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Fifty Ways Local Government Officials Can Confront Human Trafficking in Their Communities

NCJ Number
228000
Author(s)
Kelly Heinrich; Stephen Warnath
Date Published
2008
Length
61 pages
Annotation
One of a series of guidebooks that provides practical resources for countering human trafficking efforts, this guidebook provides an introduction to the types of initial steps that local governments can take in countering human trafficking for the purposes of forced commercial sex and slave labor.
Abstract
The first chapter presents a framework for implementing antitrafficking efforts. It involves prevention, prosecution, and protection measures ("3Ps"). Action measures are listed under each of the "Ps." Chapter 2 explains why a local government's response to human trafficking is so important. It notes that although national and State laws have recognized trafficked persons to be crime victims, they have often been treated by local law enforcement and prosecutors as criminals. Involvement by local officials is thus a necessary component for ensuring effective and appropriate implementation of antitrafficking responses. Chapter 3 profiles the traffickers' local communities as individuals, couples, small business owners, corporations, gangs, or criminal networks organized in a variety of ways. Chapter 4 profiles the victims of trafficking as having a range of characteristics. In serving victims of trafficking, local communities must be able to communicate with non-English-speaking persons from other cultures; the young and the elderly; men and women; citizens or noncitizens; and those who have suffered sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Chapter 5 discusses why it is important to confront human trafficking in a local community, because it is a threat to public safety and community well-being, public health, and the local economy. Chapter 6 outlines 50 ways local government officials can counter human trafficking in their communities. Based in the "3Ps" mentioned in the first chapter, these actions provide a solid foundation upon which to build in organizing local antitrafficking efforts. The concluding chapter presents these 50 recommendations in the form of a planning tool. A listing of 14 resources