Recognizing Modern Slavery

ABSTRACT

“Modern Slavery” comprises forms of extreme labor exploitation. With its Modern Slavery Law 2015, the UK is said to be at the forefront of international efforts to address the crime. But to be effective, members of the public and officers of government agencies need to be able to recognize situations as modern slavery. Students and police officers were given seven scenarios developed from real cases and literature. It turns out that police officers recognize most of the scenarios, in contrast to students. Identifying situations as modern slavery appears related to strong moral disapproval, resulting in preferences for harsher punishment. After all, modern slavery challenges the foundations of a liberal society.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge and opinion on law
• labor exploitation
• modern slavery
• moral judgment
• police training
• punishment preferences

Notes

¹ At the time of writing, the UK is a member state of the European Union. Citizens of other EU countries have the right to enter the UK without a visa. Therefore, many cases of human trafficking do not require the activity of smuggling.

² Public opinion in the UK often fails to distinguish between immigration resulting from citizens of other European Union states exercising their treaty rights to live and work in the UK, and illegal migration as the result of people smuggling.

³ Craig (2015: p. 137); Haynes (2015: p. 52); Short and Lloyd (2016a, pp. 5, 10); similar in other countries like Belgium or Austria: Gerster (2016).

⁴ They were regular students of those subjects, only by a rare coincident one of them might have been a police officer or a police volunteer.

⁵ Coding of individual variables forming the punishment index: 0 = no punishment, 1 = community service, 2 = prison sentence of 6 months, 3 = prison sentence of 5 years, 4 = prison sentence of 14 years, 5 = life in prison.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bangor University.