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Human Trafficking In The United States

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Currently, the Untied States’ prison cells are at max capacity. People sitting in these prison cells have committed everything from murder to possessing illegal drugs. Yet, there is still a group of criminals that have been successfully dodging the legal system for years, and those criminals are human traffickers. According to Webster’s dictionary, human trafficking is the act in which humans are treated as possessions to be exploited into prostitution or involuntary labor. This issue affects virtually every country in the world, and law enforcements have struggled to end this heinous crime. This act involves high profits for traffickers making it one of the fastest growing illegal activity in the world (Human Trafficking, Funk). Because of …show more content…
Indeed, a lack of education also plays a role in human trafficking, specifically in a minority group (Box). Lack of education limits the opportunities children and young adults have when going into the workforce. When opportunities are minute, individuals have to find new ways to make a better life for themselves. Lack of education alongside the lack of stability in a household can make the victim unaware that they are in fact a victim of a crime (About Human Trafficking). If a child grew up in an unstable household, it is significantly easier for them to rationalize violent or manipulative behavior by their abuser. If the child was isolated in that behavior, their lack of education or awareness of what a functional family is like makes them fall prey to traffickers easier than someone who was raised in a stable …show more content…
On the outsider's perspective, one of the challenges is being able to identify victims. For most victims, they do not identify themselves as being victims of a crime, and even if they do know they are being victimized they often fear their trafficker. (Human Trafficking, American College). Victims also feel like there are no resources for them even if they did tell authorities. Human traffickers tend to isolate victims from friends and make them dependent on them for food, shelter, and money (Ramos). The victims know that if they escape and can not find any place to stay they will have to return to their traffickers. For a majority of these victims, their worries are factual.
While governments are starting to put more money into fighting human trafficking, most of that money is going towards being able to put the traffickers behind bars (Anderson). With the focus on punishing the traffickers, fewer resources are being presented to the victims themselves. Without sustainable resources for victims, such as a safe house, victims will go back searching for ways to support themselves and will fall back into the hands of

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