High-profile traffickers aren't getting away with it because of corruption, but because of math.

We often assume that elite child sex trafficking networks survive because they pay off the right people. This paper argues it’s actually a structural feature of international law: these networks are designed to exist in the 'seams' between countries where no single state has full jurisdiction. National-level prosecution is mathematically and structurally insufficient to stop them because they exploit the very concept of sovereignty. It’s not a lack of will; it’s a design flaw in how the world is governed. To fix it, we have to rethink the idea that a nation's borders are the limit of its justice.