Trafficking (in)justice: Law enforcement's response to human trafficking in Russia.

摘要

Human trafficking is a crime that emerged in Russia only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but has quickly become one of the "modern threats and challenges" to the state. Despite international pressure and significant donor funding, Russian law enforcement has been unable to bring traffickers to justice under its human trafficking laws passed in December 2003.;This study finds an unexpected outcome. Russian law enforcement agents are prosecuting human traffickers, but not human trafficking. Through a series of interviews with law enforcement agents, non-government organizations (NGOs), international organizations and academics in cities throughout Russia, I find that ordinary law enforcement personnel are constrained by the incentives generated by domestic political and bureaucratic institutions. Specifically, promotion criteria and the interagency division of functions make law enforcement reticent to use new human trafficking laws about which they are uncertain. In the process of addressing human trafficking while negotiating existing incentive structures, police and prosecutors instead use more familiar laws, such as those governing the organization of and recruitment into prostitution.;My dissertation also helps us to understand how low-level bureaucracies navigate the ever-increasing pressures to conform to global standards in an uncertain policy environment. I show that international influence is limited by the structure and culture of the domestic agencies that must implement the desired policies. In the case of human trafficking, this means that even if the international community succeeded in persuading the upper echelons of power in Russia to fight trafficking, it is still up to local level police, prosecutors and judges to investigate, indict, convict and sentence human traffickers. My findings help move the scholarship away from assuming that the problem with enforcing laws in Russia is solely due to corruption. I show that while corruption contributes to the poor enforcement of trafficking laws, there are other important factors to consider.