Government funding is a significant issue in the nation’s anti-trafficking efforts. Various groups, including law enforcement and NGOs, have been adversely affected. For instance, the only law-enforcement team exclusively dedicated to the investigation of human trafficking closed after just two years in operation. The government cited lack of funds as the reason. This is a loss for victims, as the unit was known for its victim-centered approach. Some of the officers from the unit have been added to a new team that addresses trafficking abuses (U.S. Department of State, 2010).
Anti-trafficking organizations have also been negatively affected by funding. One such group is the Poppy Project, a group widely recognized as the United Kingdom’s leading organization for female trafficking victims. The organization, run by the charity Eaves, provides accommodation and support services for adult women trafficked into the United Kingdom for sexual exploitation or domestic servitude. From 2009 through 2011 the project provided accommodations and support services for 161 victims for an average of 8 months each. It provided additional support to 326 other victims (Channel 4 News, 2011). In 2011 the government decided not to renew the project’s contract, which could have an adverse effect on the accessibility of specialized services available to trafficked women (Hill, 2011). Initially Eaves thought the project would face a reduction in funding from the government of 40 percent or more and that in turn would reduce the number of days victims could receive services. “At the moment the minimum services that can be provided for a victim of trafficking are for 45 days,” said Abigail Stepnitz, the Poppy Project’s national coordinator. “Ideally we would be looking at a minimum of 90 days. Not only is that what is considered best practice by the Council of Europe, but that is what many other European governments have implemented” (Channel 4 News, 2011). The contract instead went to the Salvation Army, where the funds are still designated to help trafficking victims (Hill, 2011). Fortunately, the Poppy Project survived the funding loss and continues to serve female trafficking victims. It is now the largest independently funded counter-trafficking support and advocacy organization in the United Kingdom (Asylum Aid, 2012).
To address the fact that victims continue to be charged and prosecuted for offenses related to their trafficking experience, in 2009 the government published updated legal guidance to emphasize the role of prosecutors in identifying potential trafficking victims who may have committed crimes while under duress or coercion by their trafficker, and in 2011 the government issued amended legal guidance to prosecutors instructing them not to prosecute trafficking victims for any crimes committed as a direct result of their trafficking. Even so, a boy from Vietnam was convicted of cannabis cultivation despite evidence of coercion, threats to his life, and the fact that he was locked in the factory. In 2011 an appeals court affirmed the decision and said that the exploitation was not tantamount to forced labor (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2012). Through asylum, deportation of victims can be avoided for those who face retribution or hardship if forced to return to their home country. Asylum is granted on a case-by-case basis. The government can also grant victims who do not qualify as refugees the immigration status of humanitarian protection (HP) or discretionary leave (DL). Both HP and DL status give victims the opportunity to work, obtain housing, education, travel documents, family reunion, overseas travel, and health care. HP status grants victims a stay of five years, at the end of which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain and thereby begin the process of naturalization. DL status grants a stay of 6 months to 3 years or until victims reach the age of 17 and a half, depending on the type of case (ECRE, 2009). The majority of asylum requests are denied. Of the 20,930 initial asylum application decisions made in 2006, 79 percent of requests were refused, 10 percent of requests were granted asylum, and 11 percent were granted HP or DL (Office for National Statistics, 2007). At the end of 2010 roughly 22.6 percent of initial applications for asylum were granted; of those persons who were not granted asylum at the initial decision, 24.6 percent were successful on appeal (Asylum Aid, 2012).
The asylum process is not always fair. Thousands of people are detained annually and can be held in detention for long periods solely because they have applied for asylum (there are 11 immigration removal centers in the United Kingdom). Also, there is an accelerated procedure for assessing asylum—called the Detained Fast Track (DFT)—that is intended for claims by men or women that, according to the U.K. Border Agency, can be decided quickly. These detainees are automatically entitled to legal representation for their initial asylum claim, though often DFT detainees have no legal representation at their asylum appeal (Cutler, 2007; Politics.co.uk, 2010). Many women who enter the DFT asylum process lack access to adequate health care and legal representation. Detainees interviewed at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre remarked that they were regarded as criminals as opposed to asylum applicants and that supporting evidence was treated like fabrication as opposed to fact (Cutler, 2007).
Few women at Yarl’s Wood win their asylum cases, but the percentage of successful applications may be slowly on the rise. In 2005 only 1 percent of applicants were granted approval at initial decision compared to 4 percent in 2008 (Cutler, 2007; Skrivankova, 2010). The government maintains that the low percentages reflect unfounded claims, but experts point to lack of preparation time and of legal representation at appeal (Cutler, 2007). In 2008, roughly 25 percent of women initially assigned to the DFT procedure were eventually moved into the standard asylum procedure. This does not mean that the fast track is not still highly utilized, and the odds of success at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre continue to be dismal. Ninety-one percent of appeals were refused in 2008 and the first half of 2009 (HRW, 2010b).
Human Rights Watch believes that the fast track system cannot handle complex trafficking cases. The DFT asylum process does not allow enough time for lawyers or other representatives to obtain a client’s trust. Experts believe trust to be essential in allowing the lawyer/representative to obtain information regarding the victim’s claim or to obtain medical or other evidence needed to verify the claim. Those on the fast track have little time to prepare a legal case, and only a few days to appeal if refused. “The ‘Detained Fast Track’ system doesn’t meet even the basic standards of fairness,” said Gauri van Gulik, a women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is simply not equipped to handle rape, slavery, the threat of ‘honor killings,’ or other complex claims, and yet such cases are handed to it regularly” (HRW, 2010b).
Under a guidance note by the Home Office in 2008, the fast track is listed as unsuitable for certain categories of people. The list includes those whose cases should not be determined quickly, such as unaccompanied children seeking asylum, women who are more than 24 weeks pregnant, persons requiring 24-hour nursing care, and persons for whom there is independent evidence of trafficking or torture. The caveat on the latter is that victims of trafficking or torture who do not have evidence with them when they apply for asylum—such as expert reports and medical reports—can end up being placed in the fast track program (HRW, 2010a). One such case is that of Laura from Sierra Leone, who after experiencing multiple rapes and a forced abortion as well as watching the beheading of her father was trafficked to the United Kingdom. None of these issues was identified during the screening interview, and Laura was placed in the fast track program. During the interview the screening officer called Laura a liar and asked: “Why do you come to this country that doesn’t want you?” After significant intervention by an NGO, Laura was transferred out of the fast track and eventually granted refugee status (HRW, 2010a).
The DFT asylum process has raised consternation even within the government, particularly in regard to trafficking victims. In May 2009 the House of Commons Home Affairs stated its uneasiness with the system:
We are concerned that the Government’s laudable aims of deterring fraudulent applications for asylum and speeding up the decision processes for genuine asylum seekers may disadvantage the often severely traumatized victims of trafficking. … Removing people from the fast track does not mean that their cases would be examined less rigorously; it just means that there would be more time in which evidence of trafficking might be adduced. (HRW, 2010a)
Foreign victims of trafficking who decide to cooperate with law enforcement are granted a 45-day reflection period and a renewable one-year residence permit. The government’s specialized shelter houses adult female trafficking victims, including victims of involuntary domestic servitude. In 2009 the shelter assisted 260 trafficking victims; 96 women were provided aid within the shelter, and 164 were supported on an outreach basis. Many victims are excluded from the shelter because of the government’s strict criteria for admission—victims must be over the age of 18; be a victim of trafficking that involves prostitution or domestic slavery within three months of referral; be willing to cooperate in the prosecution of their trafficker; and must have been trafficked into the United Kingdom from another nation (U.S. Department of State, 2010).
There is a dearth of victim services in the United Kingdom. Historically the government’s anti-trafficking focus has been on foreign sex-trafficking victims. This is slowly changing, but children, British nationals, and men tend to be the most marginalized of the trafficked groups in terms of access to shelter and services. The U.K. government has simply not established comprehensive services for men, and child victims are inadequately placed in foster care or other general social service programs. What is worse is that some rescued children placed in the care of local authorities may be vulnerable to their traffickers, as acknowledged by the U.K. government in 2009. In 2011 experts reported that a number of rescued children placed in the care of local authorities continued to go missing (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2011, 2012).
Klara Skrivankova said that over the past decade awareness about the issue of human trafficking has increased, but progress is still needed in the post-trafficking experience. On December 17, 2008, the United Kingdom ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which went into force on April 1, 2009. According to Skrivankova, before ratification of the convention there was an ad hoc approach to providing assistance to victims: “the laws that we have are theoretically beneficial. … However, it is about how the law is implemented and whether the victim is actually benefited. We have yet to see whether the government will implement the laws in a robust way that actually benefits the victims of trafficking.”
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WHAT HAPPENS TO TRAFFICKERS
The United Kingdom prohibits all forms of trafficking through its 2003 Sexual Offences Act and its 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act. Offenders face prescribed maximum penalties of 14 and 10 years’ imprisonment, respectively (U.S. Department of State, 2010). In order to utilize the 2003 and 2004 trafficking laws, prosecutors must prove intent to both transport and exploit the victim (Government of the United Kingdom, 2003, 2004; U.S. Department of State, 2010). The double-intent criterion seems particularly unsuited to instances of trafficking within the United Kingdom, both in regard to British citizens trafficked internally and in regard to migrant workers who travel voluntarily to the United Kingdom but then experience involuntary servitude. Under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act and the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act, the trafficker must have intent to move the victim—even if just from one part of the country to another. This requirement wrongly places equal judicial focus on the movement of the victim and the exploitative purpose. Demonstrating the trafficker’s intent to move the victim for the exploitative purpose is a challenge, as migration routes often involve independent and facilitated movement. The latter usually involves a number of middlepersons, not all of whom are the same people who exploited the victim. That is not to say that interagents do not have culpability, but rather to illustrate that proving the trafficker’s intention to move the victim for the exploitative purpose is difficult, and in many cases impossible (David, 2010). Requiring that the prosecution prove a trafficker’s intent to arrange or facilitate travel, arrival, or departure to, from, or within the United Kingdom for the purposes of exploitation severely weakens the ability of prosecutors to succeed in utilizing the anti-trafficking laws. Consequently, prosecutors often use lesser offenses to prosecute traffickers. Prosecuting a trafficker under a lesser offense not only typically reduces the severity of the sentence for traffickers but also deprives the victim of an appropriate level of protection and support (Puffett, 2010).
In December 2009 the government passed the Coroners and Justice Act to explicitly criminalize slavery. Importantly, movement is not a precondition to the applicability of this act. Provisions went into force in April 2010. In Scotland this offense was introduced in Section 47 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 (Government of the United Kingdom, 2009; Skrivankova, 2010; U.S. Department of State, 2012). The 2009 Coroners and Justice Act, which prescribes up to 14 years’ imprisonment, not only creates provisions relating to the new offense of slavery, servitude, and forced or compulsory labor; it also includes criminal law provisions relating to a new offense of possession of prohibited images of children (Government of the United Kingdom, 2009). It typically takes a while for a new law to get off the ground, as prosecutors universally prefer to use tried and true offenses. In 2010 there were no prosecutions under the 2009 Coroners and Justice Act, but in 2011 that changed, and 11 offenders of slavery and servitude were prosecuted under the act. Not surprisingly, the other two acts were used more often in the same year; 87 offenders were prosecuted under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act and 29 under the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act (U.S. Department of State, 2012). Time will tell how successful the new act is in terms of convictions.