Crime Concealment as an Element of the Method of Committing Slave Trade and Slave Labor Use

The authors examine the patterns of concealment of illegal activities in human trafficking and slave labor use, as well as patterns of the activities of law enforcement agencies in the disclosure and investigation of the analyzed crimes. The aim of the article is to substantiate the data on the concealment of the investigated crimes for their subsequent use in the disclosure and investigation of the analyzed illegal activity. In the research, the authors used legal, sociological and other methods of scientific knowledge: logical, comparative legal, statistical, modeling, and a number of others. The authors relied on the materials of 130 criminal cases on encroachments on human trafficking and slave labor use, the results of interviewing 320 law enforcement officers, scientific developments of other researchers on the issue under consideration, as well as statistical data from the Main International and Analytical Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The study of the materials of criminal cases shows that the basis for the disclosure and investigation of perpetrators' criminal activities should be based on the regularities of the method of concealing the crimes under consideration reflected in the following typical forms: (1) concealment of the fact and traces of preparation for committing a crime: a) placing veiled ads with offers of employment, training, marriage services in the media, social networks, leaflets, etc.; b) holding fake “beauty contests”, “draw games”, and similar events, participants of which are offered work or study abroad; c) disseminating deliberately false information in order to attract future victims of slave trade and illegal exploitation in certain social groups: prostitutes, drug addicts, unemployed, homeless people, etc.; d) conspiring in finding accomplices, means of communication, places of detention of victims, means of physical and psychological pressure on the victim; (2) conspiracy of the direct commission of a crime: a) disguising it as legitimate; b) falsifying documents that allow victims to travel abroad; c) concealing places of detention of victims and organizing victim safe-keeping; d) seizing identity documents from victims; e) using SIM cards registered to unauthorized persons, f) veiled advertising of activities to search for consumers of sexual and other services; (3) disguise or destruction of traces of the committed crime: destruction of clothing and belongings of the victim, erasing the traces left. Thus, in the course of the analysis of the literature and criminal case materials on human trafficking and slave labor use, forensically significant data on the concealment of the investigated crimes were substantiated; the knowledge of these data should be used in the course of the disclosure and investigation of such crimes.

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