Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffickers (2021–2022) User Reviews

Solid true-crime documentary

[trivium105 · 7/10 · 27 July 2021]

For those of us who love true crime documentaries and policework voyeurism then this is definitely a.mini-series worth watching, investigating sex worker trafficking in the UK.

As is often the case, the villains behind it seem like everyday normal people, they don't stand out in the slightest. Nothing revealed in this documentary really shocked me, I found it easy to believe this sort of thing goes on. The main learning point for me was just how much work and expense goes into acquiring the evidence to charge such people.

For those who only occasionally like watching true crime then I think there are more interesting documentaries to choose from, an easy example also coming from Channel 4 in the Crime and Punishment series.

Good effort, worth seeing but not essential viewing.

A good account of police work; and a sad picture of our society

[paul2001sw-1 · 8/10 · 1 January 2022]

I tend to think that in a decent world, prostitution would be well-paid and legal. Sadly, the actual sex industry is rife with exploitation. This series follows a police investigation into a medium-level criminal gang bringing women from Brazil to work in the UK. It's not literally a tale of "modern slavery" (in that we see no signs that the women are forced to work), but it's clear that some people grow rich from the limited choices available to others. The sheer amount of effort required to put together a case for conviction is on display; as usual in such programmes, so many of those questioned have been trained to univerally answer "no comment" that you almost end up liking those who respond with half-truths instead. The main suspect is ultimately convicted; but the wider societal problems remain utterly unsolved.