ACPO Report on sex trafficking criticised

Friday, 3rd September, 2010

A police report into sex trafficking in England and Wales will claim this week that there are only 2,600 women victims of the crime. The report has been criticised as "amateurish" by a senior police source.

Experts and politicians have questioned the accuracy of the research commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which will reignite the debate about the number of women and girls coerced into the sex industry. Of particular concern is the fact that no African victims of trafficking were found, despite a national shelter for trafficked women being at capacity with African victims.

The study, codenamed Project Acumen, relied on interviews with 254 women in London brothels and extrapolated the remaining national figure using newspaper reports and patchy existing data. It estimates that 17,000 foreign women work in the off-street sex industry but does not give data for the number of women who might be trafficked into street prostitution – or the number of British women that might be trafficked.

From The Independent - see full article