Crime Reduction Toolkits

Trafficking of People

Control

Traffickers may exert control over those trafficked in a variety of ways. Some of these may be obvious and visible.

For example, traffickers can control their victims by violence, drug and alcohol dependency, threats and intimidation, and also through debt bondage and emotional manipulation. They will often abuse their victims during the transit process.

The traffickers place their victims in situations of fear and insecurity. The victims may be in a strange country, possibly illegally or without the appropriate documentation which may have been confiscated by the traffickers. As a result they will be frightened of being detained, imprisoned or deported. They have no money to return home on their own, or to survive if they were to escape from their traffickers.

The traffickers will often subject their victims to physical, sexual and emotional violence. They may be moved around the country within the UK, being sold from one exploiter to another, increasingly intimidated and disorientated. There have also been reported cases of children, particularly West African girls, being threatened with ritual ‘curses’ as a means of increasing control over them.

Whilst many victims may be under obvious physical control, others may not appear to be subject to constraints and seem to be operating under their free will. However, they may still be subject to more subtle means of control. The trafficker may use blackmail or emotional pressures. Threats may be made to their relatives and children in their home country.