Trafficking in human beings for sexual and other purposes - Polisen

1. Summary7responsibility for combating human trafficking forother purposes. The Swedish National Police Board’sskills enhancement initiatives and dissemination ofinformation also covered all forms of human trafficking,which led, in turn, to increased knowledge withinthe police organisation. The expansion of the EU alsoresulted in organised crime networks changing theiractivities to include trafficking in vulnerable peoplefor purposes other than sexual exploitation. At thesame time, this crime was given a great deal of coveragein the Swedish and foreign media.The increased mobility of people, goods, servicesand capital within and into the EU as a consequenceof globalisation has its counterpart in the mobility ofcriminal networks and crime. The financial and economiccrisis is also compounding cross-border crime.People who move away from areas of social, politicalor economic unrest can become victims of humantrafficking for various purposes.1.1 Trafficking in human beings for sexualpurposesAccording to the Swedish National Police Board it isdifficult to estimate how many people may have fallenvictim to human trafficking in Sweden during 2011.The number of victims discovered in Sweden dependslargely on the resources which the police put intodetecting this crime and on the skills that exists withinthe police organisation. The level of these initiativesvaries between police authorities and differsfrom one year to another. Neither is it possible toidentify (nor indeed to locate) all of the victims, mostlygirls and women, who are mentioned in tapped telephonecalls or observed during police surveillance.Nor can the estimate be based exclusively on thenumber of victims that are seen as injured parties inhuman trafficking investigations; especially sincemost of these investigations result in sentences forprocuring/aggravated procuring.In 2011, the police drew up 35 reports relating tohuman trafficking for sexual purposes as comparedto 32 reports in the previous year. In 2011, two peoplewere sentenced for human trafficking for sexual purposes.In addition, three people were sentenced foraggravated procuring and eight for procuring of ahuman trafficking nature. Finally 450 legal proceedingswere initiated concerning the purchase of sexualservices and 7 legal proceedings concerning the purchaseof sexual acts from children under the age of18 1 . More preliminary investigations into human trafficking,procurement and the purchase of sexual servicesare ongoing, for which sentences are expected tobe pronounced in 2012.Information received by the police during 2011showed that by far the majority of victims were girlsand women. No boys or men were identified in 2011as victims of human trafficking for sexual purposes.The foreign girls and women recruited to Sweden forthe purposes of prostitution came primarily fromEastern Europe (especially Romania, Lithuania,Estonia, Slovakia and Poland), Thailand and Nigeria.Here, a change can be clearly discerned sinceinformation about women from Lithuania beingexploited for prostitution in Sweden has increasedsignificantly in 2011 compared with previous years.Human trafficking for sexual purposes, involvingvictims from Romania, has been a significant problemfor some years throughout large parts of Europe.In Sweden too, primarily in Gothenburg, the policenoted a certain increase in the number of Romanianwomen being exploited for the purposes of street prostitutionin 2011. The perpetrators behind this trafficking(both men and women) also came from Romania.Those responsible for the activities investigated in2011 were men and women who came originally fromEstonia, Iraq, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Swedenand Poland.As in other countries, sexual services in Sweden aretoday sold mostly via the Internet. In the investiga-1 Total judicial decisions, orders of summary punishment andwaivers of prosecution in 2011.