Imagine, for example, the heroin user in a local motel room. The motel manager calls the police because of complaints of suspected drug use from occupants in neighboring rooms, and police respond to encounter an eighteen-year-old female on heroin in the room of a motel that happens to be located in a high-prostitution area of town, with a male hurriedly exiting upon their arrival. Quite possibly, the officers who have responded are either the patrol unit on duty or vice and narcotics officers who were called because of complaints of drug use. In either case, the likelihood that these officers have completed a human trafficking training (although growing), is relatively slim, and the likelihood is slimmer still that they have received training specifically delineating the intersection between sex trafficking and heroin use.

—She Leads a Lonely Life: When Sex Trafficking and Drug Addiction Collide⁶

Out of the wake of the war on drugs has risen the Opioid Epidemic which has swept Americans of all ages and demographics. There has been a marketed increase in prescription drug which in some drugs has been by as much as 500% since 1999.¹ This has changed the way in which we approach drug use, and has informed how drug use in seen in the sphere of public health. We can see a carrying over of a belief that drug is an issue of criminal justice, rather than an issue of public health. The pathologizing of drug use has directly impacted the ways in which health care professionals treat drug users often seeing them as criminals first, and patients second. These attitudes directly inform how health care professionals treat their patients, and how they evaluate diagnoses. It is with this backdrop that we examine Human Trafficking, and the ways in which the opioid epidemic has influenced the ways in which healthcare providers identify survivors of human trafficking.

Continue reading Detecting Human Trafficking in the Age of the Opioid →

Brief History

On March 21, 2018, the Senate voted ninety-seven to two on the Fight Online Sex Trafficking (FOSTA) bill. This bill intends to “protect sex workers from trafficking [and] hold online platforms legally responsible for the content of its users” (Tracy). In other words, FOSTA aims at preventing websites, like Craigslist and Backpage, from facilitating sex trafficking. It may seem like a bill to “get behind”, but it actually has been thoroughly criticized by “internet advocates and sex workers who fear it will only make matters worse” (Tracy).

What is SESTA-FOSTA?

FOSTA is actually the combination of two separate bills: The Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (SESTA) and FOSTA, or H.R.1865, which is why it has been referred to at SESTA-FOSTA. The bill “rolls back portions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), a 20-year-old law that protects online publishers from the things their users say or do” (Tracy). Now, with SESTA-FOSTA , online publishers will be liable for the things their users say and do. With SESTA-FOSTA publishers are obligated to criminally prosecute any sex trafficking discussions that are viewable on their website[s] (Tracy). Yet, the bill has very vague wording, stating that a publisher is responsible if he or she “assists, supports, or facilitates” trafficking (Tracy). This opens the bill up to interpretation, which could lead to a myriad of lawsuits against publishers that did not even know trafficking was happening on their site. This is just one issue with the bill, but this is not the main issue I wish to address. Many sex workers have already spoken out against the bill and I believe this to be particularly salient in the context of human trafficking.

What SESTA-FOSTA Means for Sex Workers

Once again, SESTA-FOSTA holds online publishers accountable for third-party activity related to sex trafficking. Publishers have even started dismantling sites “that make trafficking more visible” in fear of the repercussions of third-party activities taking place on their sites (Tracy). Further, when publishers take down these sites, law enforcement is without a digital footprint to investigate trafficking in the sex trade and to locate trafficking victims (Tracy).

Sex workers often use these sites “to vet the backgrounds of clients and consult with peers to determine whether a client is safe” (Tracy). When these sites are brought down, and this resource is no longer available to sex workers, they often look elsewhere for a client. That is most often on the street, which is even more dangerous than online. Research suggests that sex workers “run an elevated risk of violence on the street” (Lampen). Not only are many sex workers at risk of violence, but they are “fearful of arrest [and in turn] move off main streets and into areas where they’re more difficult to spot” (Lampen).

My Evaluation

It seems to me that SESTA-FOSTA is not combatting the real issue here. The bill assumes that all sex workers are victims, which is simply not the case. Many sex workers are in the industry voluntarily and much of the sex they participate in is consensual. But when “information that enables worker[s] to give consent to a client out of reach at [any given] moment” is taken away, sex workers are more likely to become victims of violence (Lampen). Sex workers are already fearful of arrest and this bill conflates consensual sex work and criminal acts, giving rise to even more fear among sex workers. Also, keeping sex work criminal only further victimizes sex workers, which gives power to the abuser or trafficker. The criminality of sex work, in addition to the “stigma on the trade with measures like FOSTA and SESTA, cultivates a landscape in which sexual exploitation thrives” (Lampen). This bill does not aim to combat trafficking or protect sex workers, it only undermines free speech and further victimizes persons in sex work.

Sources

Lampen, Claire. “Sex Workers Explain Why the House’s Online Sex-Trafficking Bill Is Bulls**t.” The Daily Dot, 2 Mar. 2018, www.dailydot.com/irl/sex-workers-sex-trafficking-bill/.

Tracy, Phillip. “Trump Signs Controversial ‘Sex-Trafficking’ Bill That Could Hurt the Future of the Internet.” The Daily Dot, 11 Apr. 2018, www.dailydot.com/debug/what-is-sesta-fosta-bill/.

By Tommy Sodeman

On April 11^th, 2018, Donald Trump signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, FOSTA for short[1].  To most, this is seen as a fine moment in Washington’s currently gridlocked system, where Democrats and Republicans came together to solve a problem that has been plaguing victims of child sex trafficking for years.  To others, FOSTA proposes a problem.  While the bill goes into effect immediately, the Internet has already begun to react.  Some sites have shut down sex related areas and stopped sex-related advertising while Craigslist has shut down their personals section in response to FOSTA passing Congress[2].  What is in FOSTA?  Why is there disagreement about this law designed to support victims of sex trafficking?  What nuances are being ignored in the larger discussion regarding human trafficking?  How did FOSTA come to exist?  These are the questions that everyone needs to ask, and what follows is an attempt to answer them.

To begin, it is crucial to examine what is in FOSTA.  What does this legislation try to accomplish?  FOSTA amends the Communications Act of 1934, specifically section 230, commonly referred to as the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA)[3], which provided protection to websites for third party postings, allowing posting sites to deflect fault for content posted by that third party (essentially, a site like Facebook cannot get sued for racially charged comments on a story, or for someone posting something transphobic on their site).  FOSTA clarifies that the law was never intended to give legal protections to sites that facilitate and promote prostitution and traffickers that advertise the sale of sex acts with sex trafficking victims.  House Bill 1865 (2018) states that

Whoever…owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service…conspires or attempts to do so, with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.

It also allows individuals who were injured by a violation of the newly implemented sections to recover damages and attorney fees in an action before a United States district court and prevents the Communications Act from blocking any action, from civil suits to federal prosecution, relevant to sex trafficking.  Lastly, it requires the GAO (Government Accountability Office) to conduct a study focused on civil actions taken against traffickers and the amount that these victims were rewarded[4].

There are numerous issues with this legislation.  To begin, there is a focus on prostitution.  The language of House Bill 1865 (2018) consistently states, ‘promotion of prostitution and disregard of sex trafficking’.  What this translates to is a conflation of sex work and sex trafficking.  It assumes that people who post on sites regarding sex for money, are unwilling participants and they qualify as a victim.  What may happen is someone who posts an ad regarding sex for money, if they are a sex worker, could be charged with prostitution.  While they will not be charged for trafficking, as they are not facilitating prostitution of someone else, they will still be charged for a crime because websites are more incentivized to report on advertisements regarding sex because they do not want to be fined and charged for willingly ignoring a potential trafficking victim.  While the CDA would normally shield sites like Craigslist and Reddit from being held accountable for a sex related post from a sex worker, they are now more inclined to either delete the post, or cooperate in a sting operation with police, as to avoid the penalties the law establishes.

Another issue is the focus of litigation as a measurement of success.  Congress wants a report from the GAO regarding the effectiveness of the legislation three years after it is implemented.  Yet they want the measurement of success to focus on civil litigation.  They specifically want the amounts of money rewarded to victims, the reasoning behind the amount the victims requested, case dismissal (if applicable) and for what reasons the case was dismissed.  What is unique about this is that they are not focusing on numbers related to criminal cases.  In a global and national context, it would be expected for them to request statistics and numbers regarding the number of traffickers arrested and convicted (and how many individuals were arrested on prostitution and drug charges and funneled into recovery programs).  However, the focus on money awarded to victims is even more insidious.  While restitution is a common practice to reward damages to a victim, utilizing it as the sole method to measure success completely ignores the more human aspects regarding trafficking.  It even ignores the people and entities that commit trafficking.  It places a monetary value on being a victim of trafficking, and can victimize trafficking victims again, as they will have to relive their experiences for cash gain rather than peace of mind.

A final issue that is being ignored is that there is a lack of protections for victims of labor trafficking.  The Internet is used across the globe to hire workers, who may become victims of fraudulent posts and offers.  Yet this law only specifies sex trafficking victims.  This has now created a two-tiered system between victims, or has, at least, created a larger gap between victims of sex and labor trafficking.  Sex trafficking has become a more visible crime, with more individuals looking out for more victims (albeit still lacking in many law enforcement offices across the country and globe).  But no one is actively searching for labor trafficking victims.  And many individuals do not know what to be aware of when it comes to labor victims.  Yet labor trafficking is much more prevalent, with 64% exploited for labor (16 million globally) compared to 19% who were sexually exploited (4.8 million globally).  Both Americas account for 5% of those exploited for labor, around 1.2 million people[5].  Accounting for other factors like race, sexuality, and immigration the gap between sex and labor trafficking victims increases and these factors, relative to victims of human trafficking, deserve further study.

Some may think that a law designed to protect sex trafficking victims would be something uncontroversial.  That is not the case, as there are many groups who do not agree with FOSTA.  One group, namely sex workers, have argued that FOSTA makes them more unsafe, as it threatens websites that allow workers to do their work safely and independently[6].  And they are not wrong.  Websites that openly and actively allowed sex related posts on their forums will either delete them or move further into the dark web, causing sex workers to either return to the streets for work, which is highly unsafe, or rely on the new dark web websites, which can be dangerous, as they will be less regulated and more open to dangerous clients.  And these websites may end up shutting down unexpectedly if investigators get too close to the administrator of the site.  That could result in sex workers going to the streets, making them vulnerable.  Another aspect is the sharing of information between sex workers.  According to an adult performer named Lorelei Lee, she states in an Instagram post from the Arnold article (2018):

This bill claims to target human trafficking, but does so by creating new penalties for online platforms…used by consensual, adult sex workers to screen clients, to share “bad date lists,” to work indoors, and to otherwise communicate with each other about ways to stay alive.  Data shows that access to these online platforms decrease violence against sex workers…

If websites are found to disregard and facilitate prostitution, they face severe penalties, and the information she describes can be construed as ways to avoid detection by law enforcement.  If someone posts a list of angry or violent customers, lawyers could argue that by avoiding these customers, they are actively choosing clients less likely to get law enforcement called on them.  If this list is used by multiple sex workers, under FOSTA, the website can be held accountable for facilitating prostitution, as they are avoiding customers who might draw law enforcement to them.  While that may be a far-fetched situation, websites that allow information to be shared amongst sex workers could be construed by prosecutors as facilitating prostitution, thus incentivizing them to delete those posts and threads.

One has to wonder how FOSTA, and its sister bill SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) in the Senate, became a controversial point in the discussions regarding human trafficking.  And the answer, I believe, is the documentary I am Jane Doe.  This is a film about Backpage.com, and how it facilitated child sex trafficking.  It revolved around the legal battles and CDA regarding Backpage.com and how the system essentially failed these victims.  But there are some glaring issues with this documentary.  While initially framed around three of the victims and their families, it quickly shifted focus to Backpage.com as an entity hiding behind an outdated rule meant to grow the Internet.  From there, the focus then seems to shift to the lawyers representing these victims in numerous court cases, with more focus around the lawyers themselves, portraying them as honorable men who fight for what is right and never gives up.  There were even interviews with the families of the lawyers to emphasize this.  This helped to reinforce a classic stereotype of men as the saviors of these women, dependent on him for bringing the perpetrators to justice.  This is not helpful when trying to construct a film for advocacy.  The film should be focused around the victims and their families to showcase what is happening, not focusing on a legal meeting determining strategy on how they will argue this case before the court, nor were the candid photographs necessary.

Another issue was that as the film progressed, it moved further away from the victims, and instead constructed a paralyzed system around which Backpage.com survived.  Anytime the victims would speak, it would not be them, but a voiceover, with candid photos of them and their families/mothers, expressing their emotional state.  This is not really victim advocacy but utilizing their emotional baggage to emotionally influence the audience to a particular way of thinking.  The documentary did not focus on the victims, their experiences, or their recovery.  Instead, it created an image of brokenness combined with pleas to others to change something, added in with a sense of hopelessness, as at the point when the movie was filmed, nothing had been done at the Congressional level.

FOSTA, while a step in some direction, is not the step needed to better tackle the issue of sex trafficking in the United States.  It conflates sex work with sex trafficking, unfairly punishing sex workers and endangering their lives, creates a tiered system between victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking, and uses an insidious method of measurement to measure success.  FOSTA could have been an amazing opportunity to fix a glaring issue in US law regarding online sex trafficking, but instead, with its long and broad strokes, has more than likely created more issues than it solves, and will require an even harder effort to fix the underlying causes of online sex trafficking.

Word Count-1940

[1] Jackman, T. (11 April 2018).  Trump signs ‘FOSTA’ bill targeting online sex trafficking, enables states and victims to pursue websites.  The Washington Post. Found at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/11/trump-signs-fosta-bill-targeting-online-sex-trafficking-enables-states-and-victims-to-pursue-websites/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.270b148a8910

[2] Jackman, T. (11 April 2018).  Trump signs ‘FOSTA’ bill targeting online sex trafficking, enables states and victims to pursue websites.  The Washington Post. Found at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/11/trump-signs-fosta-bill-targeting-online-sex-trafficking-enables-states-and-victims-to-pursue-websites/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.270b148a8910

[3] Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, H.R. 1865, 115^th Cong., 2^nd Sess. (2018).

[4] Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, H.R. 1865, 115^th Cong., 2^nd Sess. (2018).

[5] Human Rights First. (7 January 2017).  Human Trafficking by the Numbers.  Found at https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/human-trafficking-numbers

[6] Arnold, A.  (20 March 2018).  Here’s What’s Wrong With the So-Called Anti-Sex Trafficking Bill.  The Cut.  Found at https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/sesta-anti-sex-trafficking-bill-fosta.html

“Every 25 seconds in the United States, someone is arrested for the simple act of possessing drugs for their personal use… ”  This fact is stated by the ACLU in a collaborative report with Human Rights Watch. With these kinds of statistics, it is no wonder our prisons are filled by people with non-violent drug charges. These non-violent offenses can have a major impact on the lives of the people who committed them. Crimes, ranging from misdemeanor to class A felony, can make these already vulnerable people even more vulnerable to human trafficking. In this post, I will give a brief history of the War on Drugs, examine the statistics revolving around the War on Drugs and the realities that these drug offenders face while in and after being released from prison.

Continue reading Has the War on Drugs Enflamed the Environments of Human Trafficking? →

“Justice Needs a Hero,” – proudly claims the trailer¹ of Christopher Bessette’s 2012 film Trade of Innocents.² However, this evocation of a savior narrative is precisely what could undermine the director’s noteworthy efforts to introduce important complexity into the discussion of the controversies surrounding global human trafficking. While the film attempts to reveal the structural and systemic underpinnings of the problem, the incessant and permeating reliance on the Western hero trope, in my opinion, is more likely to perpetuate colonial stereotypes³ rather than raise awareness about human trafficking and labour exploitation in general.

In this blog post, I would like to discuss the pros and cons of Bessette’s vision of human trafficking in Trade of Innocents and to offer a critique (hopefully objective) of the choices he makes as a director.

Continue reading Deus Ex Machina of Human Trafficking: A Review of Christopher Bessette’s “Trade of Innocents” →

Anti-Trafficking Laws Overview

According to the United Nations, Human trafficking has three components: act (what is done), means (how it is done), and purpose (why it is done). Trafficking is a $150 billion dollar global industry, with 20.9 million victims worldwide (Polaris Project, 2017). The majority are victims of forced labor, about a quarter are children, and more than half are women and girls (Polaris Project, 2017). The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 set the stage for federal trafficking laws, with more legislation varying state-to-state.

The TVPA is the “cornerstone of Federal human trafficking legislation” (Polaris Project, 2016). It lays out ways to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and prevent trafficking. It worked to establish human trafficking and related offenses as federal crimes, attached penalties to these crimes, mandated restitution be paid to victims of trafficking, and established the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons which publishes the TIP report each year (Polaris Project, 2016).   Continue reading Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Ohio →

Introduction

In the United States, human trafficking has been widely looked at through the lens of sex trafficking, and moreover, the sex trafficking of young white women and girls. This lens allows only a portion of human trafficking to be acknowledged and limits the responses our society deems best. For example, the response to human trafficking – and sex work as a whole – has widely been criminalization of such acts. This may be an appropriate response when the only people affected are affluent white women and girls; however, research shows communities of color and impoverished communities are at a much higher risk of being trafficked, for whom this criminalized response to human trafficking can be particularly harmful.

The Mann Act

The Mann Act resulted in the policing of women’s sexuality and limited the scope of what is seen as human trafficking.

The Mann Act of 1910, also known as the “White Slave Traffic Act,” was passed as a response to the narrative of white slavery. This narrative further perpetuated the idea that there was an evil procurer, typically seen as “foreign,” who would seduce, coerce, lure, trick, or force young white women into brothels far from their homes. This federal statute made it illegal to transport, or to cause the transportation of, women over state lines for the purpose of “prostitution, debauchery, or any other immoral purpose,” which was enforced by the Bureau of Investigations (now, the FBI).

Continue reading Compounding Problems: Human Trafficking and Minorities →

Introduction

If you read the news or follow any anti-trafficking campaigns, then you have likely seen the latest development in anti-trafficking legislation passed by Trump: FOSTA. A great deal of articles are praising this development, hailing it as a much needed step to further fight trafficking and protect victims. On the other hand, many are responding quite negatively, claiming that this legislation will bring harm to internet rights, sex workers and make it harder to track and fight trafficking. So, is it good or bad legislation for trafficking? This debate brings the larger question of personal ad sites into focus- do these websites fuel trafficking, or are they a good source for tracking down and fighting trafficking? This post will take a closer look at the recent legislation and its potential effects.

Continue reading Taking a Closer Look at FOSTA →

Introduction

At the beginning of the twentieth century, human trafficking was narrowly understood within the construct of the myth of “white slavery.” Discourses on “white slavery” portrayed trafficking victims as white, virginal, innocent, and naïve women who were lured into situations of forced sexual commerce.¹ Historians posit that the idea of “white slavery” reflected anxieties surrounding women’s independence, mobility, and sexual freedom.² According to Amalia L. Cabezas with Dolores Ortiz and Sonia Valencia, “At the beginning of the twenty-first century many of the same fears are in place, with the exception that now the victim has a brown face.”²

Cabezas aptly captures the U.S. fixations on immigration restriction and sexual morality, which have remained largely unchanged over the last century, in her parallel between the historical myth of “white slavery” and the contemporary hysteria surrounding Latina migration.² Migrant women from Latin America are hyper-represented in U.S. human-trafficking narratives,²  and while the national obsession with this issue may be rooted in unfounded beliefs about Latina sexuality, the vulnerabilities that often lead to human trafficking, both in and outside of the sex industry, are very much a reality for Latin American women in the United States.³ Contributing to their vulnerability are the multiple layers of violence that Latina women endure in their native countries, from which they are impelled to flee, as well as during their precarious journey north, and finally in the United States, where they are viewed as hyper-sexual criminals, quite unlike the virginal, innocent victims of the “white-slave” myth.

Continue reading Layers of Violence: Precarious Lives of Latina Migrants →

In this posts I will be looking into the 1977 film series Roots, and its implications in the realm of human trafficking. I will explore why it is important to use the language of trafficking when referring to the African slave trade. The power structure involved, then and now. As well as what is modern day slavery and how parts of it should be seen in the realm of trafficking.

Roots (1977):
Roots, is a mini series depicting slavery in the 1760’s and onward. The series follows one Kunta Kinte, a man who was stolen by colonists from his country in Africa to be brought to the United States to be sold into forced labor. As the series progresses it goes on to show how he and his future generations survive in the US and adapt during and after the Civil war. With Kunta trying to escape and maintain his identity throughout. This series was pivotal in its time, as well as now, as it shows the brutality of slavery that most Americans prefer to not discuss. But what does it have to do with Human trafficking? What connections that are not made is that slavery, was human trafficking.
How so?

Human trafficking is defined by: the Act (what is done, in this case the abduction and transportation of millions of African people against their will), the Means (how it’s done, slaves were beaten, abused mentally and physically, had body parts removed, as well as more), and the Purpose (why it was done, broadly thought of as forced labor, but other forms of exploitation occurred in abundance). In the film series all the criteria is met to show that this was trafficking even if the language is not used to describe it as such. Kunta is abducted and transported, forced to work, and when he’d try to escape he would be beaten, he had toes removed, and all this was to exploit him as well as his fellows. So why is it important to address it as trafficking? Language matters, and if we can see slavery as trafficking we can see trafficking in a different light.

The Language of Trafficking:
Knowing that the definition of human trafficking describes slavery matters because we already see slavery as wrong, that it happened to millions of people, not just women (as is the norm with ideas of trafficking), but everyone could have been put in shackles, men, women, and children were taken and sold. We can see a film series such as Roots and recognize that this is bad, there was no one thing they could have done to save themselves. But also, much of white Americans took part in trafficking. They of whom who owned slaves or at the very least agreed with it and help facilitate slavery by turning in runaways. When we see trafficking we too know its wrong, but it seems like some truly bad immoral individuals who are doing this, but certainly not the government. And the people who are trafficked are usually women, or weak individuals, but not a entire subset of people. Not an entire culture.

This series is so important due to the fact that it was shown to most African Americans in the 80’s and 90’s. Parents would make their children watch them, teachers would show them in schools. It is important to knowing where one came from (no matter your ethnicity), and how this country was built on the backs of human slaves. It can benefit the conversation on both sides to call slavery human trafficking. The human trafficking side gets this viewpoint that shows that you don’t have to be weak to be trafficked and that even the system can take part in trafficking. With slavery showing that this is trafficking, the system did this can start a new side of conversation and saying “hey this falls into this category too” can help shed light on the powers that be and maybe finally make a change.

Power Structure (Slavery to Colonialism, Human trafficking to Neo Colonialism):
Right now slavery is just seen as slavery, something in the past that is of no consequence to the now. However that’s not the case, slavery is very much a problem today. During colonialism colonizers believed they needed slave labor to create the “new world”. The people of color that were abducted were not seen as people but as animals, partially human, savages whose life was worthless. They brainwashed the slaves, kept them uneducated, transported them in shackles, punished them severely if they tried to escape. They made sure this kept them at the bottom of the power hierarchy. The only way slavery would have worked was if the millions of slaves really felt powerless. Roots really did a good job showing this, with the interactions with Kunta and with the background where they showed the “masters” talking to one another about how to keep the slaves suppressed.

With neo-colonialism there are trafficked people who are being forced to work to cultivate and harvest a lot of the goods we in the western world enjoy daily, from the coffee we drink to the strawberries we eat. In many of these cases products are obtained through slave labor. Just like the cotton and tobacco from the US during slavery. Goods are still grown in the US (as well as other countries under colonial rule) today under appalling conditions with trafficked people who were brought here under false pretenses or people are coerced into working. The trafficking victims of today that are slaves are one in the same as the slaves depicted in Roots. Slavery can be seen within the US prision systems in the form of convict leasing, where trafficked victims along with non violent offenders are leased out to work.

Modern Day Slavery:
In the United States we have the largest prision population in the world, this is due to several factors, part of which is the prision system is a huge enterprise. After emancipation there was a strong desire to have free labor back, this is when convict leasing really started to take shape. People would be arrested for little to no reason so they could be put into prision where they would be leased out to different businesses and farms to work off their “debt” to society. Now one needs to be put through due process, but if someone ends up in prision there is a chance they too can be leased out to work.

The concept of convict leasing is legal under the 13th amendment, where slavery is acceptable as punishment for a crime. The convicts can be sent to work all over, even be sent over seas to “poor” countries to be forced to work. This is such a big business that big businesses such as target, Microsoft, Macys, and Revlon all have operations set up in prisons to force labor. Slavery is not extinct, and seeing that it has and is orchestrated by the system is important. The fact that the series Roots depicts this so throughly makes it important for the human trafficking conversation.

When considering the conversation with human trafficking there is a lot that the general public doesn’t understand and the media that is out there that is supposed to depict is has many flaws. Roots was a very good depictation but it doesnt fall into the catergory of a human trafficking media, when it should. Slavery is not done away with, the system still takes part in it, and not just women are victims. Changing the conversation can be a way to change the system. See slavery for what it was, human trafficking.

citation:

http://www.pbs.org/show/slavery-another-name/

The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

roots film series 1977.