Building Trust

Perspectives on a Victim-Centered Approach to Human Trafficking Investigations in Los Angeles County

UC Berkeley researchers have released the first study of Los Angeles County’s novel anti-trafficking efforts—evaluating a model that could be replicated nationwide to improve investigations of human trafficking and provide support for victims.

Researchers from the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law, in partnership with the International Human Rights Law Clinic, studied the first year of the Human Trafficking Bureau of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, a member of the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, which brings together investigators, service providers, and prosecutors to investigate –and stop—human trafficking. The study is the first comprehensive look at the Bureau, which was established in 2015.

Researchers interviewed 45 federal, state, and county investigators, service providers, and prosecutors for Building Trust: Perspectives on a Victim-Centered Approach to Human Trafficking Investigations in Los Angeles County.

“The Los Angeles County’s anti-trafficking model is laying the groundwork for improving care for victims and prosecuting traffickers,” said Eric Stover, faculty director of the Human Rights Center and an author of the study. “But more resources are needed to ensure the success of this effort.”

The study’s findings highlighted:

• Collaboration: The novel “co-location” model that houses state and federal law enforcement and service providers together in the Human Trafficking Bureau’s headquarters facilitates an effective “victim-centered” approach.
• Building trust: Establishing trust with trafficked youth and adults is both a challenge and priority for the Bureau and is critical to successful efforts. The historically strained relationship between sex trafficking victims and the police—combined with manipulative tactics by traffickers to maintain control over their victims—often prevents victims from trusting law enforcement. Law enforcement and service providers must work together to assure trafficking victims that they will be safer with them than with their traffickers.
• Sharing data: Expanding law enforcement coordination in California and surrounding states will improve investigations and prosecutions because traffickers often move their victims across state and county lines.
• Housing: Better short- and long-term housing options for trafficked youth and adults are urgently needed. Several respondents were highly critical of the placement of trafficking victims in insecure settings where they could be found by their traffickers or recruited back onto the streets by other residents.
• Labor trafficking: While noting the gains of the county’s sex trafficking efforts, researchers found inadequate attention and resources were paid to labor trafficking.

The Human Rights Center conducted the study in partnership with the International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. For more information or to arrange interviews, contact Andrea Lampros at 510.847.4469 or 510.643.7215 or alampros@berkeley.edu.