Eur J Crim Policy Res (2017) 23:393–408

DOI 10.1007/s10610-017-9343-4

Human Trafficking for Criminal Exploitation: The Failure

to Identify Victims

Carolina Villacampa 1,2 & Núria Torres

3

Published online: 24 May 2017

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017

Abstract Human trafficking for criminal exploitation is one of the lesser-known forms of human
trafficking. The failure of the criminal justice system to identify the victims of this type of
trafficking can lead to a failure to take the victim-centred approach to trafficking espoused in the
international legal instruments that regulate the matter, an approach that emphasises the protection
of victims and respect for their rights. In light of earlier findings of the existence of unidentified
victims of human trafficking for criminal exploitation in several European countries — the UK,
Ireland, Spain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands — a qualitative study was conducted,
consisting of 37 in-depth interviews with practising criminal justice professionals and victim
service providers in Spain. Because undetected victims of human trafficking for criminal
exploitation are usually treated as offenders, the main aim of this research with professionals
was to determine the causes of the criminal justice system’s failure to identify the victims of this
specific form of trafficking in order to prevent them from remaining hidden victims.

Keywords Human trafficking . Criminal exploitation . Victims . Identification . Professionals

Introduction

Human trafficking for criminal exploitation refers to trafficking carried out for the purpose of
forcing the victims to perform activities that are unlawful or antisocial (e.g. begging or
prostitution) or directly criminal (e.g. producing drugs, acting as a drug mule or property-
related street crime). Like all other forms of human trafficking, it includes the behaviours of
recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring, receiving, exchanging or transferring control
over a person by the characteristic means of coercive, fraudulent or abusive trafficking for the

* Carolina Villacampa
cvillacampa@dpub.udl.cat

1
Department of Public Law, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain
2
Faculty of Law and Economics, Jaume II, 25001 Lleida, Spain
3
Department of Public Law, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona), Tarragona, Spain
394 Villacampa C., Torres N.

purpose of exploiting the victims by forcing them to engage in criminal activities. These can
include the offences committed by the victims in the process of being trafficked (causation-
based offences) and the offences the victims are compelled to commit once the exploitation
phase of the trafficking process has begun (duress-based offences) (Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE]-Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for
Combating Trafficking in Human Beings 2013).
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation is one of the lesser-known types of trafficking. A
glance at the global estimates regarding human trafficking confirms that the most well-known
types of human trafficking are trafficking for labour exploitation and, especially, trafficking for
the sexual exploitation of the victims (International Labour Organization [ILO] 2012; United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC] 2009, 2012, 2014), although the prevalence of
human trafficking for criminal exploitation has begun to be calculated within the category of
other forms of trafficking (Eurostat-European Commission 2013 and 2015; UNODC 2014).
The lack of interest shown until recently in analysing this type of trafficking may be due to the
fact that it was not specifically included in the definitions of trafficking contained in interna-
tional legal documents, such as the Palermo Protocol or the Warsaw Convention, until the
adoption of Directive 2011/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on preventing
and combatting trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims (Art. 2.3).
However, specific studies conducted with women prisoners in the United Kingdom (UK) (Hales
and Gelsthorpe 2012) and Spain (Villacampa and Torres 2014) have shown that some women
serving sentences for crimes such as illegal entry into the country, acting as drug mules, or street theft
are unidentified trafficking victims who were treated as offenders even more clearly than victims of
other types of trafficking (Atak and Simeon 2014; Decker 2015). Subsequently, the Response
Against Criminal Exploitation (RACE) in Europe project (2014)1 found that victims of trafficking
for criminal exploitation who were forced to commit crimes in the UK, Ireland, the Czech Republic
and the Netherlands had likewise gone undetected by the system and been treated as offenders.
The studies referred to in the previous paragraph found that victims of this form of trafficking
were not identified as victims, but rather invariably considered offenders and treated as such by
the criminal justice systems of the countries in which the research was conducted. As a result of
the failure to make this identification, the victims of this type of trafficking do not benefit from the
victim-centred approach to the phenomenon advocated by the Warsaw Convention and Directive
2011/36/EU and are thus also heavily victimised from an institutional point of view.
In light of the proven existence of unidentified victims of this form of trafficking in
European countries, it is necessary to determine what factors might be contributing to the fact
that the professionals most likely to come into contact with these victims are failing to properly
identify them. To this end, this paper aims to determine why victims of human trafficking for
criminal exploitation are not identified as such and are thus essentially treated by the criminal
justice system as offenders and denied access to the protections the system should afford them.
Determining the reasons for this failure should enable the introduction of measures to make
institutions more effective at detecting these victims.

1
The RACE in Europe was a project focused on research on trafficking for criminal exploitation and forced
begging founded by the European Commission-Directorate-General Home Affairs. It was carried out during
2013 and 2014 in UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and The Czech Republic by eight partners located in this four
countries. As well as a good practices guide to help front line professionals to identify victims of this type of
trafficking, part of the project team (Anti-Slavery International, ECPAT UK and The Specialist Policing
Consultancy in UK, The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland and La Strada Czech Republic) completed an explanatory
study to determine its scope and scale in the four countries taking part in the project.
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 395

By focusing on human trafficking for criminal exploitation, this paper aims to fill a gap left
by the previous studies conducted with professionals to date. These studies have focused on
the knowledge of trafficking in general, or of specific better-known forms thereof, of different
criminal justice professionals in the US (Farrell 2014; Farrell et al. 2014; Farrell and Pfeffer
2014; Farrell et al. 2015) or Canada (Kaye et al. 2014) or have been conducted solely with
police officers (Renzetti et al. 2015) or been limited to child trafficking (Warria et al. 2015),
always in relation to trafficking for sexual or labour exploitation.

Method

This research used a qualitative methodology, that allowed researchers to better position
themselves within the field of study (Denzin and Lincoln 2002; Lincoln 2002) and enabled
a more in-depth exploration of the reality (Corbin and Strauss 2008; Marshall and Rossman
2006; May 2005). A purposive sampling system was used based on the assumption that
various types of criminal justice professionals and victim service providers could potentially
come into contact with victims of trafficking for criminal exploitation in Spain, were the
research was carried out. Individuals representing both professional groups were selected
taking into account the likelihood they had to run into victims of such type of trafficking
and were then directly contacted by the researchers.
The sample of criminal justice professionals consisted of members of the different groups
involved in the criminal justice process, from the arrest of the victim/offender (police officers),
to the criminal proceedings (judges, prosecutors, lawyers), to the execution of the sentence
(prison officials). For this group of professionals, in those cases in which units or teams
specialised in human trafficking and/or migratory issues existed, both specialised professionals
and their non-specialist counterparts were selected for the interviews. The sample of victim
service providers included staff from the victim assistance offices, which are responsible for
providing assistance to all crime victims under Spanish law, as well as staff from organisations
mainly dedicated to assisting human trafficking victims.
The sample consisted of 37 professionals, of which 28 worked exclusively or preferably in
the criminal justice system and nine in the field of victim services. Their specific characteristics
are shown in Table 1.
The data collection methodology consisted of the performance of face-to-face, in-depth,
semi-structured interviews. Two interview models were prepared, addressing different aspects
depending on whether the interviewee was a criminal justice professional or victim service
provider. The two interview models shared a common section, designed to determine the degree
of knowledge of the trafficking phenomenon and the applicable regulations, as well as to gather
information on training, coordination and the victim welfare system. In the main section, which
sought to determine how the professionals had acted in cases involving victims of trafficking for
criminal exploitation, different questions were asked depending on whether the interviewee was
a practising criminal justice professional or a victim service provider. In both cases, the
interview models were used as a guide, without dictating the dynamic of the conversation with
the interviewee.
Participation in the research was voluntary for the interviewed professionals, although they
were not required to sign any informed consent form. The interviews were conducted in
different Spanish cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Tarragona and Lleida) between February and
June 2014; they were recorded and subsequently transcribed in full.
396 Villacampa C., Torres N.

Table 1 Interviews conducted

Gender Assignment City CJS* Specialist

VS**

4 Officers: National Police Male Immigration Unit Barcelona CJS Yes

Male Immigration Unit Barcelona CJS Yes
Male Immigration Barcelona CJS No
Male Immigration Barcelona CJS No
5 Officers: Catalan Regional Police Male THB central unit Barcelona CJS Yes
Male THB central unit Barcelona CJS Yes
Male Chief inspector Lleida CJS No
Male Deputy inspector Lleida CJS No
Male Chief inspector Barcelona CJS No
6 Public prosecutors Male Office for Immigration Affairs Barcelona CJS Yes
Male Office for Immigration Affairs Lleida CJS Yes
Male Provincial Office Lleida CJS No
Male Office for Immigration Affairs Madrid CJS Yes
Female Office for Immigration Affairs Madrid CJS Yes
Male Office for Immigration Affairs Madrid CJS Yes
2 Judges Female Judge Lleida CJS No
Male Magistrate Lleida CJS No
4 Lawyers Female NGO lawyer Lleida CJS-VS No
Female NGO lawyer Madrid CJS-VS Yes
Female NGO lawyer Barcelona CJS-VS Yes
Female NGO lawyer Barcelona CJS-VS Yes
7 Prison officials Female Brians Prison Barcelona CJS No
Female Brians Prison Barcelona CJS No
Male Brians Prison Barcelona CJS No
Female Ponent Prison Lleida CJS No
Male Ponent Prison Lleida CJS No
Female Tarragona prison Tarragona CJS No
Female Tarragona prison Tarragona CJS No
5 NGO staff Female Coordinator Barcelona VS Yes
Female Coordinator Madrid VS Yes
Female Coordinator Madrid VS Yes
Female Coordinator Madrid VS Yes
Male Coordinator Barcelona VS No
4 Victim Assistance Offices staff Male Officer Barcelona VS No
Male Officer Barcelona VS No
Female Officer Tarragona VS No
Female Officer Lleida VS No

*Criminal justice system; **Victim services

The data were analysed using the thematic analysis methodology (Guest et al. 2012), in
accordance with its component steps: familiarisation with the data, generation of initial codes,
search and review of themes, definition and naming of themes (Braun and Clarke 2006).

Results

Knowledge of Human Trafficking for Criminal Exploitation Amongst

the Professionals

The purpose of this research was to determine the reasons for the failure to identify victims of
human trafficking for criminal exploitation. To this end, the interviews conducted with the
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 397

professionals were geared towards analysing their degree of knowledge of trafficking in

general and of this form of trafficking in particular. The researchers believed that the degree
of knowledge of the phenomenon may play a decisive role in the identification of cases of
trafficking insofar as it is a necessary precondition for the identification to be made. This initial
idea is based on studies that have confirmed that the number of victims identified increases
when professionals receive training (Farrell and Pfeffer 2014; Renzetti et al. 2015; Warria et al.
2015).
In order to analyse the professionals’ degree of knowledge of this form of
trafficking, four aspects were examined: first, knowledge of the trafficking process
in general; second, knowledge of the different forms of trafficking; third, knowledge
of current regulations; and fourth, because the degree of knowledge of any aspect
largely depends on the training received, whether the interviewees felt they had
received adequate training.

a) Knowledge of the trafficking process in general

In this regard, some of the interviewees (n = 9, 24%), largely from the criminal
justice system, referred to the concept of the crime of human trafficking as defined in
Spanish domestic law or international legal instruments without inferring from this
definition any characteristic feature that might be said to summarise the essence of the
conduct. They thus accepted the legal definition as is, without taking it any further. In
other cases, the interviewees tried to identify the essence of the phenomenon above
and beyond the regulatory provisions. Amongst them, the most prevalent idea (n = 16,
43%) was the identification of human trafficking with objectification and slavery, with
an attack on human rights of the first order. No differences were found here between
victim service providers and criminal justice professionals. The interviews revealed
conceptualisations such as:
I 16: ‘It is the slavery of the 21st century.’
I 19: ‘One of the main human rights violations. The most striking part is usually the lack
of human dignity.’
I 36: ‘A return to the times of slavery, but with a more perverse, more Machiavellian
component.’
In this vein, the conceptualisation of this reality offered by one victim service provider, who
furthermore introduced a gender perspective, was especially illuminating:
I 29: ‘I think we need to define it from three perspectives: it is a crime, because
that is how it is viewed at the international level and, since 2010, under the
Spanish Criminal Code; it is a serious human rights violation; and, also, [it has
to be viewed] from a gender perspective. It mainly affects women and children;
therefore, it is also a case of gender-based violence. (…) The person ceases to
be a subject and becomes an object.’
However, other conceptualisations were based on the identification of trafficking
with issues related to the exploitation of one person by another or for profit, generally
as a manifestation of organised crime (n = 10, 27%). In a minority of cases,
consisting solely of national police officers, the trafficking phenomenon was identified
as an issue closely related to foreigners and the legality of their entry into national
398 Villacampa C., Torres N.

territory (n = 3, 8%). Finally, some interviewees associated trafficking with white

slavery or directly with prostitution (n = 6, 16%). One interviewee even said:
I 10: ‘That’s the real problem. The crux of the matter from a legal perspective is: what do
you do with prostitution? What model of prostitution do you want?’

b) Knowledge of forms of trafficking

This association between the concepts of trafficking and prostitution was evident when the
professionals were asked about the second aspect related to their degree of knowledge of the
phenomenon, i.e. which manifestations of trafficking they were familiar with. The hegemonic
response was that the most well-known and prevalent form of trafficking was trafficking for the
purpose of sexual exploitation. In this regard, the findings for Spain were no different from those
of studies conducted in other countries, which have shown that professionals often identify
trafficking with prostitution (Farrell and Pfeffer 2014; Farrell et al. 2015). Of the 37 professionals
interviewed, only one did not refer to trafficking for sexual exploitation; the remaining 36 (97%)
of the interviewees did identify this form of trafficking. Notably, there was a widespread belief
that trafficking for sexual exploitation is more common than any other form of trafficking.
In contrast, trafficking for labour exploitation was less well known. Although 24 of the
interviewees (64%) did refer to it, it was generally to clarify that fewer actions are taken in this
area than with regard to sexual exploitation. Finally, trafficking for criminal exploitation was
only clearly identified as a form of trafficking in 15 of the interviews (40%); in another six
cases (16%), in response to questions by the interviewer, the interviewee mentioned this form
of trafficking, but without specifying any further.
The degree of awareness of this type of trafficking differed dramatically between criminal
justice professionals and victim service providers. Even when the former were specialised in
this field, they were generally unaware of the reality of trafficking for criminal exploitation;
when they did conceptualise cases of this type of trafficking, they associated it with sexual
exploitation. The cases of trafficking for criminal exploitation that they identified were those in
which sex workers were used by their pimps to offer drugs to clients or steal from them (n = 3).
The hegemony of trafficking for sexual exploitation amongst criminal justice professionals is
so evident that, in keeping with schema theory,2 the reality of trafficking for criminal
exploitation emerged, at most, in relation to the investigation of cases of trafficking for sexual
exploitation, which they did clearly conceptualise.
Two groups of criminal justice professionals broke with this general trend. The first were
specialised police officers from the Catalan regional police, who, despite acknowledging the
existence of human trafficking for criminal exploitation, said that it was not dealt with by the
special unit as a form of trafficking because it had not yet been classified as such under the
Spanish Criminal Code. The second were prison officials. Interestingly, six of the seven
interviewed prison officials, who were not specialists in the field, identified criminal exploi-
tation as a possible form of human trafficking, even though they underscored that these people
came to them as offenders. Prison officials are not responsible for identifying or processing
human trafficking victims. The reason some of them were aware of this form of trafficking is

2
According to which individuals tend to apply schemes they have internalised from prior experiences to identify
and manage new situations (Farrell et al. 2015).
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 399

because they worked at prisons where a previous study had been conducted to identify victims
of human trafficking for criminal exploitation amongst the women inmates (Villacampa and
Torres 2014), when they acknowledged they had come into contact and learned about this
reality. In this regard, the present study confirmed the findings of previous research, insofar as
the failure to identify victims may be due to a lack of knowledge and training (Farrell et al.
2015; Renzetti et al. 2015).
Unlike the criminal justice professionals, victim service providers were much more familiar
with this manifestation of human trafficking. The most clearly aware of this reality were NGO
staff, including some dedicated to providing services to trafficking victims (n = 5), and lawyers
who worked at NGOs (n = 3). Their concern regarding the lack of widespread knowledge of
this reality is apparent in the following remarks by an NGO coordinator:
I 30: ‘In other words, most provide services to women victims of trafficking for sexual
exploitation, and the concern continues to be that the reality of trafficking in other
sectors rarely emerges and is not visible. Worrisomely, the cases reaching us, or referred
to us, are virtually anecdotal. I mean, if only that were because they did not actually
exist. But when the problem is that people neither know about it, nor have the sensitivity
or training, then you worry. If you think it happens with trafficking for labour exploi-
tation, with trafficking for the purpose of committing crimes, it’s even worse.’
In contrast, victim service providers who worked at victim assistance offices were less
familiar with this form of trafficking. These professionals once again associated trafficking
almost exclusively with sexual exploitation.

c) Degree of knowledge of current regulations

With regard to the third aspect examined in relation to knowledge of trafficking, the degree
of knowledge of the applicable laws and regulations, of the 37 people interviewed, 26 (70%)
claimed — and could demonstrate — that they were aware of the existing regulations on the
matter. The remaining 11 (30%) either gave very vague information about the applicable
provisions or directly stated that they were not familiar with them. The group of criminal
justice professionals most obviously lacking in regulatory knowledge was prison officials.
Staff members at victim assistance offices were the group least familiar with the regulations
amongst the victim service providers.
Thus, the interviewed professionals were broadly familiar with current regulatory tools for
human trafficking, particularly the specialised professionals. However, the degree of knowledge
fell when they were asked specifically about the Spanish Framework Protocol for the Protection
of Human Trafficking Victims. To wit, three of the 26 professionals who had a clear notion of the
legal tools said they were not familiar with the aforementioned Protocol. Strikingly, some of the
staff members from the victim assistance offices expressed no knowledge of this type of legal
instrument, and the national police officers were likewise unaware of the existence of regional
victim assistance protocols. In conclusion, the professionals were generally more familiar with the
regulatory texts intended to prosecute crime than with those for protecting victims.

d) Adequacy of the training received

The degree of knowledge of any reality largely depends on the applicable training received;
hence, the fourth aspect assessed was whether the interviewees believed they had received
400 Villacampa C., Torres N.

sufficient training on human trafficking. Of the 37 interviewees, only seven (19%) unhesitat-
ingly said that they had received sufficient training, whilst 17 (46%) stated they had not
received it or in a very limited way. The remaining 11 interviewees to address the issue (30%
of the total) said they had received some, but acknowledged that it had clear shortcomings and
limitations.
Criminal justice professionals were the most satisfied with the existing training, with the
exception of prison officials, who referred to a lack thereof. In contrast, victim service
providers were the most critical of the failure to meet training obligations for professionals.
With regard to the type of trafficking examined here, curiously, the interviewees familiar with
the most forms of trafficking, and, specifically, those aware of the existence of cases of
trafficking for criminal exploitation, were also amongst the most critical of the professional
training provided.
Amongst the criminal justice professionals, the public prosecutors were the least concerned
with regard to the professional training received. This is perhaps logical, given that the
prosecutors interviewed for the study were specialised in trafficking and were heavily involved
in trafficking cases — albeit less so in cases of trafficking for criminal exploitation — as has
also been the case elsewhere (Farrell et al. 2014). Likewise, police officers generally seemed to
believe they had received adequate training, although they acknowledged that it was overly
oriented towards trafficking for sexual exploitation and concentrated in specialised units, such
that non-specialised police officers did not receive any training, again in keeping with the
findings of other research conducted with police (Farrell and Pfeffer 2014; Renzetti et al. 2015;
Warria et al. 2015). The research revealed the absence of any training on the issue for judges,
not only by their own admission, as they claimed not to have received any specific training at
all, but also according to the complaints of prosecutors and the staff from the NGOs, which are
often the parties responsible for providing such training.
Although the lawyers were critical of current levels of training, they also complained that it
depended on the sensibility of each bar association, on whether or not it had assembled a group
of specialists in trafficking, with the ensuing training offer. Meanwhile, prison officials,
especially those involved in the previous study with victims, cited the need to receive practical
training to help them identify victims.
Finally, curiously, the staff from the victim assistance offices had not received training.
Whilst they reported having received considerable training on gender-based violence and
terrorism victims, they said they had not received training on trafficking.

Difficulties in Identifying the Victims

Identifying victims of human trafficking is the first step to ensuring they receive the care and
protection to which they are entitled by law. However, it is a complex process requiring trained
professionals, able to detect the cases and classify them as human trafficking as well as to
distinguish them from other crimes with which they might share certain features (Farrell and
Pfeffer 2014). The following sections lay out the issues that have been identified as negative
determinants for the identification of victims of human trafficking for criminal exploitation.

a) Lack of knowledge of the phenomenon amongst professionals

The lack of professional training has led to a low awareness of the reality of human
trafficking for criminal exploitation, especially amongst the specialised police officers whom
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 401

the Spanish Protocol on the Protection of Human Trafficking Victims exclusively tasks with
identifying trafficking victims. As a result, the strategies pursued in the field of law enforce-
ment are not oriented towards finding the victims of this form of trafficking but rather almost
exclusively prioritise victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Furthermore, even in cases
of trafficking for sexual exploitation, police investigations are mainly conducted in the context
of major operations against organised crime. As a result, isolated cases of sexual or labour
exploitation that do not seem to meet the conditions of organised crime may not be identified
as such, but rather handled by police bodies not specialised in trafficking and seen merely as
cases of incitement to prostitution or crimes of worker exploitation or even simple labour
offences:
I 5: ‘Quantitatively and qualitatively, sexual exploitation is not the most important thing,
but it is what demands the most attention from the people who give us our strategic
instructions, because politically it generates more social alarm and all that. But cases of
trafficking for illegal activities are not handled by the Human Trafficking Unit; they are
handled by the Habitual Offenders Unit.’
Police officers were not the only criminal justice professionals who, when asked about
cases of trafficking for criminal exploitation, referred to cases of victims of trafficking for
sexual exploitation who are also forced by the traffickers to commit crimes; other criminal
justice professionals (n = 9) did too. Exploitation for criminal activities was exclusively
associated with victims of sexual exploitation compelled to commit crimes, whether directly
by their captors – who force them to supply drugs to clients, steal their belongings, or charge
their credit card multiple times — or as an activity the victims resort to in order to pay off their
debt to their captors. In this case, the professionals mentioned the activity of women who
commit theft — repeated reference was made to the situation of prostituted Nigerian women
who steal from tourists — or become ‘mamis’ (madams) and engage in activities to control
and exploit new victims. In short, far from being recognised as a specific form of trafficking,
trafficking for criminal exploitation was associated solely with cases of multiple exploitation.
In contrast, lawyers at NGOs, prison officials and victim service providers showed a broader
knowledge of the forms that trafficking for criminal exploitation can take. In addition to cases of
multiple exploitation, these professionals (n = 10) cited cases that they were directly or indirectly
familiar with of trafficking victims who had been forced to commit crimes such as theft,
document forgery, acting as drug ‘mules’, sale of fake lottery tickets by women pretending to
be deaf-mute or immigrants forced to cross borders with minors to whom they were not related.

b) Stereotypes about trafficking victims

The interviews showed that the professionals cherished stereotypes about who could be a
human trafficking victim that conditioned their ability to identify such victims. The fact that
both the police officers and the judges and prosecutors mainly associated human trafficking
with trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation led them to construct an image of the
victim of this crime closely associated with a woman — undocumented and foreign — who
had been forced into prostitution. This image is far removed from that of an individual — man
or woman, foreign or national — who has been captured and forced to commit crimes. The
divergence between the two notions — that of the pure or ideal victim and that of the criminal-
victim — often prevents the latter from being identified as victims, because they do not match
the professionals’ images of what a victim should be.
402 Villacampa C., Torres N.

c) The effects of exclusive authority on identification

The exclusive attribution of the authority to identify victims to specialised police officers has
resulted in a certain transfer of the responsibility for ensuring this identification to these
professionals by the other actors. A total of nine (24%) professionals not involved in policing
stated that they did not have the authority to identify victims and admitted that, if an alleged
victim has not been identified before he or she reaches them, they do not feel compelled to
investigate the matter further. Consequently, if the police do not take the necessary steps to
determine whether a person who has committed a crime was being exploited, the professionals
with whom that person subsequently comes into contact are not going to consider that possibility.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, some other professionals (n = 6, 16%), mainly from the
prison system and NGOs, did express a willingness to participate in the identification of
victims. In this regard, they thought the Spanish Protocol for the Protection of Trafficking
Victims should recognise their authority to perform this identification. Professionals in some
sectors even called for the necessary resources to be put into place to allow them to call in
experts to make the identification if they suspected a case of victimisation.
I 30: ‘What we proposed was that organisations also be given the authority to identify a
person as a victim, because, unfortunately, despite all the police’s good work, there are
going to be cases where the victims are going to backpedal, simply because they would
have to speak with a police officer. (…) There should be at least two ways to do it,
through the police and through a social organisation.’
I 23: ‘We [prison officials] are like the executioner, we are like the judges of their
correctional process, so there are certain things they are not going to tell us. But it would
be nice if an external team could come [to the prison] to detect this and be able to help
them, if there were more coordination.’

d) Difficulties in the identification interview

The research also showed that the very context in which the identification of the victim takes
place can hinder the operation. Indeed, the identification is performed in the context of an interview
in which the professional compiles the information that the potential victim provides and that might
lead to the determination of his or her actual victim status. However, often the victim’s first contact
with the professionals who can start the identification procedure takes place in police facilities, either
at the airport — in the case of ‘mules’ — or at a police station — following the victim’s arrest for the
commission of crimes. Of the nine police officers interviewed, three spontaneously said that victims
are reluctant to give statements to them at the time of their arrest. The police uniform, the weapons
they carry and the context itself are too intimidating for victims to decide to discuss their situations.
Even the public prosecutors admitted that the interview conducted by the specialised police can be
scarcely useful, as the victims, whether out of fear of reprisals or due to the very conditions in which
they find themselves, are unlikely to say anything.
Consequently, amongst non-police professionals, and particularly amongst lawyers, prison
officials and NGO staff (n = 10), the prevailing view is that the victim’s identification cannot
be entrusted to a mere interview, but rather must be approached as a process. In this process,
the professional must gradually instil in the victim the necessary trust and confidence to
explain the circumstances leading to the criminal conduct. In the case of trafficking victims,
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 403

this requires a suitable spatial and temporal context, including comfortable facilities where the
victims can feel at ease and relaxed. It also means providing the victims with enough time to
feel able to explain the circumstances surrounding their capture and the context of violence,
intimidation or deception in which they were forced to commit the crimes.
I 29: ‘We should be talking about an identification process, where there is time for the
victim to recover, to come to have a high degree of trust. It should not be presented as a
quid pro quo, as that is dangerous, but rather that the support and shelter are uncondi-
tional. Above all, we do not conduct interrogations, that is the difference.’
This idea was stressed by organisations with experience in providing victim assistance and
support services, but also by prison officials aware that, in the case of victims convicted of
committing crimes, the passage of time in prison and the closer relationship and everyday
interactions established with the inmates may, at some point, encourage the victims to share
things they had hitherto been incapable of explaining to any other authority.
It is worth noting that from the point of view of the police, the interview takes on a certain
inquisitorial character. In keeping with one of the main functions with which they are entrusted as
a law enforcement body — solving crime — the officers steer the contact with the victim towards
obtaining the information they need to begin or carry out the investigations that will allow them to
dismantle the trafficking network. Verifying the indicators of victim status does not seem to be the
sole purpose of the interview. In this regard, the victim is viewed as a source of evidence for
subsequent proceedings. Whilst this does not prevent these professionals from offering victims
their corresponding rights, the offer is sometimes presented as compensation for the information
the victim will provide rather than something they are entitled to as a result of their circumstances.
I 8: ‘For me, the police and the judiciary need to know where these people are and
remain in contact with them so that we can continue to interview them when we need
more information. They [the victims] are given protection, but they cannot disengage
from the police activity; they are given protection, but subject to the police and judicial
activity needed to resolve the conflict.’
I 1: ‘If she volunteers the information herself in her statement, that’s the easiest. The
problem is that they rarely want to give a statement. The problem is that not that many
people accept the benefits afforded under the law. I even know of cases where they
accept the benefits and then barely cooperate. But you would need to conduct the usual
police investigations: wiretaps, following suspects, etc.’
Notwithstanding the foregoing, some officers also said the interview should be conducted
once certain conditions had been met, once the interviewee had been attended to by victim
service providers.
I 6: ‘We use the BREST^ system: Relax, Eat, Sleep and Testify. First, the victim needs to
sleep, eat, and rest, to feel safe. Once they are in good shape, once they are alright, then
we go to take their statement, because we only take the statement once.’

e) Misleading signs in the identification process

Some of the signs the professionals claimed to take most into account when assessing
victim status can lead to mistakes. The individual’s life story is one of the main factors the
404 Villacampa C., Torres N.

professionals use to infer victim status (n = 8, 22%). However, several professionals (n = 6,

16%), including prosecutors, lawyers and staff at NGOs, highlighted the large number of
inconsistencies that trafficking victims’ stories tend to contain. They noted that the pressure
they have been subjected to and the process of depersonalisation they have undergone increase
the number of errors and the fragmentation of their story. But sometimes they seemed to ignore
that the trauma experienced by victims of trafficking may cause a lack of meaning in their
stories or that these were not presented in chronological order. Unawareness of this fact, or an
inadequate assessment thereof, can lead competent officers to rule out victim status for
someone who should have been protected and assisted.
I 14: ‘The storytelling is erratic, it changes. Which is devastating in criminal proceedings,
because the judge doesn’t believe anything. When you have a victim who is a witness in
criminal proceedings, and first he says one thing, and then another, and then he adds
something, and then he takes something away, and then he gets to the trial and says
something else entirely, and so on, it’s a disaster. It generates distrust.’
I 29: ‘It’s not a question of believing the story; it’s that basically there are things that
don’t fit.’
I 30: ‘The slightest gap, the slightest contradiction distorts everything, in the sense that
they assume she’s lying and start to question the credibility of everything she says. So
they fail to understand the crime, fail to understand the impact of the crime.’
In this regard, it is important to note that several professionals (n = 4, 11%) said that a
person’s victim status can sometimes be inferred more from the non-verbal language he or she
uses than from the actual story being told. Nervousness, avoiding eye contact or looking into
the distance, sweaty hands, evasiveness during the interview, etc., are telling signs of the
situation experienced by the victim.
Another manifestation recognised by the professionals as a common trait in many
victims is fear. Indeed, fear was one of the signs most often cited by the professionals
(n = 12, 32%) as a common feature in trafficking victims that could be used to identify
them. However, this fear, especially in victims of trafficking for criminal exploitation, can
manifest in two directions: there is the fear the victims feel towards the traffickers and their
fear of the law enforcement officers themselves. When the victims are aware that they have
committed a crime, they know they are at risk of being arrested and imprisoned. The
traffickers themselves may have convinced them that if they are identified by law enforce-
ment, far from being freed from their exploitative situation, they can expect the
victimisation process to continue (Farrell 2014; Farrell and Pfeffer 2014).
Additionally, allusions were made in the interviews to the fear some victims have
of being deported to their home country after they are arrested. For instance, ‘mules’
who are apprehended at the airport fear that their failure to successfully complete the
mission they were assigned could have serious consequences for their families or
themselves should they go back home. In fact, according to one prison official, some
‘mules’ are reluctant to be released from prison, because they fear the traffickers will
try to contact them again or persecute them. The same professional noted that the
‘mules’ might even have an interest in making it known that they were in prison and,
thus, had not appropriated the drugs they were carrying or the value thereof. In short,
victims’ lack of confidence that cooperating with the formal system can protect them
and remove them from the trafficking situation leads them to remain silent, which, in
turn, poses a clear obstacle to their identification as victims.
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 405

f) The failure to self-identify as a victim

One of the difficulties of identifying victims most often cited by the professionals (n = 10,
27%) was that the victims do not see themselves as victims. This lack of awareness of one’s
own victim status is stronger in the case of individuals forced to commit crimes. In these cases
the individuals perceive themselves as offenders. Sometimes because the trafficking process
itself and the depersonalisation to which they are subjected by the traffickers make it harder for
them to see themselves as victims. Other times, because they are aware of having participated
in the commission of a crime, or because the traffickers have taken advantage of this awareness
to increase their reluctance to cooperate with criminal justice system professionals. In such
cases, the professionals act as mirrors reflecting what victims say back to them, so that they can
see that they have been used by their captors and accept the reality of having been victimised.
I 20: ‘Everything involved in the victim’s self-identification as such is complex. They do
not identify themselves as victims, whether out of fear or as a defence mechanism: Bthey
did not trick me, abuse me, or attack me…^. Because they do not see the different
components, due to cultural differences, because they think it is normal to pay off the
debt, and they believe that the person calling on them to do so has been helping them.
They distort the reality and the roles. They need to be told things that make them reflect.’
I 29: Somehow, you have to make this person see that she can wonder whether she
wasn’t driven to this situation, whether what she thinks she decided wasn’t actually what
someone else wanted. You have to analyse the course of their history and pick apart
what seem like coincidences. It’s tough, self-identification; you have to act like a mirror.’
I 30: ‘Even in the clearest and easiest cases, it’s hard to identify them because of the
criteria used, let alone in these types of cases. Because if the trafficking victim has
moreover committed crimes, and is obviously aware of that fact, and perceives him or
herself as an offender, and on top of that has been caught by the police, arrested, charged
and so forth, then everything becomes that much more complicated.’

Conclusion

To make the protection of victims and the respect for their rights required under the
victim-centred approach espoused by existing international regulations on human
trafficking effective, trafficking victims must first be identified as such. This pre-
requisite to taking a victim-centred approach to the phenomenon has proven more
difficult to achieve with lesser-known forms of trafficking, such as trafficking for
criminal exploitation. The foregoing pages have drawn on 37 in-depth interviews with
criminal justice professionals and victim service providers in Spain to analyse why
victims of this type of trafficking are not identified as such.
In this regard, attention should be drawn to the lack of awareness of this reality, especially
amongst a large segment of criminal justice practitioners — unlike in the case of victim service
providers — as the precondition for the subsequent failure to identify the victims. As has been
shown, the training received by criminal justice professionals is incomplete and oriented
towards trafficking for sexual exploitation. This results in only partial knowledge of traffick-
ing, which some of these professionals identify directly with prostitution, and helps to render
the victims of other forms of trafficking, especially the form discussed here, invisible.
406 Villacampa C., Torres N.

In addition to the absence of the precondition for the victims’ identification, i.e. knowledge,
this research also revealed other negative determinants that explain the failure to identify victims.
These determinants include: a lack of police strategies aimed at identifying this type of victim; the
existence of stereotypes regarding who can be considered a victim and their association with
victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation; the ‘transfer of responsibility’ effect due to the
designation of specialised police forces as the sole authority for identifying victims; and the
erroneous conceptualisation of the identification as an act (i.e. once-off interview) rather than a
process. The circumstances hindering identification also include the limitations of the signs
professionals most often use to identify victims, which can sometimes result in mistakes, and
the failure of the very people forced to commit the crimes to identify themselves as victims.
Because the identification can only be performed by the police, once an individual crosses
the police filter without having been identified as a victim — which happens more frequently
when people do not cooperate — the other professionals understand that the case will be going
to court and that it should follow the standard procedure. The failure to identify people who
have been subjected to a human trafficking process and, in the context of this process, forced to
commit crimes will lead them to be treated as genuine offenders. This situation can be
especially serious in cases of individuals who have been subjected solely to criminal exploi-
tation and who do not meet the stereotypical requirements harboured by certain professionals
for cases of multiple exploitation of forced prostitutes required to commit petty crimes within
the context of sexual exploitation.
In light of the findings of this qualitative research on the reasons for the failure to identify victims
of trafficking for criminal exploitation in the context of the criminal justice system, there is a need to
expand both the information and training offered on the matter, especially for criminal justice
professionals who might find themselves in a position to identify a victim of this form of trafficking.
The concept of trafficking must cease to be associated solely with one of its manifestations —
trafficking for sexual exploitation — and, specifically, with prostitution. Criminal justice profes-
sionals must be trained to understand that trafficking is a complex phenomenon that includes
processes of exploitation of victims forced to engage in criminal activities, amongst other things.
Such a more global understanding of the trafficking process could also help to erode certain existing
biases with regard to the ‘ideal’ victim and thus enable more effective identification of victims.
Additionally, at the regulatory level, the authority to detect and actually identify trafficking
victims should lie not only with specialised police officers, but other professionals as well,
whether from the criminal justice system, once the case has moved beyond the police investiga-
tion, or the field of victim services, through victim service providers, which would moreover put
an end to the transfer of the responsibility for performing the identification observed in some
professionals. Once the identification of trafficking is understood to be a process, then pretending
that it can be performed in a single police interview that is moreover conducted by individuals
with a vision of the phenomenon intricately linked to trafficking for the purposes of sexual
exploitation is illusory. Furthermore, if the identification does not take place at the start, but rather
occurs once the criminal proceedings have been initiated against an individual who later turns out
to be a victim, nothing should prevent that identification from having its full effect. Consequently,
the necessary amendments should be made to any protocols for the protection of human
trafficking victims that limit the task of identifying victims to specialised police forces.
Both the efforts undertaken to train professionals in this kind of trafficking, which should
result in the overcoming of certain biases towards it, and the regulatory adaptations suggested
in relation to the identification process should ultimately help to mitigate the adverse effects
that passage through the criminal justice system has on these victims.
Human trafficking for criminal exploitation 407

Acknowledgements This research was carried out under the project DER 2015-64506-C2-1-R, funded by the
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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