This research investigates human trafficking in Bangladesh through a critical interrogation of the victim–offender dichotomy, with a specific focus on how roles within trafficking networks are shaped, constrained, and transformed over time. Semi-structured interviews with 46 key stakeholders, including victims, academics, law enforcers, and service providers, were conducted. Thematic analysis of interview data explores recruitment dynamics, structural factors sustaining trafficking, and the fluidity of victimhood and perpetration. The results demonstrate that recruitment frequently operates through close social and familial ties, where trust and obligation are mobilised to legitimise deceptive migration opportunities. Economic precarity, manifested through poverty, unemployment, and debt, significantly constrains agency, rendering high-risk migration a rational survival strategy rather than an informed choice. Significantly, the article shows how some victims later assume intermediary or recruitment roles, often under coercion or misinformation, which often blurs conventional distinctions between exploitation and complicity. Employing the concepts of constrained agency and role reversibility, the study challenges binary legal and policy frameworks that treat victimhood and perpetration as fixed categories. The insight contributes to trafficking scholarship by demonstrating how structural inequality reshapes moral, legal, and institutional responsibility. Finally, the article informs policy by advocating survivor-protective legal frameworks, accountability-focused recruitment governance, and gender-responsive protections that strengthen access to justice and reduce re-victimisation.

This article investigates industrial environmental crime along the Karnaphuli River in Bangladesh through the lenses of Green Criminology and the Legal Personhood of Nature. Using a qualitative case study design, it draws on interviews with key stakeholders, field observations across three industrial zones, and analysis of national and regional newspaper reports. The findings show that persistent pollution is sustained by a state–industry nexus, weak enforcement, and discursive practices that frame environmental harm as routine “pollution” rather than crime. Political pressure and institutional constraints further limit regulatory accountability. While the Bangladeshi courts have recognised rivers as legal persons, this status remains weakly operationalised in practice. The study argues that conceptualising environmental destruction as crime and strengthening independent enforcement institutions are essential for advancing ecological accountability. By situating environmental harm within postcolonial governance dynamics, the article contributes empirically and theoretically to debates in Southern Green Criminology.

Community policing (CP) in Bangladesh was introduced with the expectation that closer police – community cooperation would enhance public safety and legitimacy. However, its outcomes remain uneven and modest. Employing a mixed-methods research design, this article examines CP as a translated and co-constituted reform shaped by colonial institutional legacies, organisational cultures, and local political dynamics. Using a southern criminological and postcolonial analytical framework, the study explores how globally circulating policing reform ideas are negotiated, re-signified, and constrained as they encounter embedded hierarchies and governance practices. The findings show that while CP has increased public awareness, episodic information sharing, and police visibility, its transformative potential is limited by politicised committee structures, hierarchical organisational logics, capacity constraints, and persistent public distrust. The analysis further reveals a marked disjuncture between official police narratives of success and more sceptical assessments offered by community members, journalists, and civil society actors. These findings demonstrate that CP’s limited impact cannot be understood solely as an implementation deficit. Rather, it reflects deeper structural and historical conditions through which policing reforms are rendered workable in postcolonial contexts. By positioning Bangladesh as a theoretically analytical case, the article contributes to debates on policing mobilities and reform in the Global South and offers a grounded basis for rethinking participatory policing models beyond North-derived assumptions.

Human trafficking remains a critical global development and security concern, but the specific dynamics affecting Bangladeshi citizens are underexplored. This qualitative study draws on 35 in-depth interviews with survivors and experts to examine how traffickers target individuals’ socio-economic vulnerabilities by making false promises of legitimate employment, better income, and brighter prospects abroad. Traffickers employ deceptive ‘soft’ recruitment tactics, which lead to forced labour, domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, and financial abuse, all enforced through threats, violence, and coercion. Survivors recount traumatic experiences, including confiscation of documents, constant surveillance, hazardous conditions, and repeated physical and psychological abuse. The findings underscore how socioeconomic factors drive migration and elevate individuals’ susceptibility to exploitation. The study calls for targeted interventions, strong protective legislation, and international cooperation to address the root causes of trafficking and support victims, aligning its recommendations with global priorities like SDG 1, SDG 5, and SDG 8.

Volume: VIII, Issue: IIIS, ISSN: 2454-6186

Issue: Volume 4; No. 09

The present study explored the current status of blaming the Bangladeshi women by understanding the blaming motives and identifying major domineers behind blaming. The study had purposively taken into consideration of two categories of crimes, including rape and sexual harassment. Primary data were collected using the case study method and eleven severe cases were selected from twenty-nine cases of Tangail district purposively. Four types of data sources were Tangail Police Station, Tangail Court Police, several NGOs (local and nationals), and local and national newspapers. The study found that gender with power and money were significant blaming motives in the context. Most of the respondents were victimized and further blamed and repeatedly victimized by their relatives rather than strangers. Moreover, patriarchy and public attitudes were prime domineers behind blaming. Consequently, the victim had to suffer and face anger, self-blame, disability, trauma, losing life, isolation, detention, defamation, threats and verbal assault, bullying or slangs, etc.

Social Science Review [The Dhaka University Studies, Part-D], Vol. 39, No.1, June 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3329/ssr.v39i1.64917 Published on 12th April, 2023

Volume 7, Number 1, June 2021, ISSN 2454-5694

Volume XXXII, 2014.

The main intent of the study was to find out the present nature of dark figure of crime in semi-urban Bangladesh through comparing police statistics and victimization survey. Therefore, Tongi thana of Gazipur district were randomly selected as a study area by using random digit method. Data have been collected from police statistics as well as victimization survey has also been conducted to understand the nature of dark figure of crime in semi-urban area. Victimization survey was conducted on three randomly selected wards (Ward-5, 9 and 11) to understand the nature of dark figure of crime. Sixty four samples were drawn out of 26000 populations above 12 years age by using purposive sampling technique. The study shows that corruption in systems, unwillingness of victims, negligence to the nature of crime and publicity are the most important reasons of the non-reporting of crime in respective area. Additionally, age of the respondents, nature of the occupation and income are moderately related to reporting of crime than gender, religion and marital status of the victims. The study concludes that majority (74%) of the crime incidences is non-reported and rate of dark figure is 178.29. So it is an urgent need for the Government to develop positive police public relation, smooth policing and criminal justice system, and swift crime prevention strategies for controlling and reducing crime wholly.