Eliminating Human Trafficking One Step At A Time: Buyers Beware
Paul R. Abramson, Ph.D, is a Professor of Psychology at UCLA and the lead singer and lyricist of the band crying 4 kafka.
By Paul R. Abramson, Ph.D.
We’re all familiar with the numbers, they are simply staggering. Forty million human trafficking victims worldwide. That’s more than twice the number of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas. The magnitude of the psychological misery is even worse. Those losses are immeasurable.
Close to 20,000 human trafficking victims are brought to the U.S. each year, with countless more native-born citizens trafficked throughout the country. The Federal Department of Justice believes that 82 percent of those victims were kidnapped for sexual exploitation, and nearly half of them were under 18 years of age when taken.
The primary strategy for addressing this crisis in the United States has been to criminalize sellers. Task forces have been created at the federal and state levels to arrest and prosecute sex traffickers, and criminal penalties for sex trafficking have increased significantly. This is a facially reasonable model and is endorsed by the United Nations. But by the U.N.’s own admission, the results of this supply-side-only approach have fallen short. In fact, conviction rates for sellers are so low that the U.N. recently concluded that traffickers enjoy impunity around the world.
What if, simultaneously, we criminalize the hell out of buyers, the demand side, as it were. If we can substantially alter, or even eliminate, buyers’ willingness to purchase sex from trafficked victims, sex with a slave in the United States, at least theoretically, would disappear.
The first step, of course, is that states would need to make it a felony offense to have sex with a victim of human trafficking. This new crime would also need to include mandatory jail time, a hefty fine, restitution, and registration as a sex offender. If we can pull that off, then the next question would be: how do we put the fear of God, as it were, into buyers who are willing to purchase sex from trafficked victims?
What about a country-wide crusade, that had the full support of local, state, and federal governments? Imagine this: a national campaign, displayed in many languages, and distributed throughout all forms of traditional and social medias. Had Sex with a Victim of Human Trafficking? You Will Go to Jail, Pay a Fine, and Register As a Sex Offender.
Then, to add more muscle to this campaign, what if we also make this felony offense - having sex with a victim of human trafficking - a crime without a statute of limitations. Meaning, there is no escape, or time limit, for having committed this crime. Felony rape offenses that involve force or violence, for example, are already a crime in California that has no statute of limitations. Victims of human trafficking are also forced, in one way or another, to have sex with buyers, as such, would arguably put this crime in the same category as forced rape.
These suggestions, even if put into effect, would not eliminate human trafficking in the United States, and most certainly would not do so worldwide. Besides the formidable obstacles to enacting these laws, let alone successfully implementing them, the United States is hardly the only country beset with human trafficking. More significantly however is the issue of human trafficking for labor or services. The latter accounts for much of the modern slave trade throughout the world.
That notwithstanding, perhaps we should begin tackling the problem of human trafficking one step at a time. Though eliminating buyers won’t pull the plug on human trafficking, if it diminishes the willingness of buyers to purchase sex from trafficked victims, it is clearly a step in the right direction.
Let’s make Buyers Beware.
I’m grateful for the many conversations that I’ve had with Leif Dautch, Assistant United States Attorney. They were extremely helpful in shaping my thinking in this essay.