Human Trafficking

Sade D’Angela, aged 16 was on her way home on a cold, rainy night in Atlanta, Georgia when she was offered a ride to a train station by a seemingly harmless man. After entering the car, Sade was threatened at gunpoint and told to call her Mom to let her know “that [she] wasn’t coming back home”. For the next six months, Sade would be forced to be a recruiter for other girls just like her and was subjected to abuse and harassment. After months of abuse, Sade’s mother finally found a way to save her from, just in time since Sade was about to be sold to someone in New York City. Sade went through horrible treatment at the young age of 16. The sad thing is, there are millions more of people just like her going the same exact thing every day.

25 million people are subjected to modern slavery, or human trafficking every single day. This trafficking includes anything from forced labor to sexual abuse. Young men and women are forced to do heinous acts under the fear of losing a loved one or just have nowhere else to go. Not enough is being done to stop the rampant trafficking; government organizations like the WHO have the resources to fight it but have no real way to strike directly at underground rings throughout the world. The worst rates of trafficking are within major cities like New York City and Atlanta. While the issue seems very daunting, there are solutions. Improving impoverished areas would help greatly due to a safer environment for boys and girls at risk of trafficking. If major governments were to come together and work out ways to combat these issues, great progress could be made. There is hope for stopping human trafficking and it lies within the people in power as well as each and every person with ability to help.

Women in U.S. prisons are being lured into sex trafficking rings that force them into prostitution upon their release. A source, Guardian, has said that these criminals are getting these women’s personal information from government websites. “The investigation also found cases of the bail bond system being used in sex trafficking operations in at least five different states. Pimps and sex buyers are locating incarcerated women awaiting a court date by using personal data such as mugshots and bail bonds posted online, or through corrupt bondsmen” (Kelly). Women are being giving a choice of sacrificing their bodies or to going to a federal prison which may seem like an easy choice to women.

However if these targeted women chose to sacrifice their bodies they are beginning down a road with an unforeseen future. This is becoming a bigger threat as the amount of women incarcerated has increased to 8 times as much as women in prison in 1980. These women are seen as vulnerable because they have nowhere to go an no support when they are released for prison. "Our correctional facilities have a legal responsibility to protect the women who are under their charge," said Marian Hatcher, a national anti-trafficking advocate and human trafficking coordinator at the Cook County sheriff's office of public policy in Chicago."If inmates are being targeted while inside our prisons and jails by predators, instead of being offered the chance of an alternative when they are released, then this is a systemic failing of our duty of care to some of our country's most vulnerable women" (Kelly). The U.S. correctional facilities are the ones who need to step up and defend the inmates.