[Stop-traffic] Trafficking into Sexual Exploitation

[Kevin Bales]

MessageOriginally sent 26 February, 2004 to Stop-Traffic (now revised)

There has been considerable interest in the New York TImes magazine article about trafficking into sexual exploitation (Jan 25 2004). The article, and work done by Free the Slaves, was criticized in Slate.com. We feel that Slate, by not actually finding out how our estimates were built up sadly misrepresented the situation.

Fact Number 1 - Jack Shafer never contacted me or Free the Slaves to ask how we had arrived at our estimates of the number of people enslaved in the United States for sexual exploitation. Had he done so, we would have explained, and then we could have had an educated discussion based on evidence. To put the record straight, the estimate of 30,000 to 50,000 people being held in forced labor in the United States for purposes of sexual exploitation was arrived at in this way: firstly, we used the State Department's estimate of 18,000 to 20,000 people being trafficked into the US each year. (Admittedly, the State Department has not explained the methodology by which they arrived at this estimate, so we use it in the hope that they will soon make their research methods clear.) Secondly, we adjusted this estimate according to two surveys we have recently conducted. The first survey was of all media reports of trafficking cases. These reports covered 136 separate cases of forced labor, 109 of which noted the number trafficked totaling 5,455 individuals. As with most crimes, the number of known and reported cases is a fraction of the actual number of cases occuring. To the best of our understanding the proportion of known to actual cases for human trafficking is low. In this survey 44.2% of cases involved forced labor in prostitution and 5.4% involved the sexual abuse of children, totaling 49.6%. As this is a rough estimate I rounded this up to 50%. In a second survey of forty-nine service provider agencies in the United States that had worked with trafficked persons, we asked how long each trafficked person they had worked with had been held in forced labor. The minimum reported time was one month, the maximum was 30 years. The majority of cases clustered between three years and five years. 

So, if 9,000 to 10,000 of the people trafficked into the US each year will be enslaved for sexual exploitation (50% of 18-20,000), and they will remain in that situation for three to five years, then the number of people enslaved for sexual exploitation at any one time in the US could be between 27,000 and 50,000 people. Since a number of people working in the area of human trafficking have stated that they believe the State Department's estimate is low, I chose to make our estimate based on the upper end of the State Department figure, thus giving an estimate of 30,000 to 50,000. Needless to say, when I discussed this number with the New York Times I emphasized that this was a rough estimate. We welcome further research that refines or replaces this estimate, and we welcome the collaboration, thoughts and criticisms of other professionals and scholars. We feel strongly that more research is needed (and we are currently carrying out such research for the National Institute of Justice), but we do not feel that this estimate is without meaning.

Question - If he had doubts, why didn't Shafer bother to contact us about the estimates?

Fact Number 2 - Shafer used information from the website of the Australian Anti-Slavery Society to question my estimate that there are some 27 million people in slavery around the world today. The Australian Anti-Slavery Society was so angered by this mis-use of their website that they changed their web pages the next day to explain that they were using a very different, narrower, definition of slavery for their count. They also added: "A recent article questions the credibility of estimates by Professor Kevin Bales . The criticism is unfair to Professor Bales and is based on a misunderstanding." You can see the full page at: www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/slavery3.htm. Meanwhile, Shafer seems to have missed other more obvious sources that have both checked over and used my estimates such as National Geographic Magazine (http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1/index.html), Scientific American (http://tinyurl.com/2lxne), or the National Academies of Science (http://www7.nationalacademies.org/internationallabor/bales.pdf). 

Question - Why did Shafer, from the many available sources using my estimates, choose only the Australian Anti-Slavery Society's count which is based on a specific and narrow definition drawn from Indian common law and which they clearly state excludes "categories of trafficked women and children"?

Fact Number 3 - Shafer, in a latter blog posting, says he can't find any indication that I know anything about human trafficking using Google and Lexus-Nexus. I don't have Lexus-Nexus, but when I type "Bales + trafficking" into Google I get a list of 2,890 items listing my participation in meetings and conferences, my publications, my quotations in the press on human trafficking, and so forth. Since most of my work concerns contemporary slavery and not trafficking per se, I'm surprised the list is this long, but I think it disproves Shafer pretty decisively, if you think a web search is a sufficient research methodology, which I don't. I am the first to admit that there are other more expert people in this area, as far as I am aware, Shafer didn't contact them either.

Question - Did Shafer really use a search engine to see if I knew anything about trafficking? Does he really think that a web search is sufficient evidence?

It is a shame that so much time has been wasted by debates and concerns over Shafer's blog postings. Meanwhile, Free the Slaves remains committed to carrying out in-depth, transparent, and quality research into slavery and human trafficking to the best of our abilities, and we welcome the collaboration, thoughts and criticisms of professionals and scholars.
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