This unique volume addresses the financial mechanisms that enable human trafficking - its actors, structures, and logistics. Viewing each stage of the market, human traffickers may need significant financial resources for recruitment, transportation, and exploitation. Drawing upon cross-disciplinary research expertise in criminology, sociology, law and economics, this book offers insights from law enforcement officers, policy makers, NGOs, and traffickers and their victims. Using three European countries - Bulgaria, Italy and the United Kingdom - it provides an account on the sources of capital for initiating and sustaining a human trafficking scheme, discussing the involvement of criminal structures, legitimate businesses, financial institutions, and information and communication technologies in the running of these enterprises. It also addresses the ways in which entrepreneurs and customers settle payments, the costs of conducting business in human trafficking, and how profits from the business are spent and invested. This important contribution to the transnational organized crime knowledge base will be of interest to researchers and academics, as well as law enforcement, regulatory agencies, and policy makers combating human trafficking.

This brief offers a unique and innovative account of the role of internet and digital technologies in human smuggling and trafficking. It explores new illegal paths through the web by analyzing how traffickers and smugglers use the visible and dark web during different phases of the process, including recruitment, transportation, and exploitation. Featuring case studies from two European countries, Italy and the United Kingdom, it outlines the types of websites used in these processes, how they are used, and common behavior patterns. With a view of transnational criminal activities involving actors from individual criminal entrepreneurs to organized crime groups and fluid large criminal networks, this brief will be of use to law enforcement, researchers of trafficking and organized crime, and policy makers.

The research analyses the social construction of bullies and victims in a sample of Italian (La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera) and English newspapers (The Guardian and The Times) applying a classical content analysis methodology. The main scientific literature on social constructionism, mass media and social construction of crime and youth crime is reviewed as well as the theoretical and research contributions on bullying. The images of bullies and victims delivered by Italian and English newspapers are further assessed and compared to the extant literature on the topic. Differences emerge both between newspapers and in regard to theoretical and research contributions, underlying specific stereotyped ways of newspapers to depict bullies and victims. Findings are consistent with those of previous research investigating the way mass media have depicted youth crime and in particular school violence.