A Social Network of a Family-run Sex Trafficking Ring

• In Event: Dynamics of Human Trafficking Across the Globe

Abstract

This qualitative legal case study analyzes the utilization of informal ethnic and community social networks in the running of a sex trafficking ‘organization’ to recruit and victimize sex workers within their own immigrant communities, recruit ‘drivers’ for the loosely connected system of brothels and provide services. These types of organizations are operated predominately within one biological family similar to traditional organized crime syndicates. By also engaging with immigrant smuggling systems and recently arrived immigrants’ vulnerabilities and desire to use informal ethnic social networks for connections and opportunity, they are able to profit from other immigrants’ sex work. Through analysis of publicly available court documents, this social network analysis examines the relationships between actors, structure and density of the group, and membership changes. One key area of this study is the examination of how this criminal social network is impacted by its existence solely within one immigrant community and ran by one biological family.

Authors

• Lauren Sabon, University of Arkansas

• Rocio Paez Ritter, University of Arkansas