Women trafficking networks: Structure and stages of women trafficking in five Dutch small-scale networks

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the relation between the different stages of women trafficking (i.e. recruitment, entrance, accommodation, labor, and finance) and the structure of five criminal networks involved in women trafficking in the Netherlands ( Ns ranging from 6 to 15). On the one hand, it could be argued that for efficiency and avoidance of being detected by law enforcement agencies, the network structure might align with the different stages, resulting in a cell-structured network with collaboration between actors within rather than across stages. On the other hand, criminal actors might prefer to collaborate and rely on a few others, whom they trust in order to circumvent the lack of formal opportunities to enforce collaboration and agreements, resulting in a core-periphery network with actors also collaborating across stages. Results indicate that three of the five networks were characterized by a core-periphery structure, whereas the two other networks exhibit a mixture of both a cell-structured and core-periphery network. Furthermore, using an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM), we found that actors were likely to form ties with each other in the stages of recruitment, accommodation, and exploitation, but not in the stages of transport and finance.

A Systematic Review of Systems Science Approaches to Understand and Address Domestic and Gender-Based Violence

“…The final group of SNA studies examined the structure of sex trafficking networks, using records from law enforcement investigations and court cases. Generally, these studies confirmed the central role of "madams" (i.e., women formerly enslaved as prostitutes who participate in trafficking other women) and others involved in the management and control of the trafficking process, while highlighting the overall decentralized nature of the networks, with most actors on the periphery and limited to only one stage in the trafficking process (e.g., recruitment, transportation) (Campana, 2016;Cockbain et al, 2011;Diviak et al, 2021;Mancuso, 2014). Collaboration and co-offending tended to occur within the same stage of trafficking (Campana, 2016) or within smaller subgroups (i.e., cliques) of the larger network (Sabon et al, 2021).…”

From pets to plates: network analysis of trafficking in tortoises and freshwater turtles representing different types of demand

“…Future studies focussed on offender networks could further improve our understanding of such trade. In addition, the use of other criminological tools such as crime script analysis to break down the stages and actors involved in the illegal trade chain could complement this work (Diviák et al, 2021). In both networks, a few locations and routes were used disproportionately for trafficking, but our knowledge of the characteristics of the locations and routes that facilitate illegal wildlife trade concentration remains limited.…”