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Identifying Challenges to Improve the Investigation and Prosecution of State and Local Human Trafficking Cases

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Identifying Challenges to Improve the Investigation and Prosecution of State and Local Human Trafficking Cases April 2012 SUBMITTED TO: National Institute of Justice 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 SUBMITTED BY: Amy Farrell, Ph.D. Colleen Owens Jack McDevitt, Ph.D. Meredith Dank, Ph.D. Rebecca Pfeffer, M.A. William Adams, M.P.P. Stephanie Fahy, M.A. URBAN INSTITUTE JUSTICE POLICY CENTER NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE ON RACE AND JUSTICE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1 Introduction and Literature Review 1 2 Research Questions and Methodology 17 3 Characteristics of Human Trafficking Cases 36 4 Identification of Human Trafficking Cases 73 5 Investigating Human Trafficking Cases 104 6 State and Local Prosecution of Human Trafficking Cases 144 7 Federal Prosecution of Human Trafficking Cases 193 8 Conclusion 217 References 229 Appended Material Appendix A - State Anti-Trafficking Laws and Provisions (2003-2007) 234 Appendix B: State Legislation at 2007 and Federally Funded Human 236 Trafficking Task Force Strata Appendix C: Screening Letter 237 Appendix D: Screening Telephone Interview Protocol and Questions 239 Appendix E: Study Site Descriptions 244 Appendix F: Request to Participate Letter and Certification Form 258 Appendix G: Closed Case Review Sheet 261 Appendix H: Interview Consent Forms and Questions 271 Appendix I: Thematic Codes 292 Appendix J.: Non Trafficking Case Review 301 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of a number of people. We would especially like to thank Noam Perry, Laura Siller, Meghan Bibb, Samantha Lowry, Hannah Dodd and Darakshan Raja for their hard work organizing site visits, collecting data, coding case records and transcribing interview materials. We are also grateful for the work of Ryan Heitsmith, Cameron Boutin, Sean Roche, Chris Temple, Rick Neiman, Colin Pugh, Carey Walovich, Sarah Trager, Stephanie MacInnes, Robin Halberstadt and Juan Pedroza for transcribing interviews, coding case records and entering case data. Additionally we thank our colleagues at Northeastern University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center for supporting the authors and members of the research team during the course of data collection and analysis. We are grateful to the time and expertise provided by the project advisory board including Sergeant Chris Burchell, President and CEO Texas Anti-Trafficking In Persons & Child Sexual Exploitation Coalitions; Mark Elam, Director, Oklahomans Against Trafficking Humans; Mary Ellison, Director of Policy, Polaris Project; Elizabeth Fildes, Deputy, Erie County Sheriff’s Dept.; Maria Sanchez-Gagne, New Mexico Assistant Attorney General; Samir Goswami, Director of Corporate Responsibility, Rule of Law, LexisNexis; Amanda Kloer, Program Associate, ABA; Anna Rodriguez, Executive Director, Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking; Karen Stauss, Director of Research, Free the Slaves. We are also grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions from the panel of anonymous reviewers. The data collected for this report would not have been possible without the willingness of law enforcement agencies, victim service providers and prosecutors to speak candidly with us about very challenging issues. In particular, the access that participating law enforcement agencies provided to closed case records and incident reports provided tremendous insight into the investigation and prosecution of early human trafficking cases. Finally, this research would not have been possible without the support of the National Institute of Justice. In particular, senior social scientists Karen Bachar and John Picarelli provided feedback and encouragement throughout the project. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW Background Chapter Overview Over the past several decades, the problem of human Since the passage of the TVPA in 2000, 49 states trafficking has received increased public attention. In the have enacted legislation criminalizing human United States, stakeholders from various interest groups trafficking, yet reports still indicate that fewer have publicized the problem and encouraged strong cases of human trafficking have been governmental responses (Batstone, 2007; Bales, 2008). In identified and prosecuted than would be expected. 2000, the federal government passed the Victims of There are many potential Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA). This law explanations for the gap between identified and defined a new set of crimes related to human trafficking1 estimated victims. One explanation is that law and enhanced penalties for existing offenses such as slavery, enforcement has yet to translate new laws into peonage and involuntary servitude. Under the TVPA, a action. Previous scholarship on new and severe form of trafficking in persons was defined as: newly prioritized crimes suggests a number of a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or legal, institutional and individual explanations coercion, or in which the person induced to perform explored here. such act has not attained 18 years of age; or the The purpose of this study is to examine practices recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or that improve the ability of local law enforcement obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the agencies to identify, investigate and prosecute use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of human trafficking cases. 1 These include forced labor (18 U.S.C. § 1589); trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude or forced labor (18 U.S.C. § 1590), sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud or coercion (18 U.S.C. §1591); unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of trafficking, peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude or forced labor (18 U.S.C. § 1592), benefitting financially from peonage, slavery and trafficking in persons (18 U.S.C. § 1593a) and attempting and conspiring to violate these provisions (18 U.S.C. § 1594). 1 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (TVPA, Section 103, 8a and b). The TVPA definition does not require transportation of victims across borders or state lines, but instead rests upon the 13th Amendment principles of preventing slavery, or involuntary servitude in any form. The TVPA and its reauthorizations in 2003, 2005 and 2008 include provisions to protect victims, prosecute offenders and prevent future trafficking. For example, the TVPA and its reauthorizations mandate restitution and forfeiture of assets upon conviction for trafficking offenses (18 U.S.C. § 1594, 1594,d-e, 2006) and include a civil remedy for human trafficking victims to be provided with compensation for losses (18 U.S.C. § 1595). The TVPA also establishes that non-citizen victims of human trafficking who participate in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking cases, or who are under 18 years of age, can qualify for refugee benefits and the opportunity to remain in the county through a special visa created for trafficking victims (T-visa) or through a certification of continued presence. The TVPA and its reauthorizations provided significant resources to support federal law enforcement to identify and prosecute trafficking offenders. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) created a specialized unit within the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division dedicated to the prosecution of human trafficking offenses. In 2009, the DOJ received a 50% increase in the funding dedicated to prosecution of federal human trafficking cases, bringing the Human Trafficking Prosecutions Unit budget to $5.3 million (ATEST, 2011). Despite the TVPA’s focus on federal prosecution of human trafficking, the federal criminal justice system cannot effectively prosecute all incidents of human trafficking occurring throughout the U.S. Local and state governments have traditionally been responsible for crime control in the U.S. As an illustration of this division of responsibility, the federal 2 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. courts handle only a small proportion of all criminal offenses. In 2008, approximately 80,000 criminal cases were filed in U.S. federal courts compared to over 21 million criminal cases filed in state courts (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). State and local authorities
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