Human trafficking: from police arrest of suspect to prosecutor’s indictment to court verdict: scientific correlation from quantitative to qualitative (case study - Serbia)

The expansion of human trafficking in the territory of Serbia occurred at the end of the last decade of the twentieth century. At that time, during the communist era, Serbia faced a structural crisis in the political, economic, normative legal, ethical and social spheres, as well as in the entire security sphere of citizens’ public life. In addition, the national security system was not organizationally or functionally ready to counter the new form of criminal activities such as human trafficking with criminal operations, and its territory covered - as the research results show, all forms: destinations, transit routes and countries of origin of the victims of that serious crime. The research was conducted using quantitative and qualitative methods and follows the correlation between the number of suspects arrested by the police and filed criminal charges with the prosecutor; number of indictments filed by the prosecutor on the basis of the criminal charges filed by the police against the suspects; and the number of convictions by the court on the basis of indictments for the commission of the criminal offense of human trafficking. Excerpts from research findings indicate that a negative correlation has been confirmed in the direction from police arrest and police criminal report to indictment and court verdict. The negative correlation reaches the level of one third of the total number of arrested who are suspected of having committed the criminal offense of human trafficking, and were never convicted.