Study Assesses Human Trafficking and the Law Enforcement Response in Two of Ohio's Largest Urban Areas
While many of us think of human trafficking—both sex and labor trafficking—as occurring mostly in foreign countries, it is a growing national problem, and one that often hits home in local communities. A new RAND Corporation study provides an evidence-based look at human trafficking in Ohio—in particular, Columbus and Toledo—to help inform and shape public discourse and practical responses to it.
The study identified 15 cases of human trafficking in the two case-study sites over the study time period from January 2003 through June 2006 and interviewed law enforcement and social service providers, many of whom believe that fewer than one in three victims is ever identified. Also, the identification of cases may be growing, with the Toledo task force now investigating six cases involving 60 potential traffickers. The study also showed that the two sites had very different markets—child prostitution in Toledo and domestic servitude in Columbus.
When it comes to the criminal justice response, Columbus and Toledo have considerably different responses. In Columbus, there is little awareness that human trafficking can involve juveniles in commercial sex transactions from which an adult benefits. This lack of awareness—coupled with lack of resources, lack of local and federal law enforcement collaboration, lack of dedicated staff or a dedicated unit to handle trafficking cases, and lack of systematic community–service provider partnerships—leads to handling potential human-trafficking victims as offenders(for example, arresting juveniles for prostitution when other people are benefiting from the commercial transactions), which may partly lead to the lack of identified human-trafficking cases in the jurisdiction.
In Toledo, the criminal justice community has made significant changes to promote awareness, identification, and investigation of human-trafficking cases. Federal resources and collaborations among federal, state, and local law enforcement and service providers have helped facilitate this change. Local law enforcement respondents claimed that these changes have led to the increase in the number of cases investigated and prosecuted in Toledo involving Toledo-area actors. In both Toledo and Columbus, there is a reported disconnect between the justice system's and the child welfare system's responses to juvenile sex-trafficking cases, which may hinder the identification and prosecution of cases. Law enforcement authorities were not made aware of the few known labor-trafficking cases in Columbus, and there were no known cases in Toledo. However, law enforcement agencies in both communities suggested they would respond to such cases if they were made aware of them.
Suggestions for law enforcement include improving training (e.g., questions to investigate in suspected cases and the identification of the legal elements of human trafficking and the evidence needed to support such cases), increasing resources for dedicated staff to identify more cases and investigate them more thoroughly, and improving coordination between local law enforcement, federal investigators, and prosecutors at all levels.
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