Abstract
Human trafficking has been identified as a growing concern across the globe, however, little is known regarding the attitudes of criminal justice actors, notably prosecutors. To address this gap, prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina were surveyed to gain an understanding of their experiences and attitudes related to sex trafficking. Findings suggest that over half of the prosecutors surveyed had worked with sex trafficking victims. Results also indicate a small portion of prosecutors held punitive attitudes for victims, but a significant majority held them for traffickers and customers. In addition to the presentation of findings related to training and knowledge held by prosecutors, limitations and implications are also discussed.
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Notes
More recent estimates for trafficking victims in BiH were searched for but none were discovered. In contrast, official figures disclosed by BiH along with various agencies and organizations have more recently focused on the number of identified victims within the country.
The country signed the protocol on December 12, 2000, which was subsequently ratified on April 24, 2002.
Minimum standards for the TVPA include: (1) prohibition and punishment for severe forms of trafficking, (2) punishment for sex trafficking offenses equitable to similarly severe sexual crimes, (3) punishment for trafficking in general should be severe enough so that it serves as a deterrent, and (4) continuing attention and efforts to reduce severe trafficking in persons (U.S. Department of State 2011).
The difference between tier 2 and tier 2 watch list is that the latter includes: (1) increasing or a significant number of victims of severe trafficking, (2) a lack of increased efforts to address severe trafficking from the previous year, and (3) the country has disclosed that significant efforts are being pursued to achieve compliance with the minimum standards (U.S. Department of State 2015).
A specific figure on the number of individuals approached and asked to complete the survey is not available to calculate the proportion of individuals who agreed to participate in the survey. What is known is that over 100 participants were present at the conference (Ministry of Security of B & H 2013) (although the total figure of individuals who attended [but who might not have registered nor participated] is unknown).
The original survey instrument was six pages long and included a total of 89 questions, with a number of items containing multiple questions contained within them. Original instrument questions not present in the reduced version included those related to: (1) investigation techniques for the crime of sex trafficking (e.g., forensic examinations), (2) if within the past year they had worked on cases involving trafficking women, traffickers, and customers, and (3) profiles of customers. In addition, the original survey contained three additional attitudes statements compared to the reduced survey.
While human trafficking does not require international movement, human smuggling by definition does require the movement between national border thresholds (U.S. Department of State 2006).
In order, the three trafficking figures cited by Farrell et al. (2008) represent training reported within a random survey of agencies (17.9 %), agencies located in areas with a medium to large population (38.5 %), and task force agencies (90.9 %).
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Grubb, J.A., Muftić, L.R. & Deljkić, I. An exploratory analysis of prosecutorial attitudes of sex trafficking in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Trends Organ Crim 19, 175–194 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-016-9267-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-016-9267-2