Policing Labor Trafficking in the United States

The purpose of this study was to better understand how local law enforcement agencies perceive their role regarding labor trafficking and to identify the factors impeding or facilitating their response.  To accomplish this, researchers conducted 86 qualitative interviews with federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, as well as victims and victim service providers.

The Victims of Trafficking Violence Prevention Act (2000) defines labor trafficking as the:

Recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of fraud, coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

It is difficult to determine the prevalence of labor trafficking in the United States. There are number of factors contributing to this. Labor trafficking victims do not reach out to law enforcement for help because they fear the potential repercussions and view officers as being biased against immigrants. In many cases, victims often come from countries where police corruption is common. The issue is compounded with language barriers and poor connections with immigrant communities. In other instances, trafficked individuals are integrated with legitimate employees making it more difficult to identify workers who are being trafficked.

Researchers found four common factors across all of the agencies surveyed.

Clarity About the Definition of Labor Trafficking

While officers and prosecutors reported they were aware labor trafficking may be occurring in their communities, they were not confident in their ability to articulate the elements of the crime and determine if employers’ actions constituted labor trafficking.  Unlike sex trafficking, officers must differentiate if exploitive work was legal or criminal.  In some cases, these workers were intermingled on the work site. It was also hard for officers to define the degree of harm when individuals were ‘coerced or defrauded into exploitive labor’.

Officers also shared they did not have the ability to differentiate between labor code violations and trafficking. Because of these issues, the cases that were investigated tended to be more extreme with clear signs of abuse or with multiple victims.

Institutional Readiness

Patrol officers, who are more likely to encounter these cases, “have little to no training about labor trafficking.” Those who received some training tended to occur in roll call. To effectively conduct these investigations requires agencies to develop the skills internally or receive assistance from outside agencies.

In each of the communities the researchers studied, it was determined their ability to conduct these investigations was impacted by inadequate staffing. When departments lacked the skills to investigate and prosecute cases, they focused on crimes they were more familiar with addressing.

Routines of Traditional Police Work

Traditionally, police departments have not been responsible for conducting labor trafficking investigations. The officials who were interviewed reported there were few established procedures and tools for officers to identify and investigate these cases. The officers cannot simply follow a checklist to conduct these investigation. Rather, the investigator must be a creative problem solver who can work through the proverbial ‘red tape’. 

None of the four communities the researchers studied had strong partnerships with external (i.e. federal) agencies. At the same time, state and federal ‘regulatory’ agencies conducting inspections were not looking to identify trafficking. Many times, officers had to train themselves and had difficulty with prosecutors taking labor cases.  When prosecutors were hesitant to take a case, investigators adjusted their focus on other areas.

Role of Law Enforcement Responding to Labor Trafficking Crimes

When officers are not capable of pursuing labor trafficking, agencies can focus on addressing the needs of the victims.  Unfortunately, social service providers are often unequipped to address victims’ needs. When agencies do not have access to strong social services, police agencies use department resources to assist with housing, medical treatment, transportation, and food. When law enforcement agencies began to work together with social services, they developed protocols to create a structured approach for sharing information.  As a result, this approach helped to build relationships to focus on the victims’ needs.

Sex trafficking is usually a cash transaction between individuals. One of the advantages investigators have when conducting labor trafficking investigations is businesses typically have records that can be used as evidence. Even when cases are not prosecuted, evidence from those records can assist victims collect monetary compensation.