Simmons gives lecture on human trafficking

Laws relating to the prosecution or enforcement of human trafficking are developing and spreading much more than laws relating to the prevention or the protection of victims, Harvard professor Beth Simmons argued at a lecture on Wednesday.

Simmons is a professor of international affairs and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. She received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard and has worked at the International Monetary Fund as well as teaching at Duke University, the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard.

Simmons defined trafficking as involving deceit, coercion and exploitation of the people involved, as opposed to smuggling, where people go voluntarily.

She introduced her discussion with policy diffusion in general, adding that diffusion depends frequently on the framing of an issue as well as the social pressures surrounding that issue.

Trafficking is frequently framed either as a human rights issue, an issue of protecting innocent victims, an immigration issue or an issue of transnational crime. Framing and social pressures often work together, she added.

Simmons gave several reasons why laws relating to prosecution and enforcement of human trafficking laws are much more common than other kinds of laws. Crime undermines the state’s authority, she said, while crime-fighting empowers the state.

Furthermore, she added, by introducing legislation related to criminalization, the state has no obligations to its constituents, whereas with victim or human rights laws the state would be responsible for protecting people.

“Criminalization legislation empowers the state,” she said. “Human rights legislation obligates the state.”

Prosecution and enforcement laws can give the state a way to prevent other crimes, which human rights laws cannot, Simmons said. For example, she noted, if a state toughens up on human trafficking, it can also toughen up on illegal immigration at its borders. This is particularly true in “destination states,” nations to which many people want to move and who therefore have a large interest in border patrol.

“Law enforcement deflects negative externalities,” Simmons said, where externalities refer to other forms of rule-breaking such as illegal border crossing.

Simmons noted that states will frequently introduce more law enforcement against human trafficking if they perceive that neighboring states are doing so as well. If the neighboring countries become tougher on human trafficking, then human traffickers will have an incentive to go toward the country where laws are less severe. Since no state wants to become a destination for crime, they will respond to peer pressure and increase the rigidity of their legislation.

She noted, for example, that the State Department reports on other states through enforcement and trafficking reports, maintaining a watch list of areas where human trafficking is a prevalent issue. States are 4.5 times more likely to criminalize trafficking if placed on the watch list, Simmonssaid.

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Simmonsalso discussed, in particular, the correlation between the number of roads a country shares with its neighbors and the severity of its anti-human trafficking legislation, saying that there is a positive correlation between the number of roads shared by two countries and one country’s desire to emulate the other. She added that the emulation of criminalization policies is twice as responsive to road sharing as the emulation of victim protection policies.

The lecture, titled “Conduits, Barriers and the Diffusion of Policy Externalities: Criminalization and the Case of Human Trafficking,” took place at Aaron Burr Hall at 4:30 p.m. and was organized by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.