Introduction:

Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry that denies

human rights to more than 20.9 million people around the world. The United
Nations Office of Drugs and Crime says that human trafficking has three
constitutional elements. The first is “the act” which includes recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons. The second part includes
“the means”, which is the threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud,
deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or giving payments or benefits to a
person in control of the victim. The third part is the “the purpose” of exploitation,
which includes exploiting the prostitution of others, sexual exploitation, forced
labor, slavery or similar practices and the removal of organs. Human trafficking
can either include sex trafficking or labor trafficking.
When most people think of human trafficking, they think of issues that
happen only in poor countries; however, that is not the case. The U.S.
Department of state did not start monitoring trafficking until 1994, but now it is
estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked to the U.S. annually (UNC).
When the Department of state first starting reporting on trafficking, the coverage
was very minimal and focused on the trafficking of women and girls. Now they
routinely monitor and submit cases of trafficking in men, women, and children for
all forms of forced labor, including agriculture, domestic service, construction
work, and sweatshops, as well as trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation
(humantrafficking.org). Statistics from 2000 state that there are approximately
244,000 American children and youth are at risk for sex trafficking each year.
Human trafficking is an important issue to me because I was actively
involved in a club on my college campus that worked to empower women to
reduce their chances of being trafficked. I care about this issue, but the rest of
America needs to as well. The first step to getting more people to care so that
human trafficking crimes can lessen is to increase the amount of awareness on
this issue in the United States. Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery and
every person deserves the right to their freedom and basic human rights.

Literature Review:
The United States is progressing in their acts to limit human trafficking
crimes in America. At first their efforts were minimal due to the lack of knowledge
and awareness on the topic. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security created
a new program in 2015 that trains federal law enforcement officials to be better
aware of the signs of human trafficking (Afro). President Barack Obama also
recently declared January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness
month. Many cities, including Denver, have also created their own human
trafficking awareness days. People are slowing starting to hear about this issue
and the growth of it in the U.S., but more needs to be done to inform the larger
population.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was authorized in 2000 and
was the first federal law to address sex trafficking and labor trafficking in the
United States (Muse). The TVPA focused on the prevention and protection for
trafficking survivors, as well as prosecution for traffickers. Since then it has been
reauthorized three times with positive changes, according to The Muse. On the
state level legislation varies greatly, as some states like Massachusetts have
multiple laws and uses the internet as a trafficking tool a punishable offense and
then Wyoming did not have any laws to punish traffickers until this year. The U.S.
Department of Justice report from 2008-2010 Federal anti-trafficking task forces
opened 2,515 suspected cases of human trafficking. They also said that 82% of
those cases were classified as sex trafficking and over half of the involved
victims were under the age of 18. The report stated that 83% of the sex trafficked
victims were confirmed U.S. citizens, while most of the labor trafficking victims
were undocumented or legal immigrants (humantrafficking.org).
Large events are usually a place for traffickers to work and the Super Bowl
has been known to be a prominent event for traffickers, and is the largest
incident of human trafficking in the United State. Since thousands of people go to
the host cities, it is a great place for forced work and one survivor said she was
expected to sleep with around 25 people a day during such large events. During
the Super Bowl XLVIII, authorities arrested 45 pimps and rescued 25 child
victims of human trafficking and during Super Bowl XLIX they arrested almost
600 people and rescued 68 victims (Goldberg). However, Super Bowl 50 was
different. Instead of being a popular place for pimps, it was used as a platform to
raise knowledge about the issue. ESPN explained that various San Francisco
and Bay Area agencies worked diligently to create awareness and send a
message that trafficking will not be tolerated. They displayed ads about human
trafficking and the San Francisco airport trained their airport personnel to spot the
warning signs of trafficking. Sporting events have become a good way to inform
large populations about the growing problem (ESPN).
The Polaris Project is a national nonprofit organization that helps survivors
of human trafficking and prevents people from becoming victimized. They provide
a national hotline for trafficked victims which averages 100 calls per day and
have many different client services. More than 21,000 total cases of human
trafficking have been reported to the National Human Trafficking Resource
Center hotline in the last eight years. They also annually reported to have
multiple reports of trafficking cases in every U.S. state. Vulnerable populations
are frequently targeted by traffickers, including runaway and homeless youth, as
well as victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, war, or social discrimination
. The Polaris Project includes a fact page on their website that states that out of
the 20.9 million victims, 55% are women and girls and 26% are children. The
amount of trafficking cases that the Polaris Project is aware of has risen every
year, which does not necessarily mean that trafficking is increasing, but just that
more people are reaching out for help.
Elizabeth Moffitt, an employee for the Willow Domestic Violence Center in
Lawrence, said that human trafficking has always been here and it’s not
necessarily happening more, but in the past 15 years people have began to be
aware of it. Survivors are coming forward and sharing their stories and people
are talking about it more to shed a light on it. Moffitt says that Douglas County
raises awareness by collaborating with community organizations, putting on
presentations, training staff, and working with schools.
Human trafficking is an underreported crime and the prosecution on the
demand side is minimal. Most people that get in trouble for the crime are the
victims themselves and not the traffickers. Moffitt believes that a greater
prosecution for people who are perpetuating the demand would be helpful and
that it should be easier to prosecute the traffickers.
The FBI describes human trafficking as a heinous crime which exploits the
most vulnerable in our society and says that it is a modern form of slavery were
people are often beaten, starved, and forced to work as prostitutes or to take jobs
as migrant, domestic, restaurant, or factory workers with little or no pay. They
also describe human trafficking as four different categories; domestic sex
trafficking of adults, sex trafficking of international adults and children, forced
labor, and domestic servitude. Huffington Post declares that there are more
slaves in the world today than ever in history. Slavery has been banned across
the globe, but still 29 million people in the world are not allowed their freedom
due to human trafficking.
Traffickers recruit their victims by offering false promises, like a good
education, job, or even marriage. Then once they trust their trafficker, they are
controlled by means of debt, violence, threats, and drug use. Large portions of
traffickers use various social networking sites to find their victims. According to
American Bar Association, trafficker’s real people by expressing love and
admiration, promising to make the victim a star, and providing a ticket to a new
location away from the victim’s home. Surprisingly, Elizabeth Moffitt says that it
would be worse if websites that traffickers use went away. There are nationwide
organizations that monitor websites for traffickers and it makes it easy to track
people and even meet up with them. If the websites they used were banned, then
people could not watch where victims were being sold. However, Moffitt did note
that it is hard to monitor them because of how many different sites there. For
example, when the U.S. Craigslist Adult Services Section was available, there
were 10,000-16,000 adult services postings per day in the U.S. alone. Moffitt
does believe that the sites need to be better monitored, especially internally.
President Barack Obama stated “We’re turning the tables on the
traffickers. Just as they are now using technology and the Internet to exploit their
victims, we’re going to harness technology to stop them.” Many private industries
have begun to combat human trafficking with technology and the internet. In
2011, Google created many grants that consisted of $11.5 million to give to anti-
trafficking organizations to support new initiatives utilizing technology to combat
human trafficking. Also JP Morgan Chase has created new tools for applying
anti-money laundering protocols to human trafficking networks (Human
Trafficking and the Internet).

New Knowledge:
Human trafficking victims have to testify in court against their trafficker for
them to be prosecuted. This is incredibly hard for the victim because they do not
want to face the person and some even still feel dominated by them. Most people
understand how difficult that situation is; however, people have put a blind eye to
the enormous amount of criminals who walk freely due to this issue. This is why I
created a FOIA request for access and copies to all forms that show statistics on
the amount of people arrested for human trafficking and then all forms that show
how many of those people were actually prosecuted. I do not believe that the
Department of Justice is properly controlling this growing issue and actually
making it worse. Since the criminal justice system makes their prosecution very
difficult, many criminals get to walk free and return to their illegal operations
knowing that the likelihood of them being prosecuted is very low.
When I asked Elizabeth Moffitt out of the 428 reported victims in Kansas
during 2014, how many traffickers were prosecuted, she could not answer. She
said, “I don’t know because we don’t have to report on that, I don’t think the state
even knows.” I asked her if she could give me an estimate and she said probably
less than 20. That means 428 people were trafficked in one year and not even
5% of their traffickers were prosecuted.
We are living in a period where there are the most amounts of slaves in
history and hardly anyone is getting punished for it. The U.S. Department of
Justice has prosecuted about 400 cases of trafficking since 2000. 17,500 people
are trafficked annually in the United States and only 400 people for the past 16
years have been punished fore it. To put that in better perspective, 0.14% of
people committing these crimes are going to jail for their actions.
America is now aware of this issue in our country and is saying that raising
awareness of the topic will help diminish it. Yet, people need to be aware of how
poorly our criminal justice system is working to punish the people responsible for
these crimes. As well as raising awareness, Americans need to work to change
the criminal justice system so victims do not have to testify in court against their
traffickers.

References

Goldberg, E. (n.d.). 10 Things You Didn't Know About Slavery, Human Trafficking
(And What You Can Do About It). Retrieved May 07, 2016, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/human-trafficking-f
month_n_4590587.html

Homeland Security Implements Human Trafficking Training. (2016). Retrieved

 May 07, 2016, from http://afro.com/homeland-security-human-trafficking/

Human Trafficking. (2010). Retrieved May 07, 2016, from

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/human_trafficking

Human Trafficking and the Internet* (*and Other Technologies, too). (n.d.).
Retrieved May 07, 2016, from http://www.americanbar.org/publications/j-
udges_journal/2013/winter/human_trafficking_and_internet_and_other_tec
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Human Trafficking is the Super Bowl of Suffering. (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2016,
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trafficking-continues-grow-awareness

HumanTrafficking.org | United States of America. (n.d.). Retrieved May 08, 2016,

from http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/united_states_of_america

Polaris. (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2016, from http://polarisproject.org/

Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Program. (n.d.). Retrieved May

7, 2016, from http://www.ungift.org/doc/knowledgehub/resource-
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Survivor Shares Courageous Story About Human Trafficking. (n.d.). Retrieved

May 07, 2016, from http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/02/25/survivor-
shares-courageous-story-about-human-trafficking/

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2016, from
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-
trafficking.html

What's Being Done to Stop Human Trafficking? (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2016,
from https://www.themuse.com/advice/whats-being-done-to-stop-human-
trafficking

Willowdvcenter. (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2016, from http: //www.willowdvcenter

.org/#!human-trafficking/c1ell