Safer Harbor: the impact of different models of safe harbor laws on the criminalization of commercially sexually exploited children in the United States

Commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) are commonly treated as criminals and punished for offenses committed as a result of being trafficked. Recent state-level legislative efforts have sought to prevent minors from being held criminally liable for being commercially sexually exploited. Thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Santos, Priscila Borges Marques dos (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
Published: 2016
In:Year: 2016
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Description
Summary:Commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) are commonly treated as criminals and punished for offenses committed as a result of being trafficked. Recent state-level legislative efforts have sought to prevent minors from being held criminally liable for being commercially sexually exploited. This study offers an analysis of the effects of such laws on the criminalization of CSEC through the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Data on the number of child arrests for prostitution (1995-2014) and safe harbor laws were collected from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the Polaris Project website, and the 2015 ECPAT report. The findings of the study suggest that the enactment of safe harbor legislation had no discernible effect on the mean number of annual child arrests. Continued efforts to educate and train relevant actors on the issue of domestic minor sex trafficking are needed. This study offers the first comprehensive evaluation of safe harbor laws in the U.S