The Wrong Way To Fight Trafficking

Bravo to Kansas City.com for their series of articles on Slavery in America this week.

Part one of their week-long investigation was bitter reading indeed, as their research team revealed the appalling, "unworkable" bureaucratic mess that has been made of the sincere efforts to curb the evil of human trafficking in America over the past decade. Talk about dis-illusioning: in the face of this serious moral blight, we learn, in painstaking detail, how "[t]he federal government’s vast anti-human trafficking network suffers from turf wars and a lack of coordination":

... In all, seven Cabinet-level departments are involved: Homeland Security and the State Department, the Justice Department, Health and Human Services, Defense and the departments of Education and Labor.
The enforcement effort is so widely dispersed that in 2003 officials set up the Senior Policy Operating Group to coordinate the coordination.
Federal watchdogs found it isn’t working. A Government Accountability Office audit in 2006 noted that disagreements among the various agencies have hurt America’s anti-trafficking activities at home and abroad.
All this is costing millions. Even the Congressional Research Service couldn’t figure out exactly how much has been spent, concluding it was impossible.
A new report, however, found $23 million spent on domestic programs alone in fiscal 2008.
What’s more, federally funded human trafficking task forces are clustered in coastal areas, leaving huge swaths of the country ill-equipped to find victims.
...
While federal anti-trafficking laws provide stiff penalties — and the number of prosecutions is increasing — the chances of being charged or convicted as a trafficker remain low, The Star found.
The United States convicted fewer traffickers per capita in 2006 than most of the countries deemed by the State Department to do the best job of fighting trafficking, according to a study by Alese Wooditch, a human trafficking expert and researcher at George Mason University.
To be sure, prosecutors are reluctant to file charges they don’t think they can make stick.
...
“The definition of human trafficking in the federal code is for severe trafficking where there is physical abuse, or branding, of the victim,” explained Lt. Derek Marsh of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force in California. “So when we bring a case without those elements, they are less likely to prosecute.”
...
Across America, many local police and sheriff’s departments tend to ignore human trafficking. Homicide and burglary, assault and larceny remain high on their “to do” lists, but not trafficking.
“I don’t think much is being done to root it out,” said Ron Soodalter, who wrote “The Slave Next Door,” a new book on human trafficking, with Kevin Bales. “There’s the idea that if I stumble across it, hopefully I will know it when I see it.”
More than 70 percent of local and state law enforcement agencies surveyed by Northeastern University recently said that human trafficking was a rare or nonexistent problem in their communities. Only one in five agencies had received some type of human trafficking training.