The Demographic Characteristics of Federal Human Trafficking Defendants: Who Are the Offenders?

Wed, September 21 | 11:45 AM EDT–12:45 PM EDT

Topic: Research, Legal | Knowledge Level: Intermediate

Shana M. Judge, MA, MPP, JD, PhD

Recent high-profile human trafficking cases have steered media and researcher attention toward offenders (e.g., Dahlstrom, 2021; Kernsmith et al., 2021), prompting the question: What types of individuals are involved in trafficking crimes? By commodifying humans and their labor, human trafficking is distinct from other common crimes and from other types of trafficking, for example, drug trafficking, the most frequently prosecuted trafficking crime. These crimes may also differ in their underlying social networks and organizational structures (Busch-Armendariz et al., 2009; UNODC, 2020). Given these differences, this study analyzed whether significant demographic differences exist between offenders involved in drug and human trafficking, and within human trafficking, between labor and sex trafficking. Also, because statutes differentiate among the severity of sex trafficking crimes, the study assessed whether differences exist among sex trafficking defendants, depending on the severity of the crime. Using 21 years of federal criminal justice data and multivariate statistical tests, study findings indicate that human trafficking defendants differ in important respects from other offenders. When separating human trafficking into labor and low- and high-penalty sex trafficking, significant differences among defendants remain, which will be discussed in more detail in the presentation. Future research should differentiate human trafficking crimes by type and severity and examine whether findings from this exploratory study continue to hold. Researchers should consider partnering with legal professionals to explore additional reasons for the dominance of male offenders in high-penalty trafficking cases.

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Presentation Objectives

• Describe the differences that prior research has shown among human trafficking crimes
• Explain how these differences may be reflected in significant age, gender, race, and ethnic disparities among offenders
• Discuss the demographic characteristics of federal labor and sex trafficking defendants using data from a 21-year period between 1994-2014
• Describe how these data may be used to estimate statistical associations between defendant characteristics and the type of human trafficking offense
• Demonstrate the ways in which media portrayals of human trafficking offenders may and may not be reflected in the reality of offender characteristics over time