Forced Criminality: From Scamming Compounds to Criminality as Strategy
April 2025 GLC Monthly Learning Call Brief
In April we dove deeper into the topic of forced criminality. On our Eastern Call our focus was on scamming compounds, a sub topic that many of us have started getting to grips, but which thanks to the presentation shared by Sharlene Chen from Humanity Research Consultancy (HRC) we got to know in sharper detail. And on our Western Call we had Jane Anderson, a former U.S. prosecutor who now serves as an Attorney Advisor with AEquitas who gave an excellent presentation on the forced criminality of victims as an intentional strategy for perpetrators to escape accountability.
What we learned and discussed:
The Eastern Call provided a breakdown of the components of the scamming compound enterprise and detailed the relationships between actors - compound owners, scam companies and the authorities; as well as examples of the structure of scamming teams within the compounds and the obligations team leaders need to fulfil such as earnings per week.
Sharlene walked us through the challenges around victim identification and provided an outline of the different typologies of victims encountered in scamming, the challenge lying particularly with the many different national legal frameworks and policies around victim identification and support, many may not be identified as such. Alongside this, the fraudulent methods used to recruit victims may eventually aid scammer’s efforts to secure their willing participation, an example being that a victim may take on debt to get themselves to the location of their new ‘workplace’ and upon arrival and discovery of what’s entailed their initial resistance may be overridden by their need to pay back their own personal debt. In the discussion we explored how this fits into understandings of debt bondage but in this case it is the victim’s own debt and is not linked to the traffickers.
Other aspects of our learning on the call included examples of how social media platforms and apps, in particular Telegram, are used by traffickers in their operations, developing their own jargon and terminology to talk about their victims and their operations to evade detection.
It was a very robust and detailed presentation which once again reveals the underpinnings of vulnerabilities to trafficking at the intersection of systemic economic realities and criminal enterprises.
Jane’s presentation on the Western Call opened up the inner workings of forced criminality from a perpetrator lens - what are they looking for and what methods they use to victimise and exploit someone. This intentional strategy is to place blame on the victim so they, the perpetrators, escape culpability. This ‘perfect plan’ relies on a victim knowing they have committed criminal acts and believing they will not be seen as a victim. This strategy follows three steps: firstly identifying vulnerability for example substance abuse, mental health challenges, prior criminality or an undocumented migrant; secondly accessibility, at locations where there might be vulnerable people they can access easily; and thirdly that the victim is perceived to lack credibility should they disclose. Jane highlighted that it is at the third step where we can make a difference by being able to change that narrative, when building a case for example, by revealing the intentionality of the perpetrator’s strategy which is highly individualised for each victim and can be identified from the way they recruited and controlled the victim to how they attempt to evade accountability by blaming the victim.
Highlighted for us on the call was how these dynamics interplay with the authorities’ and the publics’ presumption and in fact desire to see ‘the perfect victim’ - a victim who is wholly blameless, which aids the perpetrators’ deployment of the strategy.
And while the presentation reminded us that the criminalisation of victims remains a problematic hurdle yet to be overcome in many contexts across the globe, Jane shared her own insightful experiences on specific cases to show what approaches can be used to assist such victims through legal procedures. And beyond this, the learning here importantly illuminated the need to look more closely at the kind of support that people really need when they come out of such situations, particularly where victims had been made to do criminal acts which went against their own conscience as a survival strategy.
The discussion after the presentation very much circled around how forced criminality is in fact part of the normal operating procedure of trafficking. We discussed examples from South Africa and the UK where children and youth are trafficked through various means to then undertake criminal activities, often in the drug trade, as well as the matter of victims of sex trafficking who by the illegality of their ‘trade’ in many contexts are forced to commit criminal acts in their exploitation.
What are the implications?
As the Secretariat reflected after the calls we came to see that while forced criminality is currently a ‘hot topic’ as relates particularly to the scamming compound cases which have come to light in recent years, we should not lose sight of the fact that criminality is inherent to what human trafficking is and how it operates. Herein, forced criminality should not be placed in a silo of its own within the movement nor should organisations presume they don’t need to learn more about this if it doesn’t fit under their specific programmatic work. Rather, paying attention to it is necessary as it lays bare the prevalent gaps in the fabric of our societies resulting from deeper economic structures through which vulnerable people of different kinds can fall which the traffickers themselves are keenly aware of and exploit. Where communities are affected at the intersection of economic inequality and deprivation, and violence and crime - such as family difficulties and loss of familial support, indebtedness which could exacerbate the readiness to pursue any available employment opportunities, or the lack of opportunities for youth - multi-pronged interventions may be necessary. Certainly in these situations, with a lens focused on forced criminality it might be possible to see more clearly how communities and families can be strengthened.
Furthermore, it also importantly illuminates more of how communities need to be supported and some very specific ways that survivors’ recovery might need to be addressed, particularly where an individual has been forced to make choices they would otherwise not have made had it not been to ensure their survival. This sort of moral injury caused to victims may require very specific interventions, its impacts having the potential to deeply affect an individual in ways we have yet to fully understand.
What next for the GLC?
These calls open up multiple avenues for further engagement, particularly if we link back to some of our calls last year on prevention and the need for strategies to meet vulnerabilities beyond awareness - as awareness has been shown to not stop a vulnerable person accepting a risky offer of employment when there is little food on the table.
We have an upcoming Coffee Corner Call on May 21st with GLC member Helen Avadiar-Nimbalker from the Asia Freedom Network who will be walking through their recently launched resource, “Guidelines for Repatriation and Reintegration: Supporting Survivors of Forced Criminality.” See their information flyer for more details here, and register for the call if you’re interested in the usual place you find GLC call registration links.
We are also discussing another future Coffee Corner Call suggested by a member who would like to bring the matter of debt to the community for discussion, pertaining to how having debt and taking on debt creates vulnerability but also challenges to reintegration. They have seen this in their community work in Cambodia and would like to explore with other GLC members the topic of equipping community members with understanding of and skills to manage debt, as a prevention tool.
If any member would like to connect with the Secretariat or other members on any of the learning from this call, get in touch. You can email us at team@globallearning.community