POLICE will set up Scotland's first unit to combat people trafficking after stinging criticism of their failure to secure a single conviction for the crime.
Scotland on Sunday can reveal that a special dedicated team will tackle the organised crime groups smuggling humans into the country, mostly women destined for the sex trade. Strathclyde Police has agreed to create the group, which will cover nearly
half of the population of Scotland.
The move comes after a Scottish Government paper earlier this month found the police were failing to deal with the scourge of people trafficking or even understand its scale.
Government researchers said that Scottish forces had a "gap" in their intelligence on the crime, which is often carried out by foreign gangs. Most of the victims of the crime, moreover, are foreign and rarely co-operate with the authorities.
The report said: "In England and Wales, there have been a number of successful prosecutions for human trafficking, resulting in some of the largest sentences in Europe. While there have been prosecutions for brothel keeping and other offences in suspected human trafficking cases in Scotland, there have been none for human trafficking to date."
A total of 79 people believed to have been trafficked into Scotland came into contact with public authorities in 2007-08. Most were women being exploited in the sex industry.
One police source said: "A lot of these people are coming from south-east Asia and China and are being trafficked by the same Chinese gangs that are behind things like cannabis cultivations and counterfeit DVDs.
"As far as we know, most of them are coming through England, but some come through Ireland or other European countries."
The Government report said that most of the victims of people trafficking identified north of the border had entered the UK using fake ID. Most were found to have no documents at all when they came to the attention of the police. Typically the victims were women and their travel to the country was handled by agents.
Researchers, however, said police and other authorities had an "unclear intelligence picture" of the nature of those agents – essentially traffickers – and that problems with language and culture made it harder for them to overcome such barriers.
Police sources are also concerned that some foreigners may be being trafficked into Scotland to work in underground cannabis factories and other illegal enterprises.
