Problems and obstacles for police officers in the operations of human trafficking preventions and suppression

Abstract

          The objectives of this study on ‘problems and obstacles for police officers in the operations of human trafficking preventions and suppression’ are to study on problems and obstacles that police officers face with when carrying out the operations to prevent and suppress human trafficking in terms of investigation, inquiry and arrest; and to find out ways to solve such problems and obstacles. This study is a survey research work that relies on documentary survey and field survey disciplines. The samples used in this study are police officers from the Anti Human Trafficking Division (ATPD) to total number of which is 300 (Anti Human Trafficking Division, 2014), selected with the purposive sampling technique.

          The findings from the study reveal that the majority of the 300 studied samples or 55.7% are the male whilst the rest 44.3% are the female. Most of the samples or 40.3% are in the age range of 30-39 years, and having bachelor’s degrees (57.3%). Concerning the positions of the samples, it is discovered that most of the samples or 41.0% are sub-inspectors, having 3-5 years of experiences in rescuing victims that are the minor and the female (50.7%). The samples are highly aware of the problems and obstacles in all the 3 studied categories (x¯= 3.60). Considered separately, the awareness to problems in the category of the investigation is in the high level (x¯= 3.71), followed by the categories of arrest (x¯= 3.58) and inquiry (x¯= 3.51), respectively. The samples give suggestions concerning the investigation that the budget for the investigation on human trafficking agents should be raised (45.5%). The suggestion for the arrest is that there should be robust measures against state officials who take parts in human trafficking activities (40.3%). Meanwhile, the suggestion for the inquiry is that there should be clear directions to distinguish the victims from the criminals in order to prevent false prosecutions (50.7%).