Definitions of Human Trafficking - Arkansas

Defined in Child Protection Law

Citation: Ann. Code §§ 9-27-303; 12-18-1201

The term 'abuse' includes recruiting, harboring, transporting, or obtaining a child for labor or services, through force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

The term 'sexually exploited child' means a person younger than age 18 who has been subject to sexual exploitation because any of the following apply:

• The person is a victim of trafficking of persons under § 5-18-103.
• The person is a victim of child sex trafficking under 18 U.S.C. § 1591.
• The person engages in an act of prostitution or sexual solicitation.

Definitions of Labor Trafficking

Citation: Ann. Code §§ 5-18-102; 5-18-103

The term 'involuntary servitude' means the inducement or compulsion of a person to engage in labor, services, or commercial sexual activity by means of the following:

• A scheme, plan, or pattern of behavior with a purpose to cause a person to believe that if he or she does not engage in labor, services, or commercial sexual activity, he or she or another person will suffer serious physical injury or physical restraint
• Abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process
• Causing or threatening to cause serious harm to a person
• Physically restraining or threatening to physically restrain another person
• Kidnapping or threatening to kidnap a person
• Taking another person's property
• The knowing destruction, concealment, confiscation, or possession of an actual or purported passport, other immigration document, or other government identification document of another person
• Extortion, blackmail, deception, fraud, coercion, duress, or menace
• Debt bondage or peonage
• The facilitation or control of a victim's access to an addictive controlled substance

The term 'debt bondage' means the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of the personal services of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the following apply:

• The value of the debtor's personal services is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt.
• The length and nature of the debtor's personal services are not respectively limited and defined.
• The principal amount of the debt does not reasonably reflect the value of the items or services for which the debt was incurred.

The term 'extortion' means the obtaining of property, labor, a service, credit, a commercial sexual activity, or a sexually explicit performance from another person through a wrongful use of force or fear.

The term 'serious harm' means any harm, whether physical or nonphysical, including without limitation psychological, financial, or reputational harm, that is sufficiently serious, under all the surrounding circumstances, to compel a reasonable person of the same background and in the same circumstances as the victim to perform or to continue performing labor or a service, a commercial sex act, or a sexually explicit performance in order to avoid incurring that harm.

The term 'victim of human trafficking' means a person who has been subjected to 'trafficking of persons.' A person commits the offense of 'trafficking of persons' if he or she knowingly does any of the following:

• Recruits, harbors, transports, obtains, entices, solicits, isolates, provides, or maintains a person knowing that the person will be subjected to involuntary servitude
• Benefits financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture described above
• Subjects a person to involuntary servitude
• Recruits, entices, solicits, isolates, harbors, transports, provides, maintains, or obtains a pregnant woman for the purpose of causing the pregnant woman by the use of or threatened use of physical force to place the baby who is not yet born for adoption
• Benefits financially or benefits by receiving anything of value from participating in an act described above to procure an infant for adoption

Definitions of Sex Trafficking of Minors

Citation: Ann. Code §§ 5-18-102; 5-18-103

The term 'commercial sexual activity' means a sexual act or sexually explicit performance for which anything of value is given, promised, or received, directly or indirectly, by a person.

The term 'sex act' means any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of gratifying the sexual desire of a person. 'Sex act' includes without limitation the touching of the person as well as touching by the person, whether directly or through clothing.

The term 'sexually explicit performance' means an act or show, whether public or private, live, photographed, recorded, or videotaped, with a purpose to either appeal to the prurient interest or depict, in a patently offensive way, a sex act and do so in a way that lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The term 'sexually explicit performance' includes, without limitation, any performance that depicts a sex act by a minor or that would create criminal liability under §§ 5-27-303 or 5-27-304.

A person commits the offense of 'trafficking of persons' if he or she knowingly does any of the following:

• Recruits, entices, solicits, isolates, harbors, transports, provides, maintains, or obtains a minor for commercial sexual activity
• Sells or offers to sell travel services that he or she knows includes an activity prohibited above

It is not a defense to prosecution for an act described above that the actor did not have knowledge of a victim's age or mistakenly believed a victim was not a minor.