Welcome to \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d \u2013 Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

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Radio Program available at http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2014\/04\/human-trafficking-urban-institute\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[Audio Begins]<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital this is DC Public Safety. I\u2019m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, today\u2019s show examines human trafficking. Research shows that there\u2019s a common misperception about human trafficking. Most believe that it\u2019s something that happens predominately outside of the US, not in our own backyards. Research from the Urban Institute tells us why so many human trafficking cases slip through the justice system and where new efforts could make a difference. Our guest today is Colleen Owens. She is a Research Associate with the Urban Institute\u2019s Justice Policy Center where she directs several national and international research projects on human trafficking spanning eight countries and five continents. She currently leads a National Institute of Justice study to examine the organization, operation, and victimization of trafficking in the Unites States. Colleen Owens, welcome to DC Public Safety.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Thank you very much for having me.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Colleen, this is just an extraordinarily important topic, because as I told you before we hit the record button, I was talking to a friend of mine who said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the topic of today\u2019s radio show?\u201d and I said, \u201cHuman trafficking in the Unites States.\u201d And he said, \u201cHuman trafficking in the Unites States; is there human trafficking in the Unites States?\u201d So answer the question for my friend.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes, absolutely. There is human trafficking in the United States. I think unfortunately that\u2019s not an uncommon reaction. I think it happens more than people realize. And there are reasons why a lot of people in the United States don\u2019t think that it actually happens here. The way that I often describe it is that it\u2019s sort of hidden in plain sight and that even cases that do come forward and are identified by our criminal justice system will still become hidden in the criminal justice system later on. And we can get into reasons why that is.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 If you take a look at the research on rape, and it\u2019s something undoubtedly that you have and I know Urban has over the course of years, it\u2019s so underreported. I would imagine this equals that degree of non-reporting.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Exactly. And I think there are differences when you look at sex trafficking versus labor trafficking, both of which happen in the United States, and no community is immune to it. But what we found in our research is that very low percentages of victims actually self-identify and come forward to law enforcement and report themselves as being victimized by labor or sex trafficking, and there are a lot of reasons why that is. So for sex trafficking victims, for example, they might perceive themselves to actually complicit in the crime of prostitution. They might view themselves, instead of being victims, they might view themselves as being criminals, violating our prostitution laws, regardless of the fact that they\u2019re forced or that there\u2019s fraud or coercion used to compel them into that.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 So they see themselves as vulnerable to the criminal justice system. They don\u2019t see the criminal justice system as being necessarily on their side. They see them as potentially victims of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yeah. That\u2019s part of it, the other issue is, so both US citizen victims as well as foreign nationals in our country are victimized by labor and sex trafficking. And so for US citizen victims they don\u2019t have the issue that, for example, foreign nationals might have where they might be undocumented either prior to the trafficking or as a result of the trafficking they become undocumented, and so they might fear that coming forward would mean that they\u2019d be put in jail for being undocumented.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 The website for the Urban Institute, www.urban.org. They\u2019ve been before our microphones many times in the past and we hope many times in the future. Look for human trafficking on their website. Colleen, do we have a sense as to the extent of the problem in the United States and throughout the world?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yeah. Prevalence is the biggest question; it\u2019s also the biggest unanswered question. The best statistics that we actually do have are from the International Labor Organization and they estimate that approximately 21.9 million individuals around the world become victims of labor and sex trafficking.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Wait a minute, 21.9 million, so 22 million human beings.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 22 million human beings are victims of sex or labor trafficking.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 And explain to me what is sex trafficking and what is labor trafficking.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So there\u2019re a variety of laws, but within the United States our federal law, which is the TVPA, was passed in 2000, it\u2019s been reauthorized several times, and all states now actually have state laws against human trafficking. Sometimes those state laws vary in term of the definition and also the criminalization of human trafficking. But the TVPA, our federal law, defines human trafficking as essentially the use force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into labor or services, and so that can be two broadly different things, so compelling a person into forced labor situations or into forced commercial sex situations.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay. So we\u2019re talking about, what, principally labor or sex do we know?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Are we talking about principally people being forced into labor situations or sexual situations or do we know?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 We don\u2019t know actually. So there\u2019s what the available statistics tell us, and that is one piece of the puzzle. So the available statistics are few and far between, but when you look at investigations that local, state, federal law enforcement have undertaken into human trafficking, they\u2019re primarily investigations into sex trafficking.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So that might lead some people to believe that sex trafficking is more prevalent. However, through the research that I\u2019ve done and that I\u2019ve done with colleagues from Northeastern University we\u2019ve looked at, we\u2019ve gone into communities and we\u2019ve spoken with criminal justice actors and what we found is that primarily criminal justice actors are operationalizing human trafficking as sex trafficking and mostly sex trafficking of minors. So that means if they are looking for these cases, which is a big if, they\u2019re primarily looking for sex trafficking of minors, and they\u2019re not proactively out there looking for labor trafficking in communities, for the most part.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Do we have any sense, with this 22 million worldwide; do we have any sense as to the extent of victimization in the United States?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 We really don\u2019t know. We don\u2019t have good statistics on that. There\u2019ve been a few attempts to get an accurate measure that have been unsuccessful. I think like a lot of crimes you\u2019d mentioned earlier, like rape for example \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 It\u2019s unreported.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 And so those that actually do come forward and report cases that go forward in the criminal justice system are always going to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the prevalence.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 But feel free to push back \u2013<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 If it\u2019s not valid to make this assumption. But is it proper to suggest that out of the 22 million certainly we could say that millions of people in the United States are victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking, is that possible to extrapolate to the Unites States?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So the International Labor Organization, which came up with that number, estimated that when you look at the United States as well as other EU, or what I think they called industrialized \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Nations, they estimated that 1.5 million victims of labor and sex trafficking were in those countries.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So within the Unites States we still don\u2019t have a good count of how many victims are in our country.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Why is it that \u2013 we\u2019re talking about something despicable, we\u2019re talking about something disgusting, we\u2019re talking about I\u2019m assuming female victims.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Both men and women, as well as children.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Does one category lead the other?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 No. And you do start to see differences when you look at labor trafficking versus sex trafficking. But again, sometimes the numbers that we see are more as a result of investigative priorities and available services and outreach to communities. And that influences who you see coming forward.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 I\u2019m making the assumption, and quickly tell me where I\u2019m wrong or it\u2019s not supported at all, but the overwhelming majority of what we call the sexual assault problem in the United States is male perpetrators and female victims. I do understand that males are subject to being raped, males are subject to being sexually abused, but it\u2019s principally male perpetrators, female victims. So I can\u2019t make that assumption here?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Well, with sex trafficking what we\u2019ve been seeing is that primarily the offenders been coming forward through the criminal justice system are male, but we\u2019ve seen an increasing trend in female offenders as well.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Huh.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 And so this is a real grey area for a lot of criminal justice actors. Law enforcement officials that we\u2019ve spoken with have talked about you have a situation where traffickers are victimizing for example female victims and then over a period of time those victims then are sort of groomed in a sense to become offenders. And so they\u2019re used by the trafficker to then recruit other victims and to also enforce the rules and keep the victims compliant. And so they\u2019re sort of in this victim and offender category.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 So help me put it in perspective, and, again, pushback, because you\u2019ve made, said very clearly that this is very difficult to put numbers and groups regarding this problem within context. But what we are talking about is either labor, and I\u2019m going to stereotype now, tell me where I\u2019m wrong, of where the person works in the house, the person is brought in from another country, the person is recruited within the United States, the person is taken to a house, the person acts as a sort of a servant within the house, or the person is recruited for sexual activities and they\u2019re held in bondage almost and they\u2019re moved from one location to another location. So what we\u2019re talking about is bondage, what we\u2019re talking about is trafficking human beings in the most significant and serious ways. We\u2019re not talking about finding somebody for prostitution. We\u2019re talking about thousands upon thousands of people who are either coming in from outside of the country or being recruited inside of the country for sex bondage or for labor bondage, are we not?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes. No. That\u2019s exactly what it is. I mean I think at the root of our trafficking laws, they\u2019re actually rooted in 13th Amendment principles of slavery. And so often you hear human trafficking described as modern day slavery. But really what is at the heart of it is that somebody is being, their labor is being used against their will, that person\u2019s freedom is being denied.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 I remember reading some of the literature, or the list of the literature that you provided before the program, and the word slavery did come to mind and I\u2019m saying to myself, \u201cWhy is the word slavery not in here? Is it too politically incorrect of a word?\u201d I don\u2019t know where to take this topic. I\u2019m trying to be fair and slice it right down the middle. But it strikes me as being disgusting and despicable, and it strikes me as being slavery, it strikes me as human bondage. In the cases that I\u2019ve been exposed to throughout the criminal justice system, I\u2019m going to be stereotypical I suppose, the women involved were held in psychological and physical bondage, they were told that if they left they would be killed, their families would be killed, they would be injured, they were threatened, they felt that they had no place to go. I mean is that what we\u2019re talking about?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yeah. No. That is definitely part of what we\u2019re talking about. I think another part where sometimes to be honest there is sort of a wide variety of different stakeholders within the anti-trafficking movement. And sometimes what you do see is that there are arguments or discussions about sort of the role of prostitution versus sex trafficking and when does something become trafficking versus when is somebody voluntarily involved in prostitution. And so \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, is anybody ever voluntarily involved in prostitution?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 That\u2019s a good question. It\u2019s sort of what our laws say and how our laws are enforced. But, yeah, I mean that a question that people debate.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 I mean I know it\u2019s legal in certain areas of the country, but for the vast majority of my exposure throughout my years within the criminal justice system, prostitution has been, I can\u2019t use the word, \u201cIf you don\u2019t do this and if you don\u2019t comply with me and if you don\u2019t give me 60% of what it is that you make, I\u2019m going to kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yeah. No. That is \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 I mean that to me is \u2013<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 That is 100% of trafficking situation.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So it\u2019s that a person is using force, fraud, or coercion. And if you\u2019re under the age of 18 then our laws say that you don\u2019t have to show force fraud or coercion, because the thought is that if you\u2019re under the age of 18 you can\u2019t voluntarily consent to the commercial sex act.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 All right, are these \u2013 I\u2019m sorry, I may have asked this question already \u2013 are these outside of the United States coming into the Unites States or recruited within the United States?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So it\u2019s both. So US citizens as well as foreign nationals are both groups that are victimized by human trafficking. So when you look at sex trafficking in the Unites States, US citizen victims are involved. So you have for example runaway homeless youth that are often on the street looking for a place to stay and somebody might approach them and say, \u201cIf you do x, y, and z, I\u2019ll give you a place to stay.\u201d And so in our laws actually we say that exchanging anything of value, so it doesn\u2019t actually even have to be money that\u2019s being paid, but offering someone a place to sleep or food to eat can actually be used to coerce a person into sex trafficking.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 So we\u2019re talking about very vulnerable human beings \u2013<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 To begin with, either outside of the United States or inside of the United States. Those vulnerabilities are played on, they\u2019re exploited, and suddenly the person ends up in bondage. And by that I mean a situation that they cannot extract themselves out of and they\u2019re afraid to go to the authorities because they\u2019re afraid that they may be implicated in crimes.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Right. And I think so there\u2019s a really important piece of what you said, this is that they feel that they\u2019re in bondage, and I think that is often a misperception, and you see that really affects cases, even when they go forward, if they go forward in the criminal justice system, which is, well, this victim wasn\u2019t being held in chains, they weren\u2019t locked in a basement, therefore they could\u2019ve left. But understanding the psychological coercion that goes into compelling a person to do things against their will is very important, and our laws protect people against that, but actually proving those cases in court and holding offenders that use primarily psychological means of coercion is very difficult.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay. We\u2019re going to go back to my original question then in terms of public misperception, in terms what a person asks me about the radio show, the topic of my radio show, and I said human trafficking, and they\u2019re going, \u201cWhere?\u201d And I\u2019m saying, \u201cIn the United States.\u201d And so, but we\u2019re going to reintroduce you. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today is Colleen Owens. She is a Research Associate with the Urban Institute\u2019s Justice Policy Center where she directs several national and international research projects on human trafficking. The website for the Urban Institute is www.urban.org. So, Colleen, let\u2019s go back to that question once again. If it is as you describe and if we know that 22 million human beings are involved and within the western industrialized world, the United States, Canada, and the EU, you\u2019re talking about at least one to two million human beings. This is a significant and serious problem in the Unites States that we don\u2019t recognize as a significant and serious problem, correct?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yes and no. So I think we do recognize it as a significant and serious problem in the sense that so in 2000 we passed a federal, it was the first federal to actually criminalize human trafficking. I should mention that human trafficking is not a new crime; it\u2019s a crime that has existed for \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Centuries.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Forever, for centuries.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 It\u2019s just a newly defined crime and there are new penalties to combat it. It\u2019s being taken seriously in the United States and many other foreign countries. At the time that the US law was passed this was also the same time that the Palermo Protocol was passed. So this was a sort of international movement to really take this crime seriously and to not only hold offenders accountable, but to create and provide services for those victimized by the crime. Since 2000, all states in the United States have passed laws to criminalize human trafficking, but laws vary, some states don\u2019t criminalize sex trafficking, some have different definitions of labor trafficking, for example. So on the one hand we have taken it very seriously, but our research shows that we have a long way to go and these laws aren\u2019t actually being enforced as they should be. So a lot needs to be done in terms of more awareness and resources to identify victims to hold offenders accountable and to provide services for those victims.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 A tough, tough topic. I mean where does the criminal justice system need to go with this? I mean I\u2019ve spent the first half of the program trying to understand the degree and the extent of the program for myself. I\u2019m not quite sure that everybody \u2013 when you say prostitution, people very rarely ever come to grips with the fact that these are victims that are slapped, punched, threatened, have a gun held to their head, they\u2019re in bondage. It\u2019s just people say the word \u201cprostitution\u201d they really don\u2019t understand how nasty it is for the lives of the individuals involved. So you say human trafficking, the words human trafficking roll off the tongue, and thank you very much for helping me create the context for the first half of the program. What must the criminal justice system do, in terms of the second half of the program, what must we do, and what should society do across the board, because I will constantly go back to that conversation, \u201cWhat do you mean there\u2019s human trafficking in the United States?\u201d, so?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Right. So that\u2019s a big question with a lot of answers, but I mean I think first and foremost those that are in charge of enforcing our laws should be made aware of what those laws are, there needs to be a lot more training, and it needs to be on the state and local level. The federal government does do training on human trafficking and it is very helpful and they should continue to do that. But we really need more state and local training that involves both investigators, as well as prosecutors working together to understand what their laws are and then how to operationalize those laws. So what evidence do you need to collect to be able to take a case forward and prove it in court? What indicators do law enforcement need to be aware of to identify that that person is actually a victim of crime and not arrest those victims and charge them as criminals. So in sex trafficking cases, for example, victims may be arrested and charged with prostitution and in labor trafficking cases victims may be arrested and charged and placed into deportation proceedings if they\u2019re here and they\u2019re undocumented. And so there really needs to be a lot more awareness for criminal justice system actors. The other piece of it actually is we need to actually create spaces in the criminal justice system to bring these cases forward. So in our study that we conducted with Northeastern University on challenges investigating and prosecuting human trafficking, we found that there were actually no state labor trafficking prosecutions in our study.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 What?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 And when we went to local state prosecutors and asked them about what would happen if a labor trafficking case came to your desk, they actually said, \u201cWe don\u2019t what we would do with it. We don\u2019t know who would actually take that case.\u201d And so there really aren\u2019t actors in place in our system in many ways that are even in charge of finding these cases and then bringing them forward, and the same is true with investigating labor trafficking. So we\u2019re doing a study right now that will be released in the summer and we\u2019re finding in our study that those victimized by labor trafficking in our sample anyway are primarily from other countries, they\u2019re either here undocumented or they were \u2013 a significant percentage of our sample was actually brought into the United States on temporary work visa programs, they were promised certain jobs, certain hours, certain wage, some of them were promised that if they remained in the job for a certain period of time that they would have their visa extended and they could get a green card. That of course was all fraudulent \u2013<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 And never happened, and then the person finds themself undocumented. But when you look at local law enforcement, for example, and you compare sort of the investigations of sex trafficking versus labor trafficking, sex trafficking, while there\u2019s still a long way to go in terms of investigating those crimes, law enforcement at least has been in the business of doing investigations into prostitution.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So they sort of it\u2019s now requiring them to take a step back and ask, \u201cIs this person in this situation willingly? Is this actually their choice? Are they being forced?\u201d So that change is happening slowly. But when you look at labor trafficking, local law enforcement has never been in the business of enforcing workplace regulations or something that would even be similar to a labor trafficking situation. That\u2019s been the business of the civil justice system, so Department of Labor. But the Department of Labor is not able to open cases criminally. So they\u2019re not always trained to look for criminal elements. They might identify back wages, they might identify workplace hazards, but they are not trained to pull together all the criminal elements that amount to a labor trafficking situation and that would make it distinct from just, I don\u2019t want to say just labor exploitation, because that is serious, but sort of taking it to that next step.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 I\u2019ve interviewed dozens of women in the criminal justice system who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, and I\u2019ve interviewed them at these microphones, and I\u2019ve interviewed them on television shows. And when I sit down with them, either before or when we hit the record button, it is routinely this, it is, and this is going to be very stereotypical, I apologize for it, but this is what I hear over and over and over again, that the women are involved in the criminal justice system in probably, I\u2019m going to guess, 60% to 70% of the cases where a male is forcing them to move drugs. A male is forcing them to be engaged in criminal activity, and they\u2019re doing it through physical violence, through threat, through literally a gun pointed to the head.<\/p>\n

And these are women who\u2019re coming from histories of sexual violence, histories of sexual abuse themselves. So they go out and they\u2019re involved in all this criminal activity and then they\u2019re saying to themselves, \u201cHow can I extract myself from this? How can I get out of this, because I\u2019ve been doing drug dealing? I\u2019m running huge amounts of drugs down the interstate 95 corridor. I carry guns. I carry false IDs. I\u2019m just as vulnerable as the people who\u2019re making me do this.\u201d So they don\u2019t come forward. So when they get caught up in the criminal justice system we find when we have them under supervision on parole and probation here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, that in many cases they are just as much victims as perpetrators. We have them on a drug charge and they come out of the prison system and we find that they\u2019ve lived terrible lives. They\u2019re just as much victims as anybody else in the process, even though they committed federal trafficking, drug trafficking laws. So I\u2019m assuming that that carries over to this topic.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Yeah. I often actually \u2013 sometimes you hear people describing the phenomenon of human trafficking through a supply and demand framework, and while I think that is valid, I actually prefer to describe through where vulnerabilities meet exploitation type of a framework. And I\u2019ve done research in many other countries as well and I find that the phenomenon sort of looks the same through that lens no matter where you go. So it involves asking yourself in this local context, in this city in the United States, in this village in Cambodia, what are the vulnerabilities and where is the exploitation happening, where are people taking advantage of those vulnerabilities? And so for example with labor trafficking in the US, US citizens one would think they might not be at risk of labor trafficking because often a tool is to use someone\u2019s undocumented status against them.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 But in fact there was just a big case that came out that was reported by the New York Times of US citizens with disabilities that were forced to work in a turkey processing plant for 30 years. And so we are seeing that, US citizen victims with disabilities. There are other cases, there was one in Philadelphia as well, are being used for labor trafficking scenarios. And then the same is true with sex trafficking. A lot of the vulnerabilities and the past histories of abuse are there for sex trafficking victims. You see a lot of runaway youth, a lot of youth that have been caught up prior in the criminal justice system, they may have been arrested for quality of life issues, they may have had previous records being charged with prostitution, even though technically those should be sex trafficking charges if they were under 18, or they should\u2019ve been treated as sex trafficking victims if they were under 18. But you do see a lot of these past histories of abuse and vulnerability. And I think what really needs to happen on the front end is being able to identify those factors sooner and develop programs to prevent a lot of that from happening, because it\u2019s as much addressing the sort of demand side of holding offenders accountable, as it is addressing the supply side, and identifying what vulnerabilities are leading victims, are sort of leading to people being victimized and how do we address those vulnerabilities?<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 The criminal justice system needs to understand that people are not coming forward; they\u2019re not escaping these situations, because they feel vulnerable. The victims themselves feel vulnerable. The victims themselves believe that there\u2019s a possibility that they\u2019re going to be prosecuted. So that\u2019s one of the big reasons why they don\u2019t come forward and that\u2019s one of the things that we have to do was to make sure that we have the sensitivity and the wherewithal and the knowledge to reach out to these individuals and offer them immunity from prosecution as long as they help us prosecute the bad guys.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Right. And some states actually have passed on the side of minor victims of trafficking, sex trafficking, they\u2019ve passed what\u2019s known as safe harbor laws. So basically stating, passing additional laws that you cannot be charged crimes, quote, \u201ccrimes that are committed as a result of your victimization\u201d. But we don\u2019t have a lot of those laws for, for example, victims of labor trafficking that may be charged with crimes pursuant to their labor trafficking situation.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 But we have a criminal justice system that sees itself as overburdened, overwhelmed. We have a criminal justice system that\u2019s having an extraordinarily hard time processing the day to day burglaries, robberies, sexual assaults, homicides. There\u2019s criticism directed toward cities throughout the United States and urban areas in terms of their inability to prosecute. So when something like this comes along they\u2019re saying to themselves, \u201cI don\u2019t have the resources \u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Exactly.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 \u201cFor this type of investigation.\u201d Is it a matter that they\u2019re not looking for it because they don\u2019t have the resources?<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of a self-perpetuating cycle I guess you could say. They\u2019re not looking for it because they don\u2019t have the resources, and they don\u2019t have the resources because they\u2019re not looking for it.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 So, right, I mean we hear that often that we need more resources, we need more resources.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 More training.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Exactly, more training. You need agencies to prioritize this, because exactly as you said, you may have people calling about the fact that their cars were broken into, and so that sort of leads the priorities, right?<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 When you see what\u2019s going on in your community and you\u2019re making those calls for service. This is a crime that does not rely on calls for service for the most part.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 And yet when we speak with law enforcement their main approach to investigating this is to wait for calls to come in. And so it\u2019s not being investigated basically.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 But we do, I mean in general, we within the criminal justice system and society in general do need to understand that this does exist in the United States, it is an ongoing problem, it involves literally millions of human beings, and we have to take this seriously and we have to be looking for this.<\/p>\n

Colleen Owens:\u00a0 Exactly. I think if we\u2019re a country that believes in freedom, then this is something that we need to take seriously. And it\u2019s a serious human rights abuse. And people in our country are being abused by traffickers. And they engage in it, because for the most part it\u2019s very low-risk.<\/p>\n

Len Sipes:\u00a0 Colleen Owens, I can\u2019t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you were on the show today and that the Urban Institute is taking this on. Congratulations to the Urban Institute for taking a very tough topic, www.urban.org, www.urban.org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.<\/p>\n

[Audio Ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d \u2013 Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. The portal site for \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d is http:\/\/media.csosa.gov. Radio Program available at http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2014\/04\/human-trafficking-urban-institute\/ [Audio Begins] Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital this is DC Public Safety. I\u2019m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,6,41,25,43],"tags":[246,154],"class_list":["post-1144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiopodcast","category-domesticviolence","category-police","category-sexoffender","category-victims-services","tag-human-trafficking","tag-urban-institute","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBoKk-is","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}