Slavery in europe: Part 1, estimating the dark figure

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 817-829

  Datta, Monti Narayan ^a,b   Bales, Kevin ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND   (United States)

^b GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CRIME; SLAVERY; TRAFFICKING;

EUROPE;

EID: 84887322794     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2013.0051     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Unobtrusive measures are those that have no impact on the research subject. This may be anything from physical trace analysis to archival research. Because slavery is usually hidden, it is often necessary to explore the use of such secondary and unobtrusive approaches. Unobtrusive measures are never used alone, but normally serve as complementary techniques allowing some form of triangulation. There is an obvious potential application in the investigation of hidden activities like slavery.
2. Eugene J. Webb, Donald T. Campbell, Richard D. Schwart z & Lee Sechrest, Unobtrusive Measures 3 (2000).
3. Albert D. Biderman & Albert J. Reiss Jr., On Exploring the "Dark Figure" of Crime, 374 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1, 14 (1967).
4. Bureau of Justice Statistics, About this Topic, available at http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=95 (emphasis added).
5. See Inter-University Consort ium for Social & Science Research (ICSSR), National Crime Victimization Survey (2010), available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/31202?q=%22national+crime+victimization+survey%22.
6. Beyond this discussion of the "crime event" is a link to the Codebook for the NCVS. Within the Codebook the question order for victimization reporting can be followed over the course of the interview. Questions are asked that determine the date, time of day, and location of the victimization, as well as whether a similar victimization occurred at another date, as well as a large number of other questions concerning the precise crime event and its aftermath. While there are a number of items asking about the length of recovery after victimization, there are no items that seek to determine the duration of the victimization event.
7. Graham Farrell, William H. Sousa & Deborah Lamm Weisel, The Time-Window Effect in the Measurement of Repeat Victimization: A Methodology for its Examination, and an Empirical Study, 13 Crime Prevention Stud. 15 (2002).
8. Graham Farrell, William H. Sousa & Deborah Lamm Weisel, The Time-Window Effect in the Measurement of Repeat Victimization: A Methodology for its Examination, and an Empirical Study, 13 Crime Prevention Stud. 15 (2002). at 19.
9. Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery (3 Mar. 2012), available at http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/Research/researchfilestore/Filetoupload,286201,en.pdf (emphasis added).
10. Indentured servitude is often confused with slavery, and some definitions of slavery incorrectly include indentured sertitude as a type of enslavement. We mention this because central to indentured servitude was control of one person by another for afixed duration of time. Common in the eighteenth century, the servitude was agreed in a contract known as an indenture, which set out the responsibilities of master and servant for a fixed period, often seven years. Some masters did take advantage of the system to enslave their servants, but for many poor laborers the indenture was a pathway to migration.
11. See, e.g., Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Characterological Versus Behavioral Self-Blame: Inquiries into Depression and Rape, 37 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 1798 (1979).
12. Kevin Bales & Jody Sarich, The Paradox of Women, Children, and Slavery, in Trafficking in Slavery's Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa 241 (Benjamin N. Lawrence & Richard L. Roberts eds. 2012).
13. See, e.g., Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987).
14. Bales & Sarich, supra note 10, at 242.
15. Human Trafficking in Europe: Character, Causes and Consequences (Gillian Wylie & Penelope McRedmond, eds., 2010).
16. Id. at 6.
17. Id. See also Federal Ministry of the Interior of Austria & Int'l Organization for Migration, (IOM), Guidelines for the Collection of Data on Trafficking in Human Beings and Comparable Indicators 5 (2009).
18. See Kevin Bales, The Social Psychology of Global Slavery, Sci. Am., Apr. 2002, at 80
19. Int'l Labour Organisation (ILO), A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour (2005).
20. Julia R. Pennington, A. Dwayne Ball, Ronald D. Hampton & Julia N. Soulakova, The Cross-National Market in Human Beings, 29 J. Macromarketing 119 (2009).
21. For a clearer understanding of the types of data collected for past estimation of the prevalence of slavery, see Kevin Bales, International Labor Standards: Quality of Information and Measures of Progress in Combating Forced Labor, 24 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 321 (2004).
22. The US estimate is based on two sources: Free the Slaves & Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States (2004)
23. US State Depart ment, Trafficking in Persons Report (2010), available at http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/.
24. The former report estimated 10,000 persons are caught in forced labor, and that the average length of time a person was enslaved in the United States was just over three years. The latter report noted a State Department estimate of 17,500 people trafficked into the United States each year. The estimated fraction was derived from multiplying 17,500 (the State Dept. estimate of flow into the country) by the number of years a person would be held in bondage (equaling 52,500) and then dividing that number by the US population at the time the estimates were made (280 million).
25. In a Memorandum to the (Parliamentary) Joint Committee on Human Rights: Inquiry into Human Trafficking, the Home Office submitted evidence suggesting there were about 4,000 victims of trafficking in the UK in 2003.
26. See House of Lords & House of Commons, Joint Committee for Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Twe nty-Sixth Report of Sess ion 2005-06, HL 1127 2005-06 (13 Oct. 2006). This estimate was then divided by the UK population for 2003 of 59,834,900 (Source: Office for National Statistics; National Assembly for Wales; General Register Office for Scotland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency).
27. Eurostat, European Commission, Trafficking in Human Beings (2013).
28. Additional information from the US State Dept., Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Trafficking in Person Report (2012)
29. Over 100 Victims of Human Trafficking in Iceland, Iceland Rev. Online, 31 Oct. 2012, available at http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/Over_100_Victims_of_Human_Trafficking_in_Iceland_0_394860.news.aspx.
30. This estimated dark figure is reported with several caveats. Firstly, victims that remain in slavery in each country were not available to be counted in random sample surveys or estimated through extrapolation. Secondly, there is no uniformity in the reporting of this crime, or the definition of this crime, across the European Community. Thirdly, the impact of stigma and/or shame linked to the crime of slavery, whether through enslavement into commercial sexual exploitation or some other form of exploitation, is too little understood to suggest how the dark figure estimation might be affected.
31. Centre for Social Justice, It Happens Here: Equipping the United Kingdom to Fight Modern Slavery (2013).