ABSTRACT
Criminology has faced new challenges in understanding and describing crime over the past two decades. Criminological theory, data and methods have been challenged by the ‘emergence’ of new crime types. Many of these emerging types of crime involve group behavior in some form or another. Explaining how groups operate has been a fundamental challenge to much of this research. This dilemma certainly has been a part of the attempt to address gang crime, which has a long history in the discipline. But there are other group crimes that have received increased attention from the field. For example, criminologists had paid little attention to the study of terrorism, racialization and extremism until 11 September 2001. But as Rosenfeld noted (2004), criminological theory and methods provided a framework to begin to understand such behavior. Drug smuggling, money laundering, organized crime and crimes committed through the use of the internet represent other such emergent crime types. But perhaps no crime has been more difficult to study and explain for criminologists than human trafficking.While traditional methods, measures and theories in criminology were not suitable for understanding human trafficking, there was good work being done in social work, history and political science on this topic. After all, human trafficking – particularly as slavery and the forced re-settlement of people – has a long history.
