“Most people don’t know what human trafficking is, and when you tell them, they say, ’so what’” — Los Angeles City Councilmember, Tony Cardenas.

PREVENT HATE has devised an equation using the economic theory of supply and demand to demonstrate that human trafficking is a bias crime.

As we all know, demand for a commodity drives its supply. That’s commerce. This equation shows that, for human trafficking to occur, the in-take society must have pre-existing biases, coupled with its needs for sex and labor (demand), resulting in the flow of human bodies (supply). The bias is not merely demonstrated by the people directly enslaving those who are trafficked, but by the society-at-large into which people are brought for illicit sex and labor without much public outcry or intervention. Essentially, trafficking/slavery would not occur if there were no pre-existing institutionalized bias against the victims on the part of the in-take society-at-large. This is true for all societies that have slaves for sex and labor.   Societies have needs, their concerns for the gender and ethnic groups of the victims are less than for those getting served by the victims, so that hence – cultural values, plus public demand for sex and labor, creates institutionalized bias resulting in trafficking and slavery.

Human trafficking is a bias crime. Prevent hate!

The original post is on Prevent Hate's blog, if you'd like to have a closer look at the equation:

http://preventhate.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/prevent-hate-exclusive-human-trafficking-is-a-bias-crime/