The Children’s Society has called for a national human trafficking database for children who are at risk of being kidnapped and exploited in England.
The call for a database came after two girls told BBC Inside Out of how they were exploited and trafficked all around the country.
“If we created a national database then we’d be able to make sure that every missing person can be recorded,” Sam Royston, representative of the charity, stated.
Royston is calling for a database that have workers file missing person’s reports. He hopes that this will help officials find the missing child before they are exploited and that it will inhibit the practice of exploitation. He wants the database to be accessible to all, so everyone, including employers, can help get the abducted child home.
“You might have situations where staff just don’t realize it’s important to check whether the young person they are working with is known to the missing [person’s] service, or the sexual health service,” said Royston.
It is Royston’s hope that if the database is enacted, it will help in the prosecution process after the child is found, so the abductor is punished for the crimes he or she committed, because today, not many prosecutions occur for the perpetrator if the victim is found.
While Royston is making a push for a national database to be created, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime launched a global database for trafficked victims in October 2011.
The database includes information of “nationalities of the victims and their perpetrators, trafficking routes, verdicts… related to prosecuted cases from around the world… The database is aimed at assisting judges, prosecutors, policymakers… by making available details of real cases with examples of how the respective national laws in places can be used to prosecute human trafficking.”
The report that accompanied the database stated that at least 127 countries had victims of trafficking, and that 2.4 million people are becoming victims of exploitation at any second.
– Kori Withers