Understanding Albanian Sex Trafficking as a Crime Against Humanity: A Forensic Cultural Anthropological Approach

This volume considers the most appropriate criminal jurisdiction to prosecute aggravated sex trafficking of the kind associated with northern Albanian crime groups. Watershed jurisprudencefrom the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal could prove pivotal to achieving the legislative changes for prosecuting Albanian sex trafficking in peacetime that this book advocates. This book revisits this relevant history to challenge the current transnational status of trafficking as a mischaracterisation. It is maintained that the Albanian sex trafficker has become, like the wartime rapist before him, the perpetrator of an offence that warrants recognition by the international criminal justice regime. The book considers the historico-cultural legacies of present-day root-causes of Albanian sex trafficking to understand how the same dehumanising ideology and sexual violence aimed at women during the Yugoslav Wars persisted post-conflict and continues to underscore contemporary Albanian sex trafficking and what these similarities in assailant attitudes and actions might mean for potentially prosecuting human trafficking within the international criminal justice system. Through the prism of neutralisation theory rooted in forensic cultural anthropology, in the form of a novel hypothetical model, a conceptual framework to consider the true nature of trafficking is offered. The model offers a précised interpretation of the key factors that establish certain criminal conduct as suitable for international criminal justice and how those factors relate to Albanian sex trafficking. The model distils the characteristics of Albanian sex trafficking; it extracts the essential elements and most important aspects of this type of criminality so we can recognise their presence in real-world cases. A case study featuring interviews with the traffickers themselves and individuals who have encountered them firsthand then describes how the model holds for the real-world experience of Albanian sex trafficking. Approached from the trafficker angle, the purpose of the case study is to support the theoretical model by showing how each element manifests in Albanian sex trafficking. For a richer understanding, each of the elements is explained and explored within a historico-cultural context.

The chapters in this book feature key topics and supporting material, including:

• The backstory, purpose, and structure of the international criminal justice system followed by how the regime could and should be extended to encompass aggravated sex trafficking.
• The role of culturally-shaped neutralization theory in understanding decision-making in sex trafficking on the individual level
• Historico-cultural context, including competing elements of tradition and modernity
• Longstanding gender attitudes, particularly evaluating violence against women
• Interviews with Albanian sex traffickers and victims

By evaluating Albanian sex trafficking through this lens, this book aims to identify international criminal justice as a more appropriate and effective approach to prosecuting aggravated sex trafficking and to suggest future opportunities for further research that can aid in improved policing and prisoner management as it relates to Albanian sex trafficking. This book is ideal for students and academic researchers interested in international criminal justice and sex trafficking studies.

Alex Rochester is an academic researcher with a background in international criminal justice within the Western Balkans context. The author has significant empirical knowledge and experience of the region’s conflicts and criminality.