Assessing the Impact of State Human Trafficking Legislation on Criminal Justice System Outcomes

• Author: Amy Farrell,Vanessa Bouché,Dana Wolfe
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12124

Assessing the Impact of State Human Trafficking

Legislation on Criminal Justice System Outcomes

AMY FARRELL, VANESSA BOUCHE

´, and DANA WOLFE

Since 2003, state legislatures in the United States have been active in passing legislation aimed

at combating human trafficking. To date, all states have passed laws that criminalize acts of

human trafficking, though with significant variation in the penalty structure and associated

legal provisions. This article examines what aspects of state human trafficking laws are most

impactful at increasing the arrest and prosecution of human trafficking suspects. Using panel

data on state laws and associated enforcement actions from 2003 to 2012, this study confirms

that more comprehensive state laws that invest in antitrafficking resources are most strongly

associated with human trafficking arrests and prosecutions. States that make legislative provi-

sions for victim assistance, law enforcement training, statutory task forces, and mandatory

reporting have higher antitrafficking criminal enforcement. The political environment in which

state human trafficking laws are enacted also influences their enforcement.

I. INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, the American public and American political leaders have energetically

supported efforts to combat human trafficking. Despite changes in political administrations,

politicians have denounced the problem of “modern slavery,” and antitrafficking efforts

have received broad support. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both enacted

landmark antitrafficking legislation and devoted significant resources within the US Depart-

ment of Justice to fighting human trafficking. Although the political agenda of President

Trump is markedly different from his predecessors, just thirty-three days into office he held

a listening session with antitrafficking advocates, saying, “I want to make it clear today that

my administration will focus on ending the absolutely horrific practice of human trafficking.

And I am prepared to bring the full force and weight of our government . . . whatever we

can do, in order to solve this horrific problem” (White House 2017, 1). Seemingly, fighting

modern slavery is a political valence issue that everyone can get behind.

As such, starting in 2003, all fifty states passed legislation criminalizing acts of human

trafficking in order to strengthen the criminal justice system’s response to the problem.

We would like to thank Michael Walsh and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. This work

was supported by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice

(no. 2012-MU-CX-0027). The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this docu-

ment are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of Justice. All the

authors contributed equally to this work.

Address correspondence to: Amy Farrell, Northeastern University—School of Criminology and Criminal

Justice, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, USA 02115; Telephone: (617) 373-7439; Email: am.farrell@

northeastern.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 41, No. 2, April 2019

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12124

ISSN 0265-8240

States have also rushed to make other provisions in their laws that go beyond criminalization

in an attempt to combat human trafficking within their borders. Despite the torrent of state

legislation aimed at combatting human trafficking within this time frame, we lack system-

atic research on the impact of state antitrafficking policies on identifying trafficking victims

or holding offenders accountable. Up to this point, policymakers have been adopting laws

with little information about the types of legal change that are enforceable and effective in

combating the problem. As nongovernmental organizations, state legislators, and the pub-

lic continue to pressure states to pass more and better legislation, it is important to examine

which specific legislative provisions are the most effective for obtaining the outcomes

desired by a criminalization approach. Therefore, this research asks the following question:

What state-level antitrafficking legal provisions are most effective in yielding human traf-

ficking arrests and prosecutions?

We argue that there are a number of legislative strategies that may signal to key stake-

holders that certain crimes should be prioritized. Among the most direct is the passage

of criminalization legislation that severely punishes offenders. Therefore, we hypothesize

that highly punitive criminal sentences will yield more arrests for and prosecutions of

human trafficking in a given state. However, beyond punitive criminalization, we argue

that there are a number of other legislative strategies that may further incentivize the pri-

oritization of criminal enforcement, including investment of state resources, criminal jus-

tice system support, and civil actions. This leads to another set of hypotheses in which

we predict that measures beyond criminalization will also increase the numbers of

arrests for and prosecutions of human trafficking in a given state. Finally, beyond the

legislation itself, a body of research reveals that the political context in which legislation

is passed strongly impacts the implementation of those laws. We therefore hypothesize

that the local political context will impact the number of arrests for and prosecutions of

human trafficking in a given state.

Utilizing data from the first comprehensive assessments of the effectiveness of state

humantraffickinglaws(Bouche

´, Farrell, and Wittmer 2016), the present research illumi-

nates what types of legal provisions lead to the identification and prosecution of human

trafficking perpetrators, which has been the dominant goal of US antitrafficking efforts.

Specifically, we have catalogued the legal provisions of all state human trafficking statutes

from 2003 to 2012 to determine what types of antitrafficking laws are associated with

greater numbers of arrests of trafficking suspects and prosecutions of human traffickers.

We proceed first by providing context to this study by outlining the landscape of US

antitrafficking policy at both the federal and state levels. Next, we develop our theoreti-

cal expectations around the impact of state antitrafficking provisions in yielding criminal

justice system outcomes. We then delve into our empirical approach and present find-

ings. We end with a discussion of the implications of these results for the formation of

public policy responses to human trafficking.

II. HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE UNITED STATES

A. FEDERAL LAWS

In 2000, the US Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act

(TVPA), which defined severe forms of sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring,

transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the pur-

poses of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force,

fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

Farrell et al. ASSESSING THE IMPACT 175