Criminal Careers of Domestic Sex Traffickers in the Netherlands: Distinguishing Different Offending Trajectories

Human trafficking, among which domestic sex trafficking, is often only understood from the perspective of the victim, since research on traffickers — and in particular on their criminal careers — hardly exists. This is unfortunate, given that the wealth of longitudinal criminal career research on other offender populations has resulted in important theoretical and practical insights. This study therefore examines the offending trajectories of 630 domestic sex traffickers who were brought to court in the Netherlands, based on longitudinal judicial data. The results show that they are a heterogeneous and versatile offender group, similar to general offenders. A group-based trajectory analysis identified four subgroups following different offending trajectories between ages 12 and 35. Low-rate offenders (36%) start their criminal career late, mostly in adulthood, and for a relatively large share of them human trafficking is their first offense. Early-peak offenders (28%) are the youngest human traffickers and late-peak offenders (21%), after a slow start, do not seem to desist from offending on a regular base in adulthood. High-rate-persistent offenders (15%) have the youngest age of onset of crime in general and account for 40% of all criminal cases. On average, they have already more than 20 criminal cases registered against them, before committing human trafficking. This most problematic subgroup seems to be larger among domestic sex traffickers, than among general offenders. More research on criminal careers of domestic sex traffickers (and human traffickers in general) is needed, and should also focus on risk and protective factors that influence their offending trajectories.