Procedural Justice and Therapeutic Frameworks for Police Interactions with Migrant Populations Experiencing Forced Labour
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI can only comment on the sections about labor trafficking as I have no background in policing or procedural justice. Just a few minor points:
- I recommend not referring to labor trafficking as modern day slavery for a varety of reasons, including that it differs from chattel slavery and I do not think the characterization offers much to the reader.
- I might revise this sentence to make clearer that not all migrant labor trafficking victims have mental health issues: "While police often struggle to recognise cases of forced labour among migrant groups, 147 migrant individuals experiencing forced labour may come to the attention of the police through virtue of their mental illness "
Author Response
Reviewer 1
I can only comment on the sections about labor trafficking as I have no background in policing or procedural justice. Just a few minor points:
- I recommend not referring to labor trafficking as modern day slavery for a varety of reasons, including that it differs from chattel slavery and I do not think the characterization offers much to the reader.
This point has been acknowledged. We recognise modern day slavery is a problematic term and the use of this term has been minimised to where it is clear that this relates directly to UK legislation.
- I might revise this sentence to make clearer that not all migrant labor trafficking victims have mental health issues: "While police often struggle to recognise cases of forced labour among migrant groups, 147 migrant individuals experiencing forced labour may come to the attention of the police through virtue of their mental illness "
Sentence revised
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see the attachment.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Many thanks for the comments and the opportunity to further develop this article. We have highlighted our proposed changes in blue throughout this cover letter as well as in an attachment and have also provided a clean version of the updated paper. I hope the extra balance to the academic argument that you have collectively requested is now clear.
Best Wishes,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is a clear, well-written piece, relevant to the field and presented in a well-structured manner. There is a lot of good supporting literature, including many recent publications. It argues that procedural justice policing can be effective in producing amenable responses from marginalised populations with higher self-uncertainty, like newly arrived migrant people experiencing forced labour, than other forms of police response. Other than the points I make below, the cogency of particular arguments is good.
I have a few bigger challenges to make, but I suspect these can be addressed by qualifying the arguments made, rather than requiring any large restructuring of the article (unless you wish to). Given that this is a theoretical article, in that there is no primary research, it seems particularly worth interrogating the argument on these points:
- You do include sections acknowledging the real threat from the state (including the police) posed to the populations most subjected to forced labour, which is good. But I am not convinced that this reality is sufficiently integrated into the argument being made. I will break down my point.
- I accept that migrant populations who are experiencing much forced labour are likely to have higher self-uncertainty and may be more affected by procedural justice policing.
- I accept that procedural justice policing may make vulnerable migrant people more amenable to the police.
- I don’t accept that this makes procedural justice policing an inevitably good thing, which seems like the underlying assumption. The caution displayed by undocumented people is a necessary survival strategy in the face of oppressive immigration systems that threaten detention centres, deportation and other devastating outcomes. If changing the way first responder police officers interact with vulnerable people in order to encourage them to trust them ultimately leads to more undocumented people being subjected to the violence of immigration systems, then procedural justice policing can be harmful, exploiting vulnerability and self-uncertainty to draw undocumented people into a system that will not improve their lives. The amount of resistance to entering victim support systems displayed by undocumented people should illustrate how much the caution of non-citizens should be validated, rather than something to be overcome.
At one point you claim that process matters more than outcome. But where the outcome is deportation, having a process that “feels dignified" and where they had “trusted” the police, it is hard to imagine that process will be more important than outcome. I recognise that this undermines the overtly positive advocacy for procedural justice policing that the article currently puts forward, but given the choice to focus on forced labour and migrants with insufficient documentation, it seems very important that this threat is made more overtly clear. You mention that offenders rely upon the exploitation of uncertainty, but as much critical literature on anti-trafficking has addressed, policing such as that which you propose runs the risk of exploiting the same uncertainty to similarly harmful effects. (I am happy to provide literature on this if you would like).
More should be included on the legitimacy of undocumented people/exploited migrants evading police engagement and not trusting the police (in Western societies, not just the alluded to authoritarian regimes) given the political objectives waged against them.
- Much of the literature that you draw on to evidence the mutual benefits of procedural justice policing is with citizens. Even the literature you reference by Murphy and McPherson when mentioning research with “immigrant populations”, is solely based on citizens. They write: “All participants had to be Australian citizens (so illegal immigrant status did not confound results)”. I recognise that the literature is based on marginalised populations, so one might be able to infer that these conclusions apply to other marginalised groups (non-citizens), but there are reasons for thinking those conclusions may not apply. Large numbers of those subjected to forced labour do not have status in the countries they are victimised in. As mentioned above, the threats from law enforcement are part of what keep people in these situations of exploitation. Rather than assuming literature on citizens can be easily equated with assumptions about how non-citizens would respond to procedural justice policing, some consideration should be given to the idea that people with citizenship may respond very differently to the police than people without citizenship, and that this affects what conclusions we can draw from that literature.
You discuss “policing by consent” and the importance of people feeling trust in the police, but non-citizens are framed by many states as problems that the citizenry need protecting from. At the very least, I think this gap in the literature should be acknowledged and the assumption being made should be highlighted.
- Finally, the discussion of self-uncertainty is really interesting and is not a field I was familiar with. At times, however, the actual state threat seems sidelined, and it almost sounds like the real social dangers can be collapsed into a discussion of the vulnerable person’s psychology. I think it comes across like that because your focus is on working out how to encourage the migrants’ engagement with the police, regardless of positive or negative long-term outcomes. I think as you a) make clearer the relevance of the state threat to their caution and reluctance to engage, and b) the importance of such caution to their survival strategies, this issue will be resolved.
I think the simplest ways to address the above that would require the least, is for the limitations and value priorities to be made overt and qualifiers to the arguments put forward:
- A few sentences expressing caution about applying literature on citizens to non-citizens and the reasons why the responses could actually be very different rather than similar to those included in current research.
- A paragraph explaining that given the large-scale threat that policing poses to these populations in the context of immigration controls, how procedural justice policing could be exploiting the trust of vulnerable people into systems that harm them.
- I think a paragraph explaining the importance, reasonableness and logic of avoiding police as a survival strategy of migrant people without status is a vital context to include.
- It may be that you want to add or edit other lines elsewhere in the article in the light of these additions to the contextual framework. Because I have discussed these points here, I haven’t included them in the specific comments on the text below, but there were numerous places where the reasonableness of evading the police, or the dangers of the police nurturing trust through initial interactions, stood out to me as understated in the article.
As ever, the above concentrates more on issues to address, but that should not cause alarm. While these points are focused on foundational theoretical elements of the article, I do not think that major restructuring is required. All other elements of the discussion are clear, well-evidenced and interesting.
Specific comments on the text
Introduction – The second paragraph from section 2 on the immigration system is good. I think including a sentence on that in the introduction would be helpful context.
61 – I think a definition of ‘forced labour’ would be beneficial.
81 – “lead” not “led”.
121 – Perhaps this could be a place to discuss the legitimacy of fear of the police. If people are right to fear the police, how does that affect endeavours to encourage trust in the police, like procedural justice policing?
133 – Another reason to question whether interacting with the police is a good idea for forced labourers.
134 – “the threat posed by forced labour” is a confusing phrase. Isn’t forced labour what people are threatened with?
147 – This mentions police struggling to identify forced labour. But there is also an issue of people being over-identified as victims. People being identified and referred to as victims when they don’t find that helpful, drawn into an immigration system that harms them through victim identification.
226 – If non-compliance leads to “greater authoritarian action”, what’s the distinction with the “authoritarian policing model” it is being contrasted with in other countries?
275 – Can you double check that the referenced article (Hinds and Murphy) supports the statement “particularly in interactions with newly arrived or established migrant populations”. Happy to be corrected but it doesn’t seem to be the focus of that study and I can’t see it mentioned.
275-277 – This is a clear example of where the logics applied to citizens cannot be automatically applied to non-citizens. How can somebody “align their behaviour with the rules, norms, and laws of a society” through policing if their very existence in that society is illegalised, and where their detection runs the risk of detention, deportation etc.?
305-307 – But their “trustworthiness” is confined by institutional objectives. The officer as an individual isn’t the only thing the migrant needs to be able to reliably trust in. What of the system that “trustworthy” officer is drawing them into?
307-308 – These two lines say “citizens” three times, but the migrants in question are often not citizens.
317 – “…outcomes that benefit both the police and public.” So which should be prioritised when the police and the public cannot both be beneficiaries?
376, 372-373 – “provides a method to ameliorate such unpleasant feelings” like “unpleasant feelings about one’s…societal status”. Those unpleasant feelings are bound up in caution, awareness, self-defence. Important strategies of self-defence in the context of a system that threatens them. I would encourage caution about presenting the amelioration of such feelings as an inevitably good thing.
383-386 – “perceptions around legal and cultural status in a new country”. Again, careful not to collapse the issue down into their perception, as though the concern is based on that perception and the solution is to make them feel better. Real threats lead to feelings of hyper-caution, which is an important defence mechanism, and one that shouldn’t be dismantled through a performance of trustworthiness. I would certainly keep the discussion of “stigma”, but the threat from the police for undocumented people is worse than the police contributing to stigma (for instance, they can detain and deport).
392-395 – This is quite sweeping. At the very least, the positive possibilities that come from engaging with people who share their social position and vulnerability should also be discussed. Undocumented people depend a lot on people of similar social positions because they have to, and a lot of survival is achieved that way. It’s not all exploitation. This matters again for acknowledging why the logic of police evasion is not to be dismissed but recognised as a legitimate and logical course of action for many people who are oppressed by the state.
404-405 – That can’t be resolved through the training of frontline officers though, can it? The processes by which those people rightly fear revictimisation by the police is not just about initial interaction, but the processes they will then be subjected to as people with insufficient status. Also, I don’t think prosecution of perpetrators is a priority for victims of exploitation.
409-410 – Hence my concern about the manipulative possibilities of adapting frontline officers’ interactions to change migrant perceptions of an institutional/systemic trustworthiness.
426-434 – Yes! I think this needs to weigh in on more of the discussions in the article. And [431-432] whose “primary concern” should be prioritised where these differ?
461-462 – Yes, indeed, their vulnerability and uncertainty can be exploited by the police.
475-480 – Where the police are rightly not trusted, interagency collaboration can also put people off other services where they would have been safer. It is documented that people avoid charities and services that are seen as having connections to government, policing and immigration control.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Many thanks for the comments and the opportunity to further develop this article. We have highlighted our proposed changes in blue throughout this cover letter as well as in an attachment and have also provided a clean version of the updated paper. I hope the extra balance to the academic argument that you have collectively requested is now clear.
Best Wishes,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper is not ready for publication in the present form.
On the top of page 2 of the response the author(s) state, “this additional context is provided via international law rather than local laws due to this being a theoretical paper and the desire to compare different contexts and literature.”
However, the paper is not framed as addressing international law on labor trafficking. If this is what the focus is, then the international conventions on labour trafficking need to be included. Also, how do international labour trafficking laws affect the local policing at the street level?
Later, at the bottom of page 2 of the response, the author(s) state, “we have tried not to engage with the legal issues in this paper and to instead engage with a social interactions perspective.” How could the authors avoid engaging with legal issues when the topic of the paper are on labor trafficking and procedural justice, both of which are legal issues.
The issue continues when the authors mentioned that they “tried not to get into the complex structures of policing.” Again, the paper is on policing, so the very focus of the paper is to address the complex police structures that shape perceptions of procedural justice among victims of human trafficking. It is the local police that are having interactions with the victims, so I am confused as to why there is a purposeful avoidance of examining that relationship, given the paper is on police interactions.
My suggestion is that if the focus is going to be on international law, then discuss the international conventions on human trafficking and discuss how you think those laws will impact the procedural justice of local policing in labour trafficking cases.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
On the top of page 2 of the response the author(s) state, “this additional context is provided via international law rather than local laws due to this being a theoretical paper and the desire to compare different contexts.” However, the paper is not framed as addressing international law on labour trafficking. If this is what the focus is, then the international conventions on labour trafficking should be included.
A new paragraph has been added at line 163 to help explain how international commitments laid out in the Palermo Protocol have shaped responses to human trafficking. This partly addresses the point below too in recognising the international commitments that have shaped the development of domestic law.
Later, at the bottom of page 2 of the response the author(s) state, “we have tried not to engage with the legal issues in this paper and to instead engage with a social interactions perspective.” How could the authors avoid engaging with legal issues when the topic of the paper are on procedural justice, both of which are legal issues.
The section from line 160 to line 188 has been adapted to explain how states have move to criminalise forced labour whilst also acknowledging the limitations of this legislation in practice due to the relative invisibility of the population being policed. Due to limitations in space, the paper does not go into detail about each country’s domestic legislation. The first draft of this paper addressed domestic legislation in much more detail but feedback from the reviewers led to the removal of these sections as it was believed the paper could not address the complexity of the legal issues within the space required.
The issue continues when the authors mentioned that they “tried not to get into the complex structures of policing.” Again, the paper is on policing so the very focus of the paper is to address the complex police structures that shapes perceptions of procedural justice having interactions with the victims, so I am confused on why there is a purposeful avoidance of examining that relationship given the paper is on police interactions.
The section from line 245 to line 257 has been adapted to articulate the commonalities in policing structure and organisation across the countries being analysed in the article. A brief explanation has been provided about the historic similarities in community-focused policing models.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsBased on the abstract, I read this paper with great interest. The manuscript outlines a conceptual argument for the application of procedural justice to the study and response to the experiences of migrant populations, particularly those with 'self-uncertainty'. While the extant literature on procedural justice policing is vast, as the authors rightly note, this topic has not been explored. Overall, the paper is well written and demonstrates a strong understanding of the theories and perspectives presented within it. As a general point, the authors might consider avoiding the use of such lengthy sentences (for example, page 1 first paragraph). The meaning tends to get lost in these longer sentences. In addition, the arguments made were somewhat difficult to follow. Greater use of headings/sub headings could aid in the flow of the paper and make it easier for the reader to follow. Something to keep in mind for future writing.
The key concern I have of the paper however, is whether the paper makes a clear contribution to the field. In reading the paper, it was hard to determine the strength of the contribution as it currently stands. As noted above, this is indeed an interesting and important topic. However, by solely presenting a conceptual paper, rather than one supported by an empirical study, in my view, the application of the current paper is limited. I suspect that this paper has been carved out of a larger study. If this is the case, I strongly encourage the authors to develop a paper that draws on the conceptual framework presented here AND combines it with the empirical study. In my view, that study could make an important and clear contribution to the field. I hope the authors are not discouraged by this review as the topic and bases of the paper are important. In my view, however, the paper in it's current form cannot stand alone if it seeks to make a meaningful contribution to the field, whether that be theoretically and/or empirically. I wish the authors all the best with their future work.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to review the paper. My expertise on this topic is limited to just part of what you discuss; I did not address the sections on self-uncertainty or the details of approaches to policing for this reason.
I think that the premise of the paper is interesting and encourage you to focus on it in more depth and to remove some of the extraneous assertions that I do not think are fully supported (e.g., the comparative statements about legislation of different state actors).
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsHere’s a summary of a review for a research paper that needs improvement and additional support:
Overall, the paper provided a good understanding regarding issues related to forced labor. I found that the arguments were clear and the paper was well structured. However, there were several areas that need additional support/citations. The paper would benefit from making stronger connections between the aims of the study and how it builds off the supporting literature. Additionally, I suggest incorporating more recent works. I would suggest spending additional time addressing policy and program implications.
