RT Article
T1 Perception vs. Reality: The Relationship Between Organized Crime and Human Trafficking in Metropolitan Atlanta
JF American journal of criminal justice
VO 41
IS 4
SP 732
OP 764
A1 Tripp, Tara M.
A1 McMahon-Howard, Jennifer
A2 McMahon-Howard, Jennifer
LA English
YR 2016
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1764274180
AB Since the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, there has been an increase in both media and scholarly discussions of human trafficking. Although most of these discussions have framed human trafficking as a crime committed primarily by organized crime groups, there has been very little empirical research examining the link between human trafficking and organized crime. In an effort to start to address this gap in the research, we conduct an exploratory study to determine if there is a link between human trafficking and organized crime in one of the Southeast’s human trafficking hubs – Atlanta, Georgia. We collected data on 24 federal human trafficking cases that were indicted in metropolitan Atlanta between 2000 and 2013. Then, we conducted a content analysis of the court documents for each federal human trafficking case and classified the relationship between organized crime and human trafficking using one of three categories: nonexistent, organized criminal network, organized criminal syndicate. For the majority of the human trafficking cases ( n = 16), we found that there was no relationship between organized crime and human trafficking. For the cases that did show a relationship between organized crime and human trafficking, we found evidence of organized criminal networks in eight of the cases and evidence of an organized criminal syndicate in only one case.
K1 Organized Crime
K1 Forced labor
K1 Sexual exploitation
K1 Human Trafficking
DO 10.1007/s12103-015-9315-5