Human Exploitation and Trafficking

Human exploitation and trafficking are widespread, constantly changing, and hard to detect. This narrative review examines these crimes as forms of coercive benefit extraction. It synthesizes multidisciplinary evidence on exploiter tactics, trafficking modalities, and victim characteristics across regions and sectors. We foreground actual behavior over legal complexities while acknowledging contested definitions, variable enforcement priorities, and measurement challenges. Combining criminological insights with behavioral economic analysis, we map common mechanisms across domains—labor, sexual, criminal, and other forms of exploitation—highlighting how exploiters secure control and compliance. Throughout, the review provides curated entry points to the rapidly expanding post–Palermo Protocol literature, prioritizing recent systematic surveys. By treating exploitation as an extractive behavioral strategy and tracing regularities across domains, we aim to encourage knowledge transfer between fields and disciplines. In conclusion, we chart promising research directions for scholars and emerging avenues for action in prevention, detection, and prosecution for practitioners in the field.