Human trafficking is a prevalent and often-overlooked issue throughout the world.¹ It can prove difficult to combat, and law enforcement agencies may not know where to begin.

Free Training Resources

Learning the basics about human trafficking is possible without tapping into the training budget. There exist many reports, discussions, training modules, and other resources available online at no charge.

• The National Human Trafficking Hotline offers statistics by state, as well as a resource library.³
• Polaris provides statistics and reports focused on specific types of trafficking.⁴
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign offers basic information and support for law enforcement.⁵
• The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) supplies a guide, toolkit, training course, and other resources.⁶
• AEquitas develops and publishes resources related to the investigation and prosecution of gender-based violence and human trafficking.⁷
• The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services provides a list of resources for law enforcement agencies, including a screening tool to use when interviewing victims.⁸
• HEAL (Health, Education, Advocacy, Linkage) Trafficking focuses on serving public health professionals; the Protocol Toolkit may be a useful reference when designing protocols for local multidisciplinary teams.⁹
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government offers print resources related to local governments and community coalitions.¹⁰
• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides training and resources for law enforcement, especially regarding cases involving children.¹¹
• The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office for Victims of Crime, Training and Technical Assistance Center, offers free training from a variety of experts in the field.¹²
• DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and Office for Victims of Crime have funded human trafficking task forces for over a decade.¹³
• Additionally, law enforcement can reach out to funded task forces in their area to get information on statistics, training, and other resources.

Human trafficking is a complex crime that requires reconsideration of inaccurate stereotypes and attitudes that individuals often assume are true. Additionally, traffickers are highly adaptive predators, skilled at noticing exploitable vulnerabilities and capable of rapidly making changes to adapt to threats or opportunities in their environments.

For these reasons, no single training resource will fully inform any officer in a single session. Agencies can enable successful learning about trafficking by allowing time between sessions to consider and integrate new or reframed knowledge. Additional sessions can deepen and broaden understanding of specific trafficker-victim-purchaser dynamics or business models.

For instance, a law enforcement agency decides to address illicit massage businesses in its area. One free applicable resource is a report on the topic from Polaris. It provides foundational information that could inform the design of an investigative strategy, as well as a description of some successful approaches by the Indianapolis, Indiana, Metropolitan Police Department.¹⁴

Signs of Trafficking

Human trafficking often is “hidden in plain sight” in communities. Whereas Hollywood regularly uses imagery of physical restraints and kidnapping, in reality the indicators of trafficking can be much more subtle and situational. Emotional manipulation and coercion are the primary tools of traffickers who intentionally exploit the personal vulnerabilities of victims.

This list of “red flags” is illustrative rather than exhaustive. Different forms of trafficking generate variations in the indicators that outsiders might notice. The presence of any single sign does not necessarily prove human trafficking. However, the occurrence of several warrants additional attention.

View of the Problem

Intentionally or not, the language people use can deflect responsibility for or diminish the impact of trafficking.¹⁵ It is important to use accurate terms that avoid placing blame on victims instead of perpetrators.

• Child prostitute is an inaccurate term that stigmatizes victims—by law, there is no consent or choice when the victim is a minor. Instead, individuals should use victim/survivor of child sex abuse, trafficked minor, or commercially sexually exploited child.
• Rather than john or customer, the terms sex buyer or purchaser of commercial sex acts more clearly describe the circumstances. Softer words obscure the role that the purchaser plays in creating the demand for trafficking and, in the case of child trafficking, child abuse and sexual assault.
• Not only does the word pimp generate inaccurate and even cartoonish stereotypes, but popular culture also has softened it to mean “enhance” or “decorate,” like in some television shows. Instead, people should use trafficker to convey the role more accurately.
  

Similarly, individuals might use the term consent inaccurately with trafficking victims. Teenagers can choose to be sexually active, but legally they cannot consent to sell sex. People in desperate circumstances might originally consent to take a job only to find that the work situation is not as described.

Other ingrained assumptions become reframed as law enforcement officers learn about the science of trauma. They can gain information on the subject through training on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).¹⁶ Additionally, officers might need training to identify indicators of the many forms of exploitation—direct and indirect—that traffickers employ.

People’s attitudes about traffickers, victims, and purchasers are informed over their lifetimes by their intake of social values, media coverage, and biases. Communities tend to pay more attention to cases of sex, rather than labor, trafficking; child, instead of adult, victims; and domestic, rather than foreign-born, victims. Meanwhile, it can prove harder to hold traffickers and purchasers accountable when they are known or hold influence in local communities than when they are strangers.

Integration with Other Investigations

“Police learn about human trafficking during the course of other investigations (e.g., drug raids, domestic violence). Ninety-two percent of law enforcement agencies who identified [human trafficking] cases reported a connection between trafficking . . . and existing criminal networks.”¹⁷

Given that human trafficking intertwines with other crimes, one strategy to strengthen organizational response is to learn how to assess potential trafficking within the context of other investigations. Another tactic is to mine past case records for linkages to people, places, criminal acts, organized crime, or communication patterns.

The High Risk Victim Model represents one example of a related program. It focuses on flagging youths who have run away three or more times for outreach related to potential trafficking. This approach has proven successful in the prevention and identification of child sex trafficking victims.¹⁸

Federal law requires state child welfare agencies to screen for potential trafficking victims among youths in their care. Local law enforcement can reach out and team up with these agencies to ensure those identified or flagged as at-risk are reported to appropriate law enforcement agencies.¹⁹

Community Considerations and Partnerships

Personnel need to understand basic information about human trafficking, but they also need to assess which forms of trafficking likely will happen in their communities. An area’s environmental conditions determine which business models local traffickers more likely will use. For example, the types of trafficking in a popular tourist destination city differ from those in a farming community.

For that reason, agencies should customize training to focus on the needs of individual communities, whether on particular business models of trafficking, specific populations vulnerable to trafficking, or purchasers that create a unique market for trafficking.

The staff of other local government departments are in positions to see indicators of trafficking and potentially hold information useful for investigations. In 2018, researchers conducted focus groups of municipal and county government employees to assess which forms of trafficking they might come across during the normal course of their work.²⁰ Focus group participants reported having the potential to encounter 19 of the 25 business models of trafficking identified by Polaris in its groundbreaking report.²¹

The job positions most likely to see potential indicators include first responders and inspectors of any kind. While not necessarily confirmed cases of trafficking, local government staff described examples of situations that warrant additional attention:

• A public works crew called to clear a sewage pipe outside a massage parlor found it clogged with condoms.²²
• Environmental health inspectors saw evidence (e.g., beds in storage rooms, clothes drying on the dumpster out back) that restaurant staff lived on-site.
• A fire marshal checking for smoke alarms in a vape shop noticed a hidden room containing a bed, microwave, refrigerator, and barely conscious woman.
• An appraiser evaluating an upscale home noticed a basement filled with bunk beds that did not appear to be intended for visiting grandchildren.
• A public health department tracked its county’s unusually high rate of sexually transmitted diseases to one truck stop.
• While investigating charges of neglect, child protective workers found video on the mother’s phone of preteen siblings engaged in sexual activity.

If law enforcement agencies decide to focus on a particular business model of trafficking (such as illicit massage businesses) or a particular population vulnerable to trafficking (such as homeless persons), they must remember to invite peer professionals from other government departments and nonprofits to contribute to the discussion and planning. Human trafficking too often operates in full view, and many community members can hold vital knowledge about its dynamics, victims, and perpetrators.

Conclusion

Resources exist to help law enforcement agencies address human trafficking by deepening their understanding of and efficacy against perpetrators of this crime. Agencies must put effort into research, training, and communication with the community to combat trafficking. They can accomplish this with minimal funding and for immeasurable reward.