Books

Below you can find information on my most recent book publications.

Criminology Explains Human Trafficking (University of California Press)

Criminology Explains Human Trafficking (2024) provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of criminological theory as it applies to the topic of human trafficking. The book uses real-life applications and case studies to highlight the connections between theory, research, and policy. A diverse range of criminological theories are covered in order to understand different forms of trafficking, victims versus offenders, the role of migration and globalization, domestic and international law, anti-trafficking efforts, and more. Through the use of discussion questions, activities, and policy boxes, students come away with a deeper understanding of theory as it applies to the field of human trafficking, including how various levels of analysis from the local to the global are often linked. The book is available from the University of California Press, linked here.

Human Trafficking Hysteria (Routledge)

Through cultural criminology, Human Trafficking Hysteria: Historical and Modern Perspectives on Moral Panics, Media, and Crime brings together existing research to provide an overview of historical and modern moral panics related to human trafficking.

What do you picture when you hear the words human trafficking? Perhaps you imagine someone kidnapped and sold as shown in films or worry that sex trafficking increasingly occurs online or in big cities during major events. While sex trafficking does occur, the reality of human trafficking is complex, though this reality is often obscured by the media. The media has played a large role in shaping understanding of this crime, with panics, conspiracies, and misinformation abounding. This book uses cultural criminology to break down historical and modern panics to understand the links between media portrayals of human trafficking, perpetuation of stereotypes, and influences on policy. The text examines the impacts of human trafficking panics perpetuated by media, including understanding the origins of human trafficking in the nineteenth-century White slave panic, the ways that popular media perpetuates stereotypes, the reality of trafficking at sporting events, and the role of social media in generating misinformation.

Human Trafficking Hysteria is a valuable resource for criminology and sociology classes, as well as special-topics classes on sex crimes, victimization, or the media. The book is available from Routledge, linked here.

Human Trafficking in the Era of Global Migration (Bristol University Press)

Factors such as inequality, gender, globalization, corruption, and instability clearly matter in human trafficking. But does corruption work the same way in Cambodia as it does in Bolivia? Does instability need to be present alongside inequality to lead to human trafficking? How do issues of migration connect? Using migration, feminist, and criminological theory, this book asks how global economic policies contribute to the conditions which both drive migration and allow human trafficking to flourish, with specific focus on Cambodia, Bolivia, and The Gambia. Challenging existing thinking, the book concludes with an anti-trafficking framework which addresses the root causes of human trafficking. Human Trafficking in the Era of Global Migration: Unraveling the Impact of Neoliberal Economic Policy is available from Bristol University Press, linked here.