ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use of criminal prosecution as a means to combat human trafficking. It analyses the common attributes of traffickers and facets of sex trafficking that inhibit investigation and prosecution of sex trafficking. Trafficking of human beings occurs because it is profitable for traffickers. Sex traffickers sell victims only when they benefit financially from the trafficking, and trafficking will persist as long as traffickers continue to enjoy pecuniary gains from this activity. Sex-trafficking is a labor intensive endeavor in the sense that it requires girls and women who can be prostituted. The victims' bodies are commodity that sex traffickers sell for money. Sex traffickers have been known to use debts incurred by victims or their families to induce victims to perform commercial sex acts. Like an addiction, a victim with a debt has a vulnerability that traffickers can exploit. Peonage trafficking, as it is sometimes called, is often successful because of power that unpaid debts give to creditor-traffickers.
