Identifying the Victims of Human Trafficking‪.‬

FOR PROSECUTORS AND INVESTIGATORS, human trafficking cases can pose daunting challenges. Failure to recognize trafficking victims, inadequate resources to adequately investigate or prosecute, victims who are unwilling or too frightened to cooperate, insufficient statutory frameworks, complex jurisdictional analysis and lack of training are potential pitfalls for law enforcement professionals trying to respond to the incidence of trafficking within their communities. Despite these challenges, the existence of human trafficking in our communities demands an appropriate institutional response. Prosecutors and investigators are well-versed in the analysis of specific acts to determine whether crimes have been committed. Our focus on the specificity of these acts is often so narrow, however, that we might fail to recognize larger criminal conspiracies underlying exploitive labor and sex trafficking relationships. Human trafficking is best understood as a collection of crimes bundled together rather than a single criminal event. Investigating and prosecuting human trafficking requires complex law enforcement activities, an understanding of the dynamics of human trafficking in all of its permutations (sex trafficking, labor trafficking, trafficking of both foreign born and/or domestic victims), a complex jurisdictional analysis, familiarity with federal, state, local and nongovernmental resources and collaboration with multiple organizations at all levels.