Policing Human Trafficking

• Author: Rebecca Pfeffer,Amy Farrell
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716213515835
• Date: 01 May 2014

46 ANNALS, AAPSS, 653, May 2014

DOI: 10.1177/0002716213515835

Policing Human

Trafficking:

Cultural

Blinders and

Organizational

Barriers

By

AMY FARRELL

and

REBECCA PFEFFER

515835ANN The Annals of the American AcademyPolicing Human Trafficking

research-article2013

Since 2000, the federal government and all fifty states

have passed laws that criminalize the trafficking of per-

sons for labor and commercial sex. To date, relatively

few human trafficking cases have been identified,

investigated, and prosecuted by local criminal justice

authorities. Using data from case records and qualita-

tive interviews with police, prosecutors, and victim

service providers in twelve counties, we discuss the

challenges local police face in identifying cases of

human trafficking. We find that the culture of local

police agencies and the perceptions of police officials

about human trafficking do not support the identifica-

tion of a broad range of human trafficking cases. Since

local definitions of human trafficking are still evolving,

police focus on sex trafficking of minors, which they

perceive to be the most serious problem facing their

communities. Reluctance to differentiate between vice

and sex trafficking minimizes the problem of human

trafficking and makes labor trafficking seem largely

nonexistent.

Keywords: sex trafficking; labor trafficking; policing;

police investigations

The Victims of Trafficking and Violence

Prevention Act (TVPA 2000) and antitraf-

ficking laws in all U.S. states now provide tools

and resources to state and local police to help

them identify and assist human trafficking vic-

tims and prosecute offenders. Despite signifi-

cant legislative advances, there have been few

Amy Farrell is an assistant professor of criminology and

criminal justice at Northeastern University. Her schol-

arship seeks to understand arrest, adjudication, and

criminal case disposition practices. Her recent research

focuses on criminal justice system responses to new

crimes such as human trafficking. She has led studies of

police responses to human trafficking and state and

local prosecution of human trafficking for the National

Institute of Justice (NIJ). She has testified about police

identification of human trafficking before the U.S.

House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Farrell

was a corecipient of NIJ’s W. E. B. Du Bois Fellowship

on crime, justice, and culture in 2006.

POLICING HUMAN TRAFFICKING 47

official cases of human trafficking, raising questions about the empirical grounds

upon which these laws were passed.

Estimates of the extent of human trafficking victimization vary widely. They

are calculated from different data sources and the rigor of the research upon

which they are based is often questionable (Gozdziak and Collett 2005; Tyldum

2010). Critics of U.S. human trafficking policy commonly conclude that estimates

are overblown, citing the disparity between the predicted estimates of victims

and the actual number of victims identified by the police (Markon 2007;

McDonald 2004; Weitzer 2011). For example, the International Labour

Organization (ILO) estimates 1.5 million victims of forced labor and human traf-

ficking are in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe (ILO 2012), but

the U.S. Department of Justice reports only a few hundred victims who are iden-

tified and assisted by law enforcement annually (U.S. Department of Justice

2011).

Previous research suggests that local police and sheriffs are woefully unaware

of human trafficking and commonly lack the training necessary to investigate

these crimes (Farrell, McDevitt, and Fahy 2010; Gallagher and Holmes 2008;

Newton, Mulcahy, and Martin 2008; Wilson, Walsh, and Kleuber 2006). The

cases that the police do identify differ from the types of human trafficking

reported by victim service providers. For example, although more than 80 per-

cent of the victims identified by law enforcement working on federally funded

antitrafficking task forces between 2007 and 2010 were victims of sex trafficking

(Banks and Kyckelhahn 2011; Kyckelhahn, Beck, and Cohen 2009), data from

the victim service providers in these same task forces indicate that “64 percent of

the victims served by OVC-funded service providers were identified as victims of

labor trafficking only, 22 percent as victims of sex trafficking only, and 10 percent

as victims of both labor and sex trafficking” (Banks and Kyckelhahn 2011, 7).

While there are some important differences in the mandates of police and victim

service providers, these differences suggest the cases these two groups identify

may represent different realities of trafficking victimization in local communities

and raise questions about the reasons for such discrepancies.

In this article, we examine police accounts of how human trafficking cases are

actually identified. The term “identification” refers to the way cases come to the

attention of law enforcement and are classified as human trafficking offenses as

opposed to other types of crime with similar elements, such as prostitution. We

find that the culture of local police agencies and the perceptions held by police

officials about human trafficking prevent the police from seeing a broad range of

Rebecca Pfeffer is an assistant professor at University of Houston–Downtown. Her primary

research interests include underserved and vulnerable populations, victimology, and the pre-

vention of crime through education and other noncriminal justice based systems.

NOTE: This study was supported by a grant (2009-IJ-CX-0015) from the National Institute of

Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and

conclusions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of

the Department of Justice. We acknowledge Jack McDevitt, Colleen Owens, Meredith Dank,

Stephanie Fahy, and William Adams, who assisted with the data collection and the final report

from which this article was inspired.