Research Summary
The police have a duty to provide assistance to crime victims. Despite the importance of this role, scholars examining police effectiveness have historically been less attentive to the needs of victims. As the police are increasingly called on to combat sex and labor trafficking crimes, it is timely to explore how this new population of victims is served by the police. Information from a review of human trafficking investigations and in‐depth interviews with police and service providers in three U.S. communities indicates that human trafficking victims often do not trust the police and rarely seek their assistance. When the police do respond, human trafficking victims seek affirmation of their experiences and safety from future harm.
Policy Implications
Recommendations are offered to improve police responses to human trafficking victims including efforts to build trust, promote victim safety, and meet the needs of victims outside of the justice system.
Despite an increasing awareness about the existence and harms of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), the identification of victims remains a challenge for practitioners, hindering their ability to provide appropriate services. Tools that gauge risk of CSEC support the identification of victims but are underdeveloped because most tools assess risk of CSEC within a general youth population. An understanding of what predicts actual CSEC victimizations among youths at higher risk of CSEC due to experiences of childhood adversities has been left unassessed. Research in this area is limited in part because traditional methods do not allow for an assessment of the unique impact of childhood adversities that tend to co-occur. To address these difficulties, the current study applied predictive regularization methods to identify the most decisive risk items for CSEC. Proximal risk of CSEC was assessed among 317 youths who were referred to a specialized program in the Northeast of the United States due to suspicion of CSEC. With an innovative methodological approach, this study seeks to prompt other scholars to examine risk utilizing novel techniques and provides a foundation for the development of concise tools that assess risk of CSEC among populations of youths at higher levels of risk.
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