The Complex Relationship between Police Corruption and Sex Trafficking in Origin Countries

Author: Jonsson; Sofia

Abstract: Human trafficking is a very lucrative illegal business. As such, investigating this criminal activity in source countries requires a deeper understanding of what constitute costs and benefits, and consequently traffickers’ incentives to traffic. The argument of this paper is that police corruption lowers the costs for traffickers in origin countries by facilitating the recruitment of victims, and protecting traffickers from detection and prosecution. Using two novel proxies for police corruption––reliability of the police and bribe seeking among police officials––the paper tests the relationship between police corruption and trafficking activity on a cross-section sample of up to 109 countries. The results suggest that countries that experience more corruption within their police forces are more affected by trafficking outflow also, when controlling for variables that have been stressed to constitute important push-factors such as income, female unemployment rates, and freedom of foreign movement.

Keywords: law enforcement, migration, organized crime, police corruption, transnational human trafficking for sexual exploitation