Book Review: Selling Sex Overseas Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567713476301
• Date: 01 March 2013
• Published date: 01 March 2013
• Author: Andrea Lange
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

between the eye and the ear, the scientific and the spectacular, the endogenous and the exogenous, and

the normal and the pathological. The polygraph’s power is its ability to maintain credibility while

tolerating these essential tensions.

This well-researched early history of thepursuit of lie detection and the beginnings of criminology

contains much that makes for compelling reading. But one is left with a disappointment that there is

only the briefestnote in the introduction on the current status of the polygraph in the UnitedStates and

the legal and societal tensions that its widespread employment continues to generate. (For some

current opposit ion to the lie detec tor especially in th e United States, see http://antipol ygraph.org/)

Ko-lin Chin and James O. Finckenauer

Selling Sex Overseas Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking New York and

London: New York University Press, 2012. ix, 1–311 pp. $26.00. ISBN 978-0-8147-7258-4

Reviewed by: Andrea Lange, Washington College, Chestertown, MD, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567713476301

Reframing Concepts of Sex Trafficking in the Global

Commercial Prostitution Marketplace

Over the last 15 years, human rights advocates and victim service workers contended that sex

trafficking is globally pervasive, is facilitated by large, organized criminal groups, and adult female

victims are lured into the global commercial sex trade through fraud, force, and coercion. But with

so few rescues of victims and even fewer self-reports of victimization, criminologists now question

whether sex trafficking is very well understood. Are the full dimensions of the problem clear, espe-

cially as they relate to ‘‘push and pull’’ factors involved with global immigration patterns, women’s

rights, poverty, inequality, and self-determination? What really is known about the demand side and

diversification in the commercial sex marketplace? Why do government policies and law enforce-

ment strategies appear ineffectual when the problems are supposedly widespread? Is the problem

more country-specific than originally thought?

To date, research that was focused solely on adult female sex trafficking as compared, for exam-

ple, with the trafficking of children, has been limited to just a few countries or regions. In the

absence of hard data, political ideologies have shaped criminal definitions of sex trafficking and

stereotypes of who commits the crimes. The hidden nature of trafficking has meant that policy

makers relied on anecdotal stories either from victims rescued by nongovernmental agencies or from

those women who came forward to report their experiences, but probably did so at great physical,

emotional, and financial risk. While there is agreement that victims’ voices should be heard, there is

concern that using them as the sole source for sampling has delimited research outcomes because of

selection bias.

Polarized, political agendas have further complicated investigation into the true nature of traffick-

ing. Some factions believe women are victims of their circumstances while others maintain prosti-

tutes make specific choices. These moral and philosophical differences have tended to reduce

opportunities to investigate prostitution and trafficking, and in some cases, jeopardized funding that

could have been used to conduct robust inquiries.

100 International Criminal Justice Review 23(1)