Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Discipline

Juvenile Justice

Abstract

Human trafficking is a global menace. Millions of young girls, boys, women, and men have been victims of various forms of trafficking. The crime has no geographical boundaries, and the victims often experience physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, creating a global health and security threat. The current study incorporated multiple secondary quantitative sources with an exclusive focus on children/minors (ages 0–8), adolescents (9–17 years), and young adults (ages 18–20) from 2002–2017. The study utilized multiple data sources, each measuring various aspects of human trafficking—the victimization profile of trafficking victims (CTDC data), the country’s response to trafficking (HTI data), and country-level influencing factors of trafficking (corruption, human development, unemployment). Under five research questions, 10 hypotheses were framed and tested using Binary Logistic Regression, Chi-Square Test of Independence, Multinomial Logistic Regression, and Linear Regression. The results showed that the victims’ age and gender had a stronger association with the types of exploitation, the means of control used by traffickers, and the recruiter’s relationship with the victim.

Regarding countries’ responses to trafficking flows, based on whether a country was a source, transit, destination spot, or had internal trafficking, at least one anti-trafficking measure (prosecution, protection, and prevention), showed a significant positive effect. Lastly, the country-level influencing factors like human development and democracy showed a stronger association with anti-trafficking responses implying that countries with higher human development and democracy have better trafficking policies. Similarly, the unemployment rate showed a stronger association with the anti-trafficking policies indicating that countries with higher unemployment rates affect the policies negatively. Hence, the findings of this study provided a comprehensive picture of trafficking from a global perspective.

Keywords: human trafficking, minor victims, young adult victims, CTDC data, HTI dataset

Committee Chair/Advisor

Sesha Kethineni

Committee Co-Chair:

Nabil Ouassini

Committee Member

Gbolahan Solomon Osho

Committee Member

David A. Rembert

Publisher

Prairie View A&M University

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

6/16/2023

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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