented 

policing, provides examples of it in practice, and discusses 

how a police agency can implement the concept. 

• Problem-Oriented Policing and Crime Prevention, 

by Anthony A. Braga (Criminal Justice Press, 2003). 

Provides a thorough review of significant policing research 

about problem places, high-activity offenders, and repeat 

victims, with a focus on the applicability of those findings 

to problem-oriented policing. Explains how police 

departments can facilitate problem-oriented policing by 

improving crime analysis, measuring performance, and 

securing productive partnerships. 

• Problem-Oriented Policing: Reflections on the 

First 20 Years, by Michael S. Scott (U.S. Department of 

Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 

2000). Describes how the most critical elements of 

Herman Goldstein's problem-oriented policing model have 

developed in practice over its 20-year history, and proposes 

future directions for problem-oriented policing. The report 

is also available at www.cops.usdoj.gov. 

• Problem-Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in 

Newport News, by John E. Eck and William Spelman 

(Police Executive Research Forum, 1987). Explains the 

rationale behind problem-oriented policing and the 

problem-solving process, and provides examples of 

effective problem-solving in one agency. 
80 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women 

• Problem-Solving Tips: A Guide to Reducing 

Crime and Disorder Through Problem-Solving 

Partnerships by Karin Schmerler, Matt Perkins, Scott 

Phillips, Tammy Rinehart and Meg Townsend. (U.S. 

Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented 

Policing Services, 1998) (also available at www.cops.usdoj. 

gov). Provides a brief introduction to problem-solving, 

basic information on the SARA model and detailed 

suggestions about the problem-solving process. 

• Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case 

Studies, Second Edition, edited by Ronald V. Clarke 

(Harrow and Heston, 1997). Explains the principles and 

methods of situational crime prevention, and presents over 

20 case studies of effective crime prevention initiatives. 

• Tackling Crime and Other Public-Safety Problems: 

Case Studies in Problem-Solving, by Rana Sampson 

and Michael S. Scott (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of 

Community Oriented Policing Services, 2000) (also available 

at www.cops.usdoj.gov). Presents case studies of effective 

police problem-solving on 18 types of crime and disorder 

problems. 

• Using Analysis for Problem-Solving: A Guidebook 

for Law Enforcement, by Timothy S. Bynum (U.S. 

Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented 

Policing Services, 2001). Provides an introduction for 

police to analyzing problems within the context of 

problem-oriented policing. 

• Using Research: A Primer for Law Enforcement 

Managers, Second Edition, by John E. Eck and Nancy G. 

LaVigne (Police Executive Research Forum, 1994). Explains 

many of the basics of research as it applies to police 

management and problem-solving. 
Other Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 81 

Other Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 

Problem-Specific Guides series: 

1. Assaults in and Around Bars. Michael S. Scott. 2001. 

ISBN: 1-932582-00-2 

2. Street Prostitution. Michael S. Scott. 2001. ISBN: 1-932582-01-0 

3. Speeding in Residential Areas. Michael S. Scott. 2001. 

ISBN: 1-932582-02-9 

4. Drug Dealing in Privately Owned Apartment Complexes. 

Rana Sampson. 2001. ISBN: 1-932582-03-7 

5. False Burglar Alarms. Rana Sampson. 2001. ISBN: 1-932582-04-5 

6. Disorderly Youth in Public Places. Michael S. Scott. 2001. 

ISBN: 1-932582-05-3 

7. Loud Car Stereos. Michael S. Scott. 2001. ISBN: 1-932582-06-1 

8. Robbery at Automated Teller Machines. Michael S. Scott. 2001. 

ISBN: 1-932582-07-X 

9. Graffiti. Deborah Lamm Weisel. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-08-8 

10. Thefts of and From Cars in Parking Facilities. Ronald V. 

Clarke. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-09-6 

11. Shoplifting. Ronald V. Clarke. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-10-X 

12. Bullying in Schools. Rana Sampson. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-11-8 

13. Panhandling. Michael S. Scott. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-12-6 

14. Rave Parties. Michael S. Scott. 2002. ISBN: 1-932582-13-4 

15. Burglary of Retail Establishments. Ronald V. Clarke. 2002. 

ISBN: 1-932582-14-2 

16. Clandestine Drug Labs. Michael S. Scott. 2002. 

ISBN: 1-932582-15-0 

17. Acquaintance Rape of College Students. Rana Sampson. 2002. 

ISBN: 1-932582-16-9 

18. Burglary of Single-Family Houses. Deborah Lamm Weisel. 

2002. ISBN: 1-932582-17-7 

19. Misuse and Abuse of 911. Rana Sampson. 2002. 

ISBN: 1-932582-18-5 
82 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

20. Financial Crimes Against the Elderly. 

Kelly Dedel Johnson. 2003. ISBN: 1-932582-22-3 

21. Check and Card Fraud. Graeme R. Newman. 2003. 

ISBN: 1-932582-27-4 

22. Stalking. The National Center for Victims of Crime. 2004. 

ISBN: 1-932582-30-4 

23. Gun Violence Among Serious Young Offenders. Anthony A. 

Braga. 2004. ISBN: 1-932582-31-2 

24. Prescription Fraud. Julie Wartell and Nancy G. La Vigne. 2004. 

ISBN: 1-932582-33-9 

25. Identity Theft. Graeme R. Newman. 2004. ISBN: 1-932582-35-3 

26. Crimes Against Tourists. Ronald W. Glesnor and Kenneth J. Peak. 

2004. ISBN: 1-932582-36-3 

27. Underage Drinking. Kelly Dedel Johnson. 2004. ISBN: 1-932582-39-8 

28. Street Racing. Kenneth J. Peak and Ronald W. Glensor. 2004. 

ISBN: 1-932582-42-8 

29. Cruising. Kenneth J. Peak and Ronald W. Glensor. 2004. 

ISBN: 1-932582-43-6 

30. Disorder at Budget Motels. Karin Schmerler. 2005. 

ISBN: 1-932582-41-X 

31. Drug Dealing in Open-Air Markets. Alex Harocopos and Mike 

Hough. 2005. ISBN: 1-932582-45-2 

32. Bomb Threats in Schools. Graeme R. Newman. 2005. 

ISBN: 1-932582-46-0 

33. Illicit Sexual Activity in Public Places. Kelly Dedel Johnson. 2005. 

ISBN: 1-932582-47-9 

34. Robbery of Taxi Drivers. Martha J. Smith. 2005. ISBN: 1-932582-50-9 

35. School Vandalism and Break-Ins. Kelly Dedel Johnson. 2005. 

ISBN: 1-9325802-51-7 

36. Drunk Driving. Michael S. Scott, Nina J. Emerson, Louis B. 

Antonacci, and Joel B. Plant. 2005. ISBN: 1-932582-57-6 

37. Juvenile Runaways. Kelly Dedel. 2006. ISBN: 1932582-56-8 

38. The Exploitation of Trafficked Women. Graeme R. Newman. 

2006. ISBN: 1-932582-59-2 
Other Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 83 

Response Guides series: 

• The Benefits and Consequences of Police 

Crackdowns. Michael S. Scott. 2003. ISBN: 1-932582-24-X 

• Closing Streets and Alleys to Reduce Crime: Should 

You Go Down This Road? Ronald V. Clarke. 2004. 

ISBN: 1-932582-41-X 

• Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety 

Problems. Michael S. Scott and Herman Goldstein. 

2005. ISBN: 1-932582-55-X 

• Video Surveillance of Public Places. Jerry Ratcliffe. 

2006. ISBN: 1-932582-58-4 

Problem-Solving Tools series: 

• Assessing Responses to Problems: An Introductory 

Guide for Police Problem-Solvers. John E. Eck. 2002. 

ISBN: 1-932582-19-3 

• Researching a Problem. Ronald V. Clarke and Phyllis A. 

Schultz. 2005. ISBN: 1-932582-48-7 

• Using Offender Interviews to Inform Police Problem 

Solving. Scott H. Decker. 2005. ISBN: 1932582-49-5 

• Analyzing Repeat Victimization. Deborah Lamm 

Weisel. 2005. ISBN: 1-932582-54-1 

Upcoming Problem-Oriented Guides for Police 

Problem-Specific Guides 

Domestic Violence 

Mentally Ill Persons 

Student Party Riots 

Bank Robbery 

Witness Intimidation 
84 The Exploitation of Trafficked Women

Drive-by Shootings 

Problem with Day Laborer Sites 

Child Pornography on the Internet 

Crowd Control at Stadiums and Other Entertainment Venues 

Traffic Congestion Around Schools 

Theft from Construction Sites of Single Family Houses 

Robbery of Convenience Stores 

Theft from Cars on Streets 

Problem-Solving Tools 

Partnering with Business to Address Public Safety Problems 

Risky Facilities 

Implementing Responses to Problems 

Designing a Problem Analysis System 

Response Guides 

Crime Prevention Publicity Campaigns 

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design 

For more information about the Problem-Oriented Guides for 

Police series and other COPS Office publications, please call 

the COPS Office Response Center at 800.421.6770 or visit 

COPS Online at www.cops.usdoj.gov. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION: 

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 

1100 Vermont Avenue, N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20530 

To obtain details on COPS programs, call the 

COPS Office Response Center at 800.421.6770 

Visit COPS Online at the address listed below. 

e02061007 Date: February 9, 2006 

ISBN: 1-932582-59-2 

www.cops.usdoj.gov