This seminal volume provides a rigorous doctrinal analysis of contemporary slavery through the lens of criminal law and legal dogmatics. It addresses the modern paradox of universal prohibition coexisting with thriving exploitation, offering a robust instrument for law interpretation in both domestic and international courts.

The treatise is organized into four sections. Section I establishes conceptual foundations, diagnosing slavery as an organic product of structural vulnerability within the global neoliberal model rather than a historical anomaly. It further provides a profound constitutionalist perspective on human dignity, a concept essential for a comprehensive understanding of slavery.

Section II maps international standards, tracing the evolution of Article 4 of the ECHR and ILO benchmarks. It elucidates the critical shift from legal ownership to the de facto exercise of powers attaching to ownership, maintaining the severity threshold required to distinguish human rights violations from mere labour malpractice.

A cornerstone of the work is the Anti-Slavery Model Legislation (The Guide to Domestic Legislation) in Section III. This template defines and provides penal frameworks for ten stand-alone forms of exploitation, including slavery, servitude, and forced labour. This section also offers comparative analyses of European and South American legal landscapes.

Section IV addresses institutions of heightened criminal relevance, including the non-punishment provision for victims, complexities in global supply chains, and the challenges of “borderless” criminal jurisdiction. It tackles corporate “ubiquity” and “forum shopping,” proposing models to ensure accountability in fragmented productive networks.

By assembling preeminent legal scholars and practitioners, this book transcends sociological description to provide the dogmatic precision required to narrow the space of impunity. It serves as an indispensable resource for understanding how diverse jurisdictions regulate the most heinous affronts to human freedom and legal personality.

Dr. Esteban Pérez Alonso is Full Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Granada, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1992 and was awarded the Extraordinary Doctoral Prize for his dissertation. He specializes in the general theory of criminal law as well as in the Special Part of criminal law. Over the past decade, his main line of research has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. He has directed and coordinated six edited volumes on this topic, and has published one monograph, three articles in international journals and three in national journals, as well as four book chapters in international publications and sixteen in national edited volumes. He has supervised three doctoral dissertations in this field and is currently supervising three more. In the last twelve years, he has led six research projects and has delivered more than sixty papers at national, European, and Ibero-American conferences. He has also contributed to the organization of fifteen national and international conferences and seminars. In 2022, he was appointed by the Spanish Ministry of Justice as a member of the Special Section of the General Codification Commission responsible for drafting comprehensive legislation against human trafficking and exploitation. He is currently Director of the Ibero-American Research Network on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and Human Rights (approved by AUIP in 2014), and Director of the Criminal Law and Human Rights Research Group of the Regional Government of Andalusia (SEJ-669).

Dr. Esther Pomares Cintas is Professor of Criminal Law. She holds a PhD in Criminal Law from the University of Granada (1996–2001), having completed her doctoral thesis at the Institut für die gesamten Strafrechtswissenschaften (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany). She is an expert in criminal law relating to illegal immigration, labour trafficking, and the criminalisation of forced labour as a form of modern slavery. She has worked as a consultant for national public institutions [Congress of Deputies; Andalusian Strategy for the Eradication of Trafficking (Regional Government of Andalusia), Member of the Special Section of the General Codification Commission for a legislative project against trafficking (Ministry of Justice)], and international public institutions [(Migration EU Expertise Project, International Centre for Migration Policy Development; Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries; external collaborator for the International Labour Organization (ILO)] and consultant to NGOs. She is the coordinator of the Ibero-American Research Framework on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and Human Rights (AUIP, University of Granada, 2014), comprising 130 researchers from 35 universities in 12 Ibero-American countries.

Dr. Ana Belén Valverde-Cano is a Ramón y Cajal Postdoctoral Researcher at the Criminal Law Department of the Complutense University of Madrid and a former researcher at the Rights Lab of the University of Nottingham. She holds a PhD with Extraordinary Award from the University of Granada, where she specialized in the criminal law treatment of contemporary forms of slavery. Her extensive research in this field includes the award-winning monograph "Más allá de la trata: el Derecho Penal frente a la esclavitud, la servidumbre y los trabajos forzados" (2023) and numerous publications in high-impact journals such as the Journal of Human Trafficking. Dr. Valverde-Cano has led and collaborated on several international research projects funded by organizations such as the UK Economic and Social Research Council and has served as a trainer for the International Labour Organization (ILO) for judges and prosecutors on forced labor standards.