Introduction

While the experiences of victims of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) are becoming better understood, a greater threat emerges from the involvement of organised crime. The profit motives and violence associated with organised crime makes MSHT more dangerous for victims and difficult to detect and address. As law enforcement has sought to respond to the role of organised crime in MSHT, the tactics being used to facilitate MSHT have evolved. In many countries, particularly where there is demand for outward migration, a worrying trend has emerged where communities, families and victims themselves become complicit in their own recruitment, becoming invested in their own exploitation and subsequently reluctant to seek assistance. This chapter traces the creation of a ‘criminal pyramid scheme’, with criminals at the top driving the recruitment and exploitation of victims, communities and families in the middle, encouraging potential victims to migrate, and victims themselves making up the largest layer, expecting to profit and send their earnings home by exposing themselves to exploitation.

Human trafficking as an organised crime

Following the adoption of the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, the head of what was then the UN Drug Control and Crime Prevention Programme (now United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC]) argued that human trafficking was the fastest growing form of organised crime. Pino Arlacchi pointed to ‘reports that drug traffickers are switching to human cargo to obtain greater profit with less risk’ (UN News, 2001). That was in 2001, and one of the protocols to the UN Convention focused specifically on human trafficking – seeking to prevent and punish traffickers and protect victims of trafficking. UNODC was subsequently tasked with assisting state parties in drafting legislation, developing strategies and providing resources to implement the protocol.

Although the protocol came into force as international law in 2003, the UK Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group released a report in 2012 pointing out that ‘little is known about the profile of people who essentially fuel this criminal industry, what level they occupy within the criminal chain, their characteristics and personal circumstances, their reasons for becoming involved in trafficking activities, their perceptions of their activities and their opinion of those they traffic’ (Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, 2012).