3

Domestic Approaches to Measuring Prevalence

Carolyn Hightower, deputy director of the Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who facilitated the discussion session, began by describing OTIP’s work. The office’s mission is to combat trafficking by supporting and leading systems that prevent trafficking through public awareness and to protect victims through identification and assistance, with the ultimate goal of helping them to stabilize and rebuild their lives. Guided by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (see Chapter 1) and several other statutes, OTIP has three primary functions: victims’ protection, trafficking prevention, and research and policy.

Hightower noted that human trafficking is a public health issue that affects individuals, families, and communities and that research and data collection are critical to strengthening the nation’s response. In collaboration with HHS’s Office on Women’s Health, OTIP is implementing the Human Trafficking Data Collection Project to establish uniform data collection standards across anti-trafficking grant programs and to integrate data on human trafficking into existing datasets for child welfare, runaway and homeless youth, refugee resettlement, and health care service systems. OTIP is also part of the Interoperability Plan of HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, which facilitates secure data exchange while protecting individuals’ privacy.

The rest of this chapter covers the presentations by three panelists, their responses to questions raised by Hightower, and their responses to questions from other participants. Hightower introduced the three panelists:

Patrick Hannon of the National Counter-Proliferation Center¹ and former director of the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center (HSTC); Amy Leffler of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), who is the lead researcher on NIJ’s trafficking in persons research portfolio and cochair of the Research and Data Committee of the interagency Senior Policy Operating Group; and Meredith Dank of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a research professor who has served as a principal investigator on more than a dozen human trafficking studies funded by the U.S. government.

HUMAN SMUGGLING AND TRAFFICKING CENTER

Hannon said HSTC is the only legislatively directed national federal anti-trafficking center in the United States. Its goal is to develop and deliver intelligence to law enforcement and policy makers to help respond to the hard problems of human trafficking. He noted that the goal is particularly challenging because of the lack of a clear understanding of the priorities and gaps that exist in this research community. Hannon added that the scarcity of resources further reinforces the need for increased focus with regard to counter-trafficking efforts. HSTC also analyzes human trafficking data and tries, when possible, to unify the counter-trafficking community through collaborative opportunities. Hannon said HSTC formed the Human Trafficking Interagency Intelligence Group to enhance collaboration between federal organizations. The group developed focused initiatives that enable member agencies to work together to address the known data gaps.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE

Leffler explained to participants that NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation agency at the U.S. Department of Justice. NIJ has a diverse science portfolio that includes more than 40 studies on behavioral science, technology, and forensics. The Trafficking in Persons Research Program has operated for close to two decades and is committed to improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science; it does so by informing stakeholders on the evidence about trafficking and evaluating what counter-trafficking measures work. Through funding and disseminating rigorous research, NIJ aims to build the evidence base on such topics as prevalence, demand, screening, and victim service in an effort to improve human trafficking detection, prosecution, law enforcement, and court practices.

Leffler noted that understanding the scope and developing the right tools and resources to identify human trafficking are issues NIJ continues

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¹ After the workshop, in summer 2019, Hannon left his position at HSTC.

to tackle. NIJ addresses these challenges by funding studies to identify the best methods for detection and the best screening tools, both for sex and labor trafficking. She said NIJ’s recent research aims to better figure out prevalence through examining specific populations in specific jurisdictions while using innovative statistical methods, such as multiple systems estimation and respondent-driven sampling, to see how lessons learned abroad and in other fields can be applied to the United States.

Leffler reminded participants that prevalence is just one piece of a very complex puzzle. She urged the research community to work with stakeholders from different academic disciplines, law enforcement, and victims’ services to determine what methodological approaches work for each population. She also underscored the need to be mindful of protecting the populations being studied, who are often vulnerable and traumatized.

RECENT STUDIES

Dank described some of the labor trafficking and commercial sex trafficking studies she has conducted on grants from federal agencies, including HHS, NIJ, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the U.S. Department of Justice. The studies used a range of methodologies, including economic modeling, personal interviews, and respondent-driven sampling. They also sought to understand the characteristics of the population by looking at linkages between trafficking and drug and gun crimes.

One of her earliest studies used respondent-driven sampling to measure the prevalence of commercial sexually exploited children in New York City. Through this study, Dank said she learned this method has advantages and limitations. One of the advantages is that it can help researchers tap into hidden populations and learn more about groups not being captured in traditional studies. One of the limitations, however, is that since it relies on connections, it works well within social networks, but often does not account for socially isolated individuals, such as those under the strict control of a trafficker. Through this study, her research team also learned that there was a lot they did not know about LGBTQ youth and their experiences, and the researchers conducted a subsequent study on this specific population to better understand their needs.

Working with a mathematician and an economist, Dank created an economic model to measure the underground commercial sex economy in the United States. This was the first model of its kind, and Dank said she and her colleagues learned a lot through the development process. They were ultimately able to do an estimate in seven major U.S. cities, looking at the underground commercial sex economy and its relation to drug and gun crimes. Part of that study involved going into federal and state prisons and interviewing individuals who had been convicted on trafficking or similar

charges (i.e., pimping, pandering). Dank later developed and validated a sex and labor trafficking screening tool that was specific to runaway and homeless youth. She also used multiple systems estimation to conduct a study on trafficking prevalence in the United States; however, in the absence of a centralized referral database she had to rely on data collected by various service providers and law enforcement agencies, which she said was not always a fruitful endeavor.

Dank also described an exploratory study funded by NIJ that looked at labor trafficking of U.S. citizens. She said that conversations with providers in and outside of anti-trafficking fields revealed that labor trafficking is seldom asked about during patient screening. Her research team reached out to organizations that work with vulnerable populations—for example, formerly justice-involved people, homeless adults and youth, people with substance abuse or mental health issues, and people in cults. She noted that developing a robust prevalence estimate can be hindered by the lack of information collected on these populations, as well as by the fact that data sharing is not something that is done well across agencies. She said that looking for overlap among these datasets proved challenging because of differences in the way human trafficking is defined, investigated, and prosecuted. She also reminded participants that trafficking victims do not always immediately show up in administrative data, which could lead to undercounting; once they leave their situations, it sometimes takes years for them to seek and get help.

ISSUES OF MEASUREMENT AND RE-VICTIMIZATION

Hightower first asked the panelists which measurement approach would most advance anti-trafficking efforts in the United States. Should the focus of measurement be vulnerability to trafficking, incidence and prevalence, or the response to trafficking? She also asked what the value of each approach was in terms of policy development.

Leffler said she thinks each of the three approaches would provide information that would be useful to policy makers, but that preventing vulnerability is key because it spans an array of issues outside human trafficking. Individuals sometimes enter into human trafficking as an alternative to homelessness, but homelessness is also a risk factor for substance abuse and other vulnerable conditions. She noted the importance of understanding the traffickers as well as the trafficking victims: such information can help develop policies to combat the problem, and she said that some of NIJ’s funded research focuses on collecting prosecution and investigation data.

Dank reemphasized the need to address vulnerability, and she said that conversations about prevalence and numbers do not always go hand in

hand with discussions about a population’s vulnerability. If some vulnerabilities are addressed but others remain, there is a high likelihood a victim will be trafficked again. She also said that in her research experience, people are screened for sex trafficking or labor trafficking, but rarely both.

Hannon responded that all forms of data are important and useful in informed decision making. He noted the paucity of human trafficking data in some sectors and wondered whether areas in which there appear to be less activity actually have less trafficking or if data simply do not exist for those areas. He added that better information about vulnerability could also help guide provider training and law enforcement and that relying on prosecution is reactive and will not help solve the underlying problem.

Hightower next asked the panelists to what extent they have worked with data that reflect the probability or likelihood of trafficking re-victimization.

Dank answered that the lack of longitudinal data creates a huge gap in knowledge. She said longitudinal studies, while very valuable tools, require large amounts of funding and support to be carried out in a way that can accurately assess not just the survivors’ likelihood of re-victimization, but also their success in building essential life skills and maintaining a sustainable livelihood. She added that point-in-time research leads to gaps in understanding what can really help change survivors’ trajectory.

Leffler noted NIJ’s continued effort to support evaluation studies of victim service providers to determine what provisions are most effective. She also emphasized the importance of applying a more survivor-informed definition of program success to the evaluations, and she suggested bringing in stakeholders from different disciplines in academia, as well as law enforcement and victims services, to work together in determining what methodological approaches work for each population.

Hannon added nongovernmental organizations to Leffler’s list. He also said that the data can be inconsistent and problematic, which may make understanding re-victimization a challenge. He gave an example of how law enforcement may encounter likely incidences of human trafficking but not categorize them as such because of the occurrence of other offenses. He also noted that how data are presented is as important as how they are collected; he said data should be packaged in a way that is relevant and matters to policy makers.

Hightower asked the panel whether researchers could learn anything from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s surveillance efforts that measure other forms of violence, including child abuse and maltreatment, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking.

Dank responded that it would prove difficult to apply those approaches to human trafficking, particularly labor trafficking, because of how definitions of trafficking vary. There is no clear definition of which exploitative labor practices (or which combination of them) constitute labor trafficking.

Hightower then asked what resources, partnerships, and information would be required to measure aspects of human trafficking over time, what the benefit is to measuring these aspects over time, and what questions could be answered by measurement that was focused on a shorter time horizon.

Leffler answered that while long-term planning can foster multidisciplinary partnerships that can increase both knowledge and resources, shorter-term strategic planning allows researchers to find out what methods work for which community. She said that although researchers who apply a globalized method do note the limitations it presents for individual communities, those limitations eventually stop being mentioned along with the overall findings.

Dank agreed and said that even though they are time intensive, pilot studies focusing on subpopulations in a given jurisdiction could potentially enhance researchers’ understanding of trafficking.

Hannon also agreed with Leffler’s points about chipping away at the problem and about the importance of continued partnerships. He said that the trafficking research community can help other communities, such as academia and nongovernmental organizations, understand how their data are important to counter-trafficking efforts. Making those data available can generate new insights and speed up the rate at which products are developed and delivered.

OTHER KEY DOMESTIC ISSUES

Hanni Stoklosa (HEAL Trafficking) asked the workshop participants to consider what it would take to make child labor trafficking a priority in data collection in the same way that agencies have prioritized the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Dank responded that the lack of a concise definition and variations in state laws make it difficult to address child labor in the United States as its own research problem.

Leffler shared an instance in NIJ where learning about child labor trafficking was an unintended result of a study about sex trafficking; the finding caused them to consider how they might direct future resources. She said she recognized that federal funding helps drive the research community’s strategic planning, and she welcomes the opportunity to hear concerns from stakeholders.

Clifford Zinnes (NORC at the University of Chicago) said that in his experience as an economist, policy makers have wanted to understand the cost of trafficking as well as estimates of prevalence. He asked the panelists if a framework existed for estimating the cost of human trafficking.

Leffler said that estimating cost has come up in NIJ’s research on victimization but not in its research on trafficking. NIJ funded a study that

looked at the cost of crime victimization. Leffler said the original intent was to come up with a number, but she noted that people tend to get overwhelmed when the number they are told seems insurmountable. She said she hopes the study will lay the groundwork for future studies of the cost of crime victimization.

Hannon said it is also important to show how the cost is distributed so organizations can understand the impact to them and to their budgets.

Hannabeth Franchino-Olsen (University of North Carolina) asked the group whether methods of identification and estimation account for children who are trafficked as youth but continue sex work into adulthood without a third-party exploiter. Once child victims matriculate to criminal adult activity, are they captured in the data?

Dank said that definitional issues, as well as a lack of apparent coercion or fraud in what appears to be willful sex work, make it difficult to address nuances like this in a prevalence study.

Leffler said the type of study also determines what is measured. Point-in-time surveys of adult sex workers will yield different data than surveys that ask about their experiences over their lifetime.

Alexis Polen (Office of Trafficking in Persons) asked how participants represented forced criminality—children who are forced to sell drugs, for example—in their labor trafficking studies.

Dank said it is something she and her colleagues consider in their research and that it has come up in conversations with people in law enforcement. Her research team is also looking at how the issue is handled in studies conducted by other organizations.

Hightower wrapped up the session by summarizing the common themes that emerged from the panel discussion and subsequent question- and-answer sessions. Panelists noted that short-term studies and longitudinal studies both have value and answer different questions. They also underscored the importance of partnerships with health, public health, law enforcement, and government and nongovernmental organizations. Funding was a recurring theme, and Hightower added that maintaining ethical standards, protecting confidentiality, and providing support for study participants are also very important considerations.

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