Who are the enforcers? The motives and methods of muscle for hire in West Scotland and the West Midlands

Enforcement, ranging from threats to intimidation to assault to homicide, has long been an established practice within criminal networks. However, comparatively little academic research exists about the nature and role of enforcers within and beyond the context of contract killings. Drawing on qualitative interviews with criminal enforcers from two contrasting sites within the UK—the West Scotland and the West Midlands—the current study examines the articulated, identifiable pathways into criminal enforcement. Also it examines the nuanced nature of enforcement and the roles those men commonly adopt within the context of organised crime, as well as the relationship between these men’s activity, the wider context of organised crime, and presence of social and cultural capital within it. This article provides insights into how one becomes an enforcer; how contact is made between all parties involved; the degree of planning involved; and costing arrangements, with important implications for research and practice

Human Trafficking in South Africa: Political Conundrums and Consequences

Human trafficking remains a seemingly unsolvable problem despite over a decade of concerted international, regional and, increasingly, domestic attention. Little inroads have been made, especially in attempting to address its most prominent manifestation – human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Most government resources, in states from which victims are trafficked and in those in which they are received, have focused upon attempting to end this form of human trafficking. This has been done in two ways: either through draconian measures that focus on the security of the state (and curbing migration), or by attempting to eradicate the sex industry through criminalisation of consumers, and the continued criminalisation of sex workers. Such strategies have had little measurable effect on the supply or demand of those trafficked, which suggests that such counter-trafficking measures remain largely ineffective. Moreover, this preoccupation with the dark, exploitative side of the sex industry has been at the expense of a focus upon what is thought to be a far more pervasive form of human trafficking (which also intersects with sexual exploitation), that is labour trafficking. (Labour trafficking is an umbrella term used to denote trafficking for forced and bonded labour (in an array of industries), which also includes domestic servitude and forced marriage, forced begging, and the exploitation in warfare.) Hence, only the ways in human trafficking is manifested is addressed, and not the root causes of the phenomenon