Environmental and Institutional Influences on Police Agency Responses to Human Trafficking

Abstract

In response to domestic and international concern about individuals being exploited for labor or commercial sex, the U.S. Government passed legislation in 2000, creating a new crime of human trafficking and devoting resources to the identification of victims and prosecution of perpetrators. Since that time, all 50 states have passed legislation criminalizing trafficking of persons, yet law enforcement responses to these new legal mandates have been uneven. Recent research suggests police agencies are generally unprepared to identify and respond to human trafficking incidents in local communities and, as a result, relatively few cases have been identified. Using data from medium-to-large municipal police agencies in the United States, this research examines competing explanations for the adoption of responses in the wake of new human trafficking laws. The findings suggest the importance of institutional explanations including organizational experience with change.

Keywords

human trafficking legal change innovation

When social problems are defined as criminal threats, government officials commonly seek remedy in the creation of new criminal offenses. Studies of this process in vagrancy (Chambliss, 1964), alcohol prohibition (Gusfield, 1963), computer crime (Hollinger & Lanza-Kaduce, 1988) and hate crime (Jenness & Grattet, 1996, 2001) suggest the passage of law is just the beginning of the legal change process. Expanding the criminal code is a relatively easy task because the public generally supports efforts to get tough on crime (Beckett, 1999; Garland, 2001; Zimring, Hawkins, & Kamin, 2003), but enforcement of new law depends on the acceptance and capacity of the police to assume new responsibilities. Police have historically been resistant to change, particularly from external forces such as legislation (Bittner, 1980; Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Manning, 1997). Formal mechanisms such as the development of protocols, training, and assignment of personnel are needed to transmit information to frontline officers and facilitate the operationalization of law in practice. In this way, police agencies act as the “law in between” (Jenness & Grattet, 2005, p. 339)—the link between legislation and enforcement. Because legislation’s specifying of new crimes rarely mandates specific responses by police agencies, organizational resistance or, at a minimum, organizational inattention to newly defined crimes, obstructs the implementation of crime control policies.

The response of U.S. police agencies to new human trafficking laws illustrates the tension between the processes of lawmaking and organizational operationalization of laws. Over the past two decades, the public and policy makers have become increasingly concerned about the trafficking of persons for commercial sex and labor exploitation. The true extent of human trafficking in the United States is unknown, but the International Labour Organization recently estimated that 20.9 million people are victims of forced labor and human trafficking worldwide, with 1.5 million victims located in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe (ILO, 2012). In response, federal and state legislators have passed laws creating human trafficking crimes and providing resources to rescue and restore victims and identify and prosecute perpetrators. Despite these efforts, relatively few victims have been identified. The failure of police organizations to operationalize law may help explain the low number of identified victims.

Research on human trafficking has not examined the factors that explain why some police agencies are more successful than others at developing organizational responses to promote identification of human trafficking crimes. The passage of new laws alone is insufficient to explain organizational responses or the lack thereof. Research on legal change suggests competing explanations for why some police agencies adapt more quickly than others. There is evidence that external pressure on police agencies by the public and community leaders promotes organizational response regardless of objective indicators of a problem (Katz, 2001). Organizational susceptibility to change and alignment of preexisting practices with new laws have also been shown to promote agency response (Jenness & Grattet, 2005). Finally, experience adopting innovative practices may promote change (Pendelton, 2002). This article examines the environmental and organizational factors that promote adoption of responses to human trafficking to assess the effect of these responses on the identification of cases. Understanding the role of organizational capacity in promoting human trafficking identification informs discussion about the prevalence of human trafficking and extends institutional theory research into a new and relatively unstudied crime.

Police Response to the Problem of Human Trafficking

In the mid-1990s, growing evidence of exploitation of individuals, particularly women and girls who were moving across borders to find work, began to alarm the international community (Bales, 2008; Kempadoo, 2005). Contemporaneous with the passage of international human trafficking protocols,¹ the U.S. government passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000. The TVPA defined human trafficking as a new crime and enhanced penalties for existing offenses such as slavery, peonage, and involuntary servitude. Under the TVPA, a severe form of human trafficking was defined as

A commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. (TVPA, Section 103, 8a and b)²

The TVPA and its reauthorizations in 2003, 2005, and 2008 include provisions to protect victims, prosecute offenders, and prevent future trafficking, including the establishment of a special visa (i.e., T-visa) for trafficking victims who participate in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking cases or who are under 18 years of age.³

Following passage of the TVPA, the federal government tasked local law enforcement with being the “eyes and ears” for identifying human trafficking crimes occurring in local communities (U.S. Department of Justice, 2004-2005). The federal government funded training and multiagency task forces to promote local police response. To date, over US$80 million has been devoted to supporting state law enforcement’s antitrafficking efforts.⁴ Additionally, in 2004 the U.S. Department of Justice developed the Model State Anti-Trafficking Criminal Statute, which was widely disseminated as the first model state law. All 50 states have passed legislation criminalizing human trafficking and providing mechanisms to improve local identification of victims and response to the crime.

Despite new laws and resources, fewer human trafficking cases have been identified than estimates of the problem would predict. Since 2000, approximately 2,100 victims of human trafficking have received T-visa certification (U.S. Department of Justice, 2011) and 825 trafficking suspects across 341 cases have been prosecuted federally for trafficking-related crimes (U.S. Department of Justice, 2011).⁵ An unknown number of human trafficking cases have been prosecuted under state antitrafficking statutes, but the U.S. Department of State reports that as of 2011, only 18 states brought forward human trafficking cases under state human trafficking statutes (U.S. Department of State, 2011).

Research has identified numerous challenges to police identification of human trafficking. First, police officials are generally unaware of the problem. A survey of U.S. police agencies found that in states with antitrafficking legislation, 44% of police leaders were unaware of the legislation (Newton, Mulcahy, & Martin, 2008). Respondents also provided varying definitions of human trafficking, in some instances producing definitions in conflict with their state’s definition. Second, police officials generally do not think human trafficking is a problem in their local community (Farrell, McDevitt, & Fahy, 2010; Wilson, Walsh, & Kleuber, 2006) and have not adopted institutional practices to promote the identification of such cases. By 2007, only 19% of local police agencies had any type of human trafficking training, just 9% had developed protocols or policies to guide officer responses, and only 6% had designated specialized human trafficking units or personnel (Farrell et al., 2010). Finally, police officials are often not willing to commit the resources for proactive investigation strategies that are necessary to identify human trafficking crimes (Gallagher & Holmes, 2008). Due to the clandestine nature of the crime, police are unlikely to identify human trafficking victims during their routine duties. Traffickers have an interest in keeping victimization hidden from the police and those who have knowledge of trafficking because they benefit from the services of trafficked individuals (i.e., Johns, business owners) have little incentive to report victimization. Victims rarely contact the police out of fear of retribution from the trafficker, distrust of law enforcement, or fear of deportation (Clawson, Dutch, & Cummings, 2006). Due to these challenges, few police agencies investigate trafficking cases. By 2007, less than 10% of local police agencies had investigated a human trafficking case (Farrell et al., 2010). Similarly, by 2008, only 7% of state or local prosecutors had prosecuted a human trafficking case (Clawson, Dutch, Lopez, & Tiapula, 2008).

Explaining Organizational Responses to New Law

Research on lawmaking generally focuses on factors affecting the passage of legislation. This has been the case with human trafficking, where most social and sociolegal research examines the influence of interest groups, media, and politicians leading to the passage of federal (Berman, 2006; DeStefano, 2007; Farrell & Fahy, 2010; McDonald, 2004; Stolz 2005, 2007; Weitzer, 2007) and state legislation (Barnhart, 2009; Payne, 2006-2007). The passage of law is just one step in the process of legal change. Legislation rarely directs specific actions by the agencies responsible for enforcement (Edelman, 1990; Pressman & Wildavsky, 1979). Instead, in the case of new criminal laws, lawmakers generally outline the elements of a new offense and its associated penalties. In some cases, laws direct training of agency professionals, but they rarely impose systems of accountability to ensure new criminal provisions are utilized.

Enforcement practices are commonly resistant to change despite passage of new law; frontline agents can use their discretion to ignore new laws (LaFave, 1965; Lipsky, 1980). Police are especially dependent on routines and resist change, particularly change perceived to be in response to political whims as opposed to well-informed crime control policy (Bittner, 1980; Manning, 1997). While frontline agent resistance is a common challenge, institutional explanations help us understand why some organizations do a better job implementing new laws than others (Dent & Goldberg, 1999). Police agencies act as mediators between the enactment and enforcement of new law. Jenness and Grattet (2005) describe police agencies as the “law-in-between” (p. 339)—the institution that provides a structure to promote enforcement of new laws despite frontline agent resistance. Research on human trafficking confirms the importance of institutional responses; agencies that adopt human trafficking policies, conduct training, or designate specialized personnel are most successful in identifying cases under new human trafficking laws (Farrell et al., 2010). However, characteristics of police organizations vary (Maguire, 2003), and this variation may be associated with differing institutional responses. The following sections discuss factors—external and internal—to the police agency that promote change.

Environmental Influence—External Pressure

Forces outside of the agency can facilitate or impede the implementation of new law. Municipal police agencies are responsive to a host of constituents including local community groups, local government officials, and networks of professional organizations on which they depend for the legitimacy and resources necessary to ensure their survival (Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Katz, 2001). External groups exert pressure on agencies that can either divert organizational priorities away from the enforcement of new laws or promote programs of change within an organization when new laws align with the demands of external constituents (Crank & Langworthy, 1992; LaFave 1965; Lipsky, 1980; Wilson, 1968). External groups such as advocacy organizations have a particularly important role to ensure police agencies respond to new law. Research suggests that advocacy groups exert pressure on the police by following up on individual cases, releasing reports on police performance, and speaking publicly through the media and other outlets about the successes or failures of law enforcement to identify and respond to new crimes (Mastrofski & Ritti, 1992; McVeigh, Welch, & Bjarnason, 2003). In addition to having a presence in the community, advocacy groups use the media to draw attention to problems and put pressure on the police to promote enforcement (Holder & Treno, 1997).

The response of police agencies to human trafficking provides an interesting opportunity to examine the effect of public pressure on the legal change process because concern about human trafficking has been widely perceived as a federal, as opposed to local, crime control problem. The widespread and rapid passage of state legislation, however, suggests that human trafficking is a particularly salient concern among local stakeholders in some communities. Human trafficking advocacy groups have been instrumental in promoting the passage of federal and state human trafficking legislation (Stolz, 2005), but to date, no research has examined the influence of such groups in promoting the enforcement of human trafficking laws.

Institutional Influences—Openness to and Experience With Change

Not all organizations are equally open to making institutional changes in response to changing legal environments or community demands. Some police agencies are particularly responsive to the concerns of their communities and have experience changing policies and practices in response to external concerns. However, agencies less aligned with community policing tend to avoid organizational change, particularly when it does not emerge from the needs of the rank and file. Examining the predictors of police adoption of hate crime policies in California following the passage of state legislation, Jenness and Grattet (2005) suggest that some police organizations are “pervious” or susceptible to the process of organizational change in response to the passage of new law. They suggest two main factors that predict susceptibility to change—police organization exposure to the influence of community demands and the alignment of legal change with existing practices and policies of the organization. Thus, while organizations operate in environments with varying levels of public pressure, they react differently to legal change based on their openness to change. The perviousness framework has not yet been retested, but other research has confirmed the importance of community-policing practices in promoting police responsiveness to new crimes (King, 2007).

Jenness and Grattet’s (2005) research leaves open the question of whether institutional change in the form of adopting policies actually affects enforcement. Organizations may ceremonially adopt law by decreeing policy to gain or maintain legitimacy in the profession or community without any intention of enforcing the policies or changing agency routines (Bittner, 1980). The present research tests Jenness and Grattet’s theory of perviousness and addresses deficits in the literature by examining the direct impact of organizational perviousness on police agency adoption of human trafficking policies and training and designation of specialized personnel, as well as the indirect impact of perviousness on the identification of human trafficking cases.

In addition to being open to change, research on police innovation suggests that some agencies develop institutional mechanisms to support change as a result of change (for a comprehensive review of research on police innovation, see Willis and Mastrofski, 2011). This proposition assumes that certain agencies embrace the concept of being innovative (or emulating the innovations of other agencies) and adopt new programs regardless of demand from the local community. This research considers innovation experience as an alternative explanation of police agency responses to human trafficking.

There are many potential reasons police agencies innovate, but research suggests that police agencies develop cultures of innovation based on past experience (Pendelton, 2002). Agency leaders who support innovation (Willis & Mastrosfki, 2011) and who are embedded in professional networks that promote innovation (Crank & Langworthy, 1992) respond more quickly to change. Features of the police environment such as complexity, centralization of authority, and formalization may also promote innovation (Damanpour, 1991). This research measures the degree to which experience with innovation explains change in response to law. While there are many kinds of innovations in policing,⁶ this research focuses on agency experience adopting programmatic innovations, a form of institutional change that includes training, policies, and specialization in response to a new crime problem.

The Current Study

This study seeks to understand the factors that promote police responses to human trafficking. Responses are conceptualized here as both institutional action—adopting policies, training officers, and dedicating personnel, and institutional outcomes—the identification of human trafficking incidents in medium-to-large municipal police agencies in the United States.

It is expected that both environmental and institutional influences explain police responses to human trafficking. Specifically, external pressure from local advocacy groups and the media are expected to promote responses to human trafficking (Hypothesis 1). Alternative explanations for responsiveness to legal change that emerge from institutional theory are also tested. It is anticipated that police response to human trafficking will be greater in agencies that are open to change measured according to the framework established by Jenness and Grattet (2005) as commitment to community policing and alignment with existing police programs (Hypothesis 2). Additionally, police response to human trafficking will be greater when agencies have experience innovating in response to a new crime (Hypothesis 3).

While there are many types of police innovation, the present analysis measures a programmatic innovation—hate crime reporting—which is similar to human trafficking in its institutional response. In the 1980s and 1990s, state legislatures adopted laws specifying bias-motivated crimes or adopted sentencing enhancements for bias crimes (Bell, 2002; Jenness & Grattet, 1996, 2001; Martin, 1995; McVeigh et al., 2003), yet, police identification of hate crimes has been uneven. Hate crime often goes unrecognized in a community because hate crime victims are reluctant to report their victimization to the police (Langton & Planty, 2011) and police do not officially record allegations of hate crimes (Nolan & Akiyama, 2002). Research suggests that police identification and reporting of hate crime is a better reflection of police agency practices than the realities of hate crime victimization in a community (Bell, 2002; Cronin, McDevitt, Farrell, & Nolan, 2007; Nolan & Akiyama, 1999). Numerous programmatic innovations such as specialized training and personnel have been recommended as necessary to promote hate crime identification (Balboni & McDevitt, 2002; Bell, 2002; Jenness & Grattet, 2005; McDevitt et al., 2003; McVeigh et al., 2003; Nolan & Akiyama, 1999, 2002; Walker & Katz, 1995).

A key challenge with hate crime identification is that a traditional crime must be reclassified as a hate crime when a bias motivation is identified. Nolan, McDevitt, Cronin, and Farrell (2004) document this challenge and suggest that the police learn to see ambiguous events according to their professional interests. Without agency guidance to help officers recognize and reclassify crimes as bias motivated, police will rely on established crime classification routines and fail to accurately identify and report hate crimes. Human trafficking identification and investigation has similar reclassification challenges (Gallagher & Holmes, 2008; Farrell et al., 2012). The individual who appears to have been a victim of a civil labor regulation violation must often be reclassified as human trafficking crime victim. Even more problematically, prostitution and illegal migration crimes often must be reclassified by the police as victimization experiences. It is anticipated that agency experience adopting programs that facilitate reclassification of crime, such as hate crime, will improve human trafficking response and identification.⁷

Data

Data from a national survey of law enforcement agencies administered in 2007 are used to identify the response of police agencies to new human trafficking laws in the United States (Farrell, McDevitt, & Fahy, 2008). Because law enforcement response to human trafficking is in its early stages, all medium-to-large municipal police agencies (those serving populations more than 75,000 as identified in the National Directory of Criminal Justice Data, 2006) were surveyed. Agency leaders were sent a personal letter explaining the study and requesting their participation. After a series of follow-up contacts, including reminder postcards and telephone reminders, 77% of the 396 medium-to-large police agencies (n = 303) responded to the survey. Diagnostic tests indicate the response population did not differ significantly from the original sample population. The survey, completed by the chief or highest ranking officer within the law enforcement agency, gathered information on the degree to which law enforcement had adopted common preparations to address the problem of human trafficking such as training, policies, and dedication of personnel as well as the degree to which law enforcement had identified cases of human trafficking between 2000 and 2006. To help guide responses, the survey included a definition of human trafficking corresponding to the language in the TVPA.⁸

In addition to the survey about human trafficking responses, the present analysis utilizes information from the Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey conducted in 2003 by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The LEMAS survey collects data on the organizational and administrative environment of a nationally representative sample of police agencies. The 2003 LEMAS data provides the most accurate reflection of institutional environments during the period of human trafficking response studied here (between 2000 and 2006). Data on the community context were collected from a variety of sources including the 2000 U.S. Census, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, a review of media reports and clearinghouses of state human trafficking laws and antihuman trafficking groups.

Measures

Dependent variable: Two main responses to human trafficking are explored here. First, the operationalization of law, measured as a dichotomous variable capturing whether an agency responded to human trafficking by adopting a human trafficking policy, training officers, or dedicating specialized personnel (1) or had no organizational responses (0). Subsequent models test each of these institutional responses individually. Forty-two percent of agencies adopted a human trafficking policy, held training, or dedicated specialized personnel to investigate these cases. Organizational responses to human trafficking were not adopted evenly. Forty percent of medium-to-large municipal police agencies held human trafficking training, while only 17% adopted policies and 13% dedicated specialized personnel. Second, the law in action is a dichotomous measure of whether or not an agency identified any cases of human trafficking during the study period. Twenty-eight percent of the studied agencies identified at least one human trafficking case during the study period. Because we are interested in understanding the factors associated with adopting an organizational response to human trafficking or identifying human trafficking cases, logistic regression models are employed. Diagnostic tests indicate that multicollinearity does not threaten the results.⁹

Human trafficking is a new and less understood phenomenon, and as a result, the outcomes examined here could have been conceptualized in different ways. For example, negative binomial models estimating counts of how often agencies adopted responses and separate models estimating the number of identified cases were estimated with nearly identical results to the logistic regression models.¹⁰ For ease of interpretation, the dichotomous measures are discussed here. Additionally, while it would be helpful to understand whether environmental and organizational factors differently predicted types of human trafficking cases, the majority of cases reported in the survey involved sex trafficking offenses, and as a result, this data is not well suited for examining predictors of different types of trafficking.

Independent variables: A number of environmental and institutional-level concepts are measured to help explain organizational responses to human trafficking and the identification of human trafficking cases. Table 1 provides an overview of these concepts; their measurements and descriptive statistics for all dependent and independent measures are included in Table 2.

Table 1.

Independent Measures.

Variable	Description and measurement
Explanations of change
External pressure Groups News	A count of the number of human trafficking advocacy groups in the state where the law enforcement agency has jurisdiction. A count of the number of articles about human trafficking appearing in local newspapers between 2000 and 2006.
Openness to change
Community policing	A factor combining degree of community policing, including training officers in community policing, forming problem-solving partnerships with citizen groups, and a mission statement that includes community policing (a = .75).
Organizational alignment	Existence of a vice unit (0 = no, 1 = yes); existence of child abuse/child exploitation unit (0 = no, 1 = yes)
Experience with change	Evidence of previous programmatic innovation—hate crime reporting. Agency reported hate crimes prior to 1996 (innovative reporter) and a control variable measuring diffused reporting of hate crimes in 2006. Both measured as 0 indicating no hate crime reporting and 1 indicating hate crime reporting.
Organizational resources and complexity
Spatial differentiation	Number of district, precinct, or division stations outside of police headquarters
Civilian	Percentage of the police personnel who are civilian
Specialization	Number of special units in the police organization
Size	Log of the number of sworn officers
Resources	Log of the general operating budget divided by the number of sworn officers
Community context
Poverty	Percent in poverty in 2000 in community where law enforcement agency resides
Foreign-born	Percent foreign-born in population in 2000 in the city where the law enforcement agency resides
Legislation	Any state human trafficking legislation including legislation specifying only task forces or studies prior to 2007 (0 = no, 1 = yes)
Region	Being in one of six regions: Northeast, South, Southeast, Midwest, West, and Southwest.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics of Dependent and Independent Measures.

Dependent variables	N	Mean	SD	Min.	Max
Operationalization of law	303	0.42	0.49	0.00	1.00
Policy	303	0.17	0.38	0.00	1.00
Training	303	0.40	0.49	0.00	1.00
Personnel	303	0.13	0.34	0.00	1.00
Law in action	303	0.28	0.45	0.00	1.00
Independent variables
Community context
Poverty	295	10.67	5.86	1.50	34.80
Foreign-born	301	15.14	11.96	1.00	59.50
Legislation	303	0.50	0.42	0.00	1.00
Northeast	303	0.14	0.35	0.00	1.00
South	303	0.07	0.24	0.00	1.00
Southeast	303	0.17	0.37	0.00	1.00
Midwest	303	0.16	0.37	0.00	1.00
West	303	0.13	0.33	0.00	1.00
Southwest	303	0.33	0.47	0.00	1.00
Organizational resources and complexity spatial differentiation	277	2.79	7.38	0.00	97.00
Civilianization	277	24.85	8.91	0.00	53.14
Specialization	277	14.57	4.26	0.00	21.00
Ln size	303	5.68	0.98	2.56	10.60
Ln budget	277	11.52	0.45	8.42	12.43
Predictors of change
External pressure
Groups	303	7.08	8.62	0.00	23.00
News	302	79.03	70.32	0.00	368.00
Community policing	277	0.04	0.98	−2.76	1.66
Alignment—vice	277	0.84	0.37	0.00	1.00
Alignment—child unit	277	0.80	0.40	0.00	1.00
Experience with change
Innovation—early reporter	303	0.57	0.49	0.00	1.00
Diffusion of innovation—late reporter	303	0.75	0.43	0.00	1.00

External pressure by advocacy groups is measured as a count of the total number of such groups incorporated in each state listed by the Freedom Network and Freedom Registry lists of human trafficking advocacy. These registries represent primary sources of information on local human trafficking advocates and victim service providers. Advocacy groups are a proxy measure of the amount of external pressure such groups place on the police to respond to crime problems (see similar use in McVeigh et al., 2003). Additionally, media reports about human trafficking have also been used alone and in combination with the presence of advocacy groups to measure local external pressure (Holder & Treno, 1997). Media reports are measured here as the count of newspaper articles with human trafficking in the subject for each municipality between 2000 and 2006. Articles were identified from Lexis-Nexus.

Organizational openness to and experience with change are the two institutional measures anticipated to predict human trafficking responses. As conceptualized by Jenness and Grattet (2005), an organization’s openness is predicted by reception to the ideals of community policing and alignment of change with existing agency practices. Data from LEMAS are employed to create these measures. First, a factor is created by combining questions from LEMAS about agency engagement in community policing practices, including whether or not the agency trains officers in community policing, forms problem-solving partnerships with citizen groups, or has a mission statement that includes community policing. These measures load around a common factor with an alpha of .75. Second, two variables measure the existence of programs that are aligned with a human trafficking response. Whether or not the police agency has a vice unit (measured as 1 for a unit and 0 for no unit) is included because the responsibility for human trafficking enforcement is commonly assigned to vice units, indicating organizational expectations that human trafficking is associated with other vice concerns (Farrell et al., 2008). Whether or not the agency has an existing child abuse/child exploitation unit (measured as 1 for a unit or 0 for no unit) represents departmental concern for groups at high risk for domestic minor sex trafficking. Somewhat surprisingly, the two alignment variables are not highly correlated, suggesting they measure distinct organizational arrangements.

Agency experience reporting another type of new crime—hate crime—is used to measure agency experience with change in response to new law. Like hate crime reporting, human trafficking responses such as the development of policies, training, and dedication of personnel would be classified as a programmatic innovation (King, 2000). As described earlier, the response of police agencies to hate crime reporting laws is strikingly similar to the expected responses of police to new human trafficking laws. Police reporting of hate crimes to the FBI has been used by scholars as a measure of compliance with the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act, which required the U.S. Department of Justice to acquire data from law enforcement agencies on new crimes of prejudice (Jenness & Grattet, 2006; King, 2007; McVeigh et al., 2003). While some law enforcement agencies were responsive to the legal change and provided data annually to the FBI on the number of hate crimes identified by their agency, by the end of the 1990s, half of local law enforcement jurisdictions were still noncompliant with the Act (McDevitt, Balboni, & Bennett, 2000). Hate crime reporting is measured here as a dichotomous variable indicating that an agency either reported hate crimes prior to 1996 (1) or reported no hate crimes or failed to report any data to the UCR during this period (0). Hate crime reporting from 1990 to 1996 was chosen for the purposes of this analysis because it represents experience reporting in the first six years following the Hate Crime Statistics Act, a similar period to the human trafficking survey data which captures police responses in the 6 years following the TVPA. Fifty-seven percent of study agencies reported hate crimes to the UCR by 1996. To control for the potentially spurious relationship between bias-motivated crimes in a community and police responses to human trafficking, a variable measuring reporting of hate crime in 2006, when a majority of police agencies complied with the UCR requirements and responses to hate crimes were institutionalized as opposed to innovative (Oliver, 2000), is included in the models. By 2006, three fourths of the agencies studied here reported hate crimes to the UCR.

Control variables are included to capture the context in which agencies respond to human trafficking. A dichotomous measure of whether or not the agency was in a state with human trafficking legislation is included. Though police could charge human trafficking suspects under the federal trafficking laws (TVPA, 2000), agencies may have incentives to identify such crimes in states with legislation. Twenty-four states had antitrafficking legislation in effect during the study period (between 2000 and 2006), and half of the study agencies resided in states with legislation criminalizing human trafficking.¹¹ Local factors may also influence police responses to human trafficking; therefore, measures of the percentage of the population that was foreign-born and the percent that lived in poverty from the 2000 Census are included because characteristics of communities that increase social disorganization, such as ethnic heterogeneity and poverty, increase the opportunity for economic exploitation and human trafficking (Ebbe & Das, 2007).

Variables measuring the complexity of the police organization and its capacity to respond to new crimes are also included. There are practical limitations on an agency’s ability to change. Organizations may be susceptible to change but lack the resources necessary to facilitate new responses such as policies, training, or personnel time. The complexity, size, and resources of police organizations may therefore constrain institutional change (Mastrofski, Parks, & Wilson, 2003). Organizational complexity is captured in three measures found in the LEMAS data. First, the spatial differentiation of an agency or the extent to which its duties are spread out geographically (Langworthy, 1986; Maguire, 1997) is measured as the number of separate district, precinct, or division stations outside of police headquarters. Second, specialization in the police personnel is measured as the percentage of the police personnel who are civilian (Skolnick & Bayley, 1986). Finally, the functional differentiation of the police department or the degree to which tasks are broken down within the organization is measured by the number of special units (Langworthy, 1986; Maguire, 1997). Measures of agency size, measured as the log of the number of officers,¹² and agency resources, measured as the log of the agency budget per officer, were also included to control for police agency capacity for change. The following analyses report results from 277 medium-to-large municipal police agencies where data were available from both the LEMAS survey and the national law enforcement survey about human trafficking response.¹³

Findings

Municipal police agencies are situated in different types of communities that face varying risks for human trafficking victimization and pressure from local interest groups to address the problem. Some police agencies operate in communities without any local human trafficking advocacy groups or media reports about human trafficking that might promote a police response to new law (see Table 2 for descriptive statistics). Agencies also differ in their organizational capacity and readiness to address new crime problems. The police agencies examined in this study range in complexity, size, and resources. For example, the full-time sworn personnel of study agencies range from a modest force of 13 officers to massive organizations of 40,000 officers. These organizations also differ in their openness to and experience with change. The following analyses examine how variations in environmental and institutional factors explain police adoption of policies, training of officers, or the designation of personnel to address the problem of human trafficking and identify cases in local communities.

Table 3 presents logistic regression models that predict organizational responses to human trafficking adopted between 2000 and 2006 by police agencies. For this analysis, logistic regression models are estimated measuring whether or not an agency adopts any response (e.g., adopting a policy, holding trainings, or designating specialized personnel). The first model in Table 3 examines the relationship between environmental and organizational factors and police response to human trafficking. None of the measures of the community environment were related to organizational responses. Interestingly, agencies in states with human trafficking laws were no more likely to have operational responses to human trafficking than those agencies in states without legislation, and there were no regional differences among agency responses. Larger agencies and agencies with more resources were more likely to adopt organizational responses to human trafficking.

Table 3.

Logistic Regression Models Predicting Any Organizational Response to Human Trafficking (N = 255).

	Model 1 (adjusted R² = .20)		Model 2(adjusted R² = .32)
	B(SE)	ExpB	B(SE)	ExpB
Community context
Poverty	−.043 (.028)	0.96	−.047 (.030)	0.95
Foreign-born	.021 (.015)	1.02	.024 (.017)	1.02
Legislation	.029 (.373)	1.03	.014 (.400)	1.01
Northeast	.421 (.531)	1.52	1.428** (.682)	4.171
South	−.020 (.716)	0.98	.377 (.778)	1.45
Southeast	.033 (.514)	1.03	.449 (.556)	1.56
West	.321 (.505)	1.37	.698 (.565)	2.00
Southwest	−.416 (.479)	0.66	.297 (.662)	1.34
Institutional resources & complexity
Spatial differentiation	−.026 (.033)	0.97	−.017 (.031)	0.98
Civilianization	.025 (.020)	1.02	.026 (.021)	1.02
Specialization	.028 (.038)	1.03	−.021 (.048)	0.98
Size	.955*** (.251)	2.59	.982*** (.263)	2.67
Resources	.904* (514)	2.40	1.073* (.598)	2.92
External pressure
Groups			.010 (.031)	1.01
News			−.008* (.004)	0.99
Openness to change
Community policing			.297 (.186)	1.34
Alignment—vice			−1.741*** (.608)	0.04
Alignment—child exploitation			.493 (.566)	1.63
Experience with change
Innovation—early reporter			.877** (.352)	2.40
Diffusion—late reporter			.685 (.416)	1.98
Constant	−17.046*** (6.216)		−18.381** (7.089)
−2 Log likelihood	306.858		280.850
Model χ²	42.364***		68.372***
df	13		20

p < .10 level. **p < .05 level. ***p < .01 level.

External pressure on agencies and their openness to and experience with change, are added to the analysis in Model 2. Contrary to expectations, neither the existence of human trafficking advocacy groups nor media reports of human trafficking were positively related to human trafficking responses. In fact, news coverage of human trafficking was negatively related to police adopting human trafficking training, developing protocols, or assigning specialized personnel, though the effect is modest. Based on previous research, agencies were anticipated to be more likely to adopt organizational responses to human trafficking as their openness increased. As established by Jenness and Grattet (2005), measures of openness to change, including both affinity with community policing principles and alignment of new response with existing practices, are included in the models. While Jenness and Grattet combined these measures into a single factor, we have kept them separate as the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that they represented different phenomena. Contrary to the perviousness framework, neither experience with community policing or measures of the alignment of responses with existing agency practices is positively related to human trafficking responses. In fact, having a vice unit decreases the likelihood that an agency will adopt a human trafficking response.

Model 2 also incorporates a measure of police agency experience with change, conceptualized here as previous programmatic innovation in response to hate crimes, which, like human trafficking, was a newly defined crime a decade earlier. Agencies that have experience with change were 140% more likely to adopt a policy, train officers, or designate specialized personnel to respond to human trafficking. It is of course possible that agencies in communities with risk factors for hate crimes would have similar risk factors for human trafficking; however, the effect of early innovation on organization responses to human trafficking is significant and positive even when controlling for diffused hate crime reporting a decade later when reporting was institutionalized. This provides a more accurate representation of the risk of hate crime. In this model, experience with change is a stronger predictor of police responses to human trafficking than openness to change.

Table 4 presents a series of logistic regression models that predict specific organizational responses to human trafficking. Because training was the most common police response, the findings in Model 1 closely mirror those presented in Table 3. Agency openness and experience to change were positively related to the adoption of human trafficking training. Contrary to expectations, agency alignment, measured as having a vice unit, was negatively related to all three types of responses. While none of the measures of agency complexity were related to the adoption of antitrafficking responses, larger agencies were more likely to adopt all three types of responses, underscoring the importance of capacity in institutional change.

Table 4.

Logistic Regression Models Predicting Specific Organizational Responses to Human Trafficking (N = 255).

	Model 1: Training(adjusted R² = .35)		Model 2: Policy(adjusted R² = .27)		Model 3: Personnel (adjusted R² = .37)
	B (SE)	ExpB	B (SE)	ExpB	B (SE)	ExpB
Community context
Poverty	−.090** (.033)	0.91	−.007 (.044)	0.99	−.088** (.043)	0.92
Foreign-born	.021 (.017)	1.02	.009 (.023)	1.00	.023 (.021)	1.02
Legislation	.299 (.429)	1.35	−.684 (.611)	0.50	−.773 (.543)	0.46
Northeast	2.382*** (.769)	10.82	−.036 (.983)	0.96	1.010 (.980)	2.74
South	.796 (.821)	2.21	−.179 (1.278)	0.84	1.388 (1.053)	4.00
Southeast	.763 (.600)	2.14	−.501 (.905)	0.61	.387 (.829)	1.43
West	.920 (.609)	2.50	−.936 (.977)	0.40	.018 (.915)	1.02
Southwest	−.037 (.703)	0.96	.325 (.900)	1.38	−.114 (.939)	0.89
Institutional resources & complexity
Spatial differentiation	−.024 (.031)	0.97	−.001 (.032)	0.99	−.010 (.049)	0.99
Civilianization	.020 (.023)	1.02	.003 (.034)	1.00	0.51* (.030)	1.05
Specialization	−.074 (.050)	0.93	.107 (.070)	1.11	−.051 (.070)	0.95
Size	1.198*** (.286)	3.31	.722** (.313)	2.05	1.556*** (.362)	4.73
Resources	.755 (.581)	2.12	1.715 (1.129)	5.55	−.206 (.588)	0.72
External pressure
Groups	.047 (.034)	1.05	.014 (.042)	1.01	.066 (.042)	1.06
News	−.010* (.004)	0.99	−.002 (.006)	0.99	.001 (.005)	1.00
Openness to change
Community policing	.419** (.198)	1.52	−.465* (.258)	0.72	−.019 (.253)	0.98
Alignment—vice	−2.099** (.677)	0.12	−1.455* (.834)	0.23	−1.389* (.804)	0.25
Alignment—child exploitation	1.120* (.652)	3.06	−.170 (.893)	0.84	1.452 (1.176)	4.27
Experience with change
Innovation—early reporter	.828** (.380)	2.29	.353 (.566)	1.42	.704 (.530)	2.02
Diffusion—late reporter	.552 (.277)	1.73	1.109 (.848)	3.03	.141 (.638)	1.15
Constant	−15.561** (6.923)		−26.866** (13.114)		−9.340 (7.141)
−2 Log likelihood	251.245		151.723			171.360
Model χ²	71.242***		38.973***			64.451***
df	20		20			20

p < .10 level. **p < .05 level. ***p < .01 level.

It is also possible that it is the identification of human trafficking cases that promotes organizational responses.Organizational responses may be ceremonial as opposed to effective. Holding training or designating a specialized unit may signal to external constituents that an agency is taking a problem seriously, but it may not necessarily result in officers changing their behavior on the street, which would result in the identification of new crimes (Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Katz, 2001). Measuring the effect of organizational responses provides a more precise test of what Grattet and Jenness (2008) describe as the transformation of symbolic law into instrumental law. Departmental policies, the assignment of specialized personnel, and officer training are expected to transform symbolic statements about the importance of a problem, such as public outcry or the passage of legislation, into concrete action aimed at increasing identification of human trafficking crimes. Table 5 presents logistic regression models that predict identification of human trafficking cases. As described in the discussion of measures, identification is measured as whether or not the agency identified any human trafficking cases in the years immediately following the passage of federal human trafficking legislation (between 2000 and 2006).

Table 5.

Logistic Regression Models Predicting Identifying Human Trafficking (N = 255).

	Model 1(adjusted R² = .18)		Model 2 (adjusted R² = .26)		Model 3 (adjusted R² = .39)
	B(SE)	ExpB	B(SE)	ExpB	B(SE)	ExpB
Community context
Poverty	−.023 (.032)	0.98	−.019 (.033)	0.98	−.003 (.035)	0.99
Foreign-born	.015 (.015)	1.01	.013 (.017)	1.01	.005 (.019)	1.00
Legislation	−.104 (.413)	0.90	−.082 (.428)	0.92	−.006 (.451)	0.99
Northeast	−.950 (.658)	.39	−.775 (.778)	0.46	−1.369* (.804)	0.25
South	.386 (.716)	1.47	.751 (.777)	2.11	.711 (.839)	2.04
Southeast	−.295 (.561)	0.74	−.048 (.600)	0.95	−.292 (.645)	0.75
West	.175 (.531)	1.19	.342 (.568)	1.40	.022 (.609)	1.02
Southwest	.013 (.501)	1.01	−.179 (.681)	0.84	−.361 (.745)	0.70
Institutional capacity
Spatial differentiation	.034 (.043)	1.03	.026 (.040)	1.02	.054 (.049)	1.05
Civilianization	.011 (.021)	1.01	.011 (.023)	1.01	.003 (.025)	1.00
Specialization	.005 (.041)	1.00	.007 (.052)	1.00	.012 (.055)	1.01
Size	.654** (.258)	1.92	.596** (.269)	1.81	.196 (.307)	1.21
Resources	.657 (.548)	1.92	.308 (.512)	1.36	−.026 (.552)	0.96
External pressure
Groups			.032 (.032)	1.03	.031 (.036)	1.03
News			−.002 (.004)	0.99	.000 (.005)	1.00
Openness to change
Community policing			−.098 (.196)	0.91	−.240 (.214)	0.78
Alignment—vice			.333 (.698)	1.39	1.002 (.736)	2.72
Alignment—child exploitation			.145 (.601)	1.15	.079 (.646)	1.08
Experience with change
Innovation—early reporter			1.021*** (.383)	2.78	.789** (.417)	2.20
Diffusion—late reporter			.469 (.480)	1.59	.246 (.519)	1.28
Human trafficking response					1.988*** (.376)	7.30
Constant	−12.513** (6.537)		−9.767 (6.150)		−4.825 (6.642)
−2 Log likelihood	275.853		261.621		229.982
Model χ²	36.530***		50.762***		82.401***
df	13		20		21

p < .10 level. **p < .05 level. ***p < .01 level.

Measures of community context and organizational complexity were not related to the identification of human trafficking crimes (Table 5). Larger agencies were more likely to identify human trafficking cases than smaller agencies. As with the analysis of organizational response, having state human trafficking legislation was not associated with identification of human trafficking cases.

The second model in Table 5 adds measures of organizational openness to and experience with change. Departing from previous models, none of the measures of agency openness to change, including community policing or alignment with agency programs, are significantly related to the identification of human trafficking cases. Organizational experience with change in response to new crimes, however, does have a positive and significant relationship with the identification of human trafficking cases. Those agencies that were early reporters of hate crime in 1996 had a 178% increase in the odds that they would identify cases of human trafficking a decade later than those agencies that did not report hate crimes, suggesting that innovation experience not only predicts the adoption of polices or programs but may have a direct effect on the outcomes of police responses. The analysis presented in the third model tests this assumption by adding a measure of agency response.

When departments adopt organizational responses to human trafficking (measured here as whether or not they adopted policies, trained officers, or designated personnel), the odds of identifying cases increased 630%. The addition of organizational responses in Model 3 also increases the measures of strength of association in the model (up from .26 in Model 2 to .39 in Model 3). Based on this data, organizational responses serve a role beyond being merely symbolic. Instead, adopting programs to train and guide officers may help create an environment where trafficking cases are identified and investigated. There is an alternative potential explanation for the strong association between organizational response and the identification of human trafficking cases. It is possible that communities had a problem with human trafficking, evidenced by their identification of cases, and they adopted policies or trained officers to address this problem. Unfortunately, there are no good measures of the real prevalence of human trafficking in a community. The data utilized here are unique in that they provide the first measure of police identification of human trafficking cases, but because the measures of cases were collected contemporaneously with measures of organizational responses, we cannot adequately determine the direction of the response to identification relationship.

Importantly, agency experience with change remains positively related to identification of cases, despite the strong effect of organizational responses to human trafficking, suggesting an independent effect on police outcomes when agencies have experience being innovative in response to new crimes.

Discussion of Findings

Nearly all states have now passed laws criminalizing human trafficking, but relatively few cases have been identified, and only a small number of offenders have been prosecuted. Understanding the role of police agencies in translating new law into action is critical to informing debates about the effectiveness of antitrafficking efforts. This research identifies environmental and institutional structures of a police agency that affect responses to the crime of human trafficking. Previous research on institutional responses to legal change suggests that passage of new laws alone is insufficient to achieve change (Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Edelman, 1990; Grattet & Jenness, 2005; Pressman & Wildavsky, 1979). This has certainly been the case with human trafficking, where passage of federal and state laws criminalizing offenses related to the trafficking of persons for commercial sex or labor has not immediately translated into the identification of trafficking cases or prosecution of perpetrators. For example, Washington was the first state to adopt a human trafficking law in 2003 but did not prosecute a case under this new law until 2009. The findings presented here confirm that adoption of institutional responses such as police training, policies, and dedication, and the subsequent identification of cases are not predicted by the existence of state human trafficking legislation. Additionally, external pressure on police agencies in the form of local human trafficking advocacy groups or local news coverage was not positively associated with either adoption of institutional responses or the identification of cases. Instead, factors internal to the organization provide the strongest explanations of police responses to new crimes.

As suggested by Jenness and Grattet’s (2005) work on hate crime responses, police agencies are more likely to adopt responses to new crimes when there is evidence of institutional openness to change. The concept of institutional perviousness advanced by Jenness and Grattet relies on measures of agency commitment to responsive policing in the form of community policing and indications that changes align with previous police practices. Perviousness concepts have not yet been employed to explain police responses to legal change outside the context of hate crime reporting. The present research finds that in the case of human trafficking responses, commitment to community policing is positively related to the adoption of training programs, though the effects are modest. Alignment with previously existing practices, measured here as either existence of specialized vice or child exploitation units, was not positively associated with police responses. In fact, existence of a vice unit was significantly negatively associated with human trafficking responses. Those agencies with vice units may be less inclined to adopt specialized responses to human trafficking because the leadership believes they are already addressing prostitution, a problem commonly associated with human trafficking. Additionally, human trafficking cases may be misidentified as prostitution when vice units have the institutional responsibility for such investigations.

While these analyses provide weak support for organizational openness to change as a predictor of human trafficking responses, measures of organizational capacity and experience with change were stronger predictors of both agency responses to human trafficking and the identification of cases. Not surprisingly, larger agencies and agencies with more resources were more likely to adopt human trafficking responses than were smaller and less-resourced agencies. However, capacity to change is a more robust concept than size and resources alone. Police agencies with experience adopting a previous programmatic innovation were more likely to train officers to respond to human trafficking and consequently more likely to identify cases of human trafficking than were agencies without previous experiences. Thus an agency’s experience with being innovative in response to legal change may signal institutional willingness to make subsequent changes in response to new crimes in the future.

The findings presented here are not without some limitations. Most importantly, this analysis examines the influence of complex factors that are not easily measured. For example, while the indicators of external pressure, measured here as the presence of local advocacy groups and news coverage, were not associated with institutional responses to human trafficking or the identification of cases, these measures may not capture fully the pressure police agencies face from the local community. Advocacy groups lobby publicly for government institutions to take human trafficking seriously, but in some cases, these groups actively deter potential victims from seeking assistance from the police out of fear of potentially negative consequences for the victims, such as arrest or deportation (Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2007). Likewise, media coverage of human trafficking may not promote police responses if the coverage is too general in nature or reports on events occurring elsewhere in the nation or world. Measures of institutional openness and experience with change were defined narrowly in the present study to test specific concepts. As a result, while agencies with experience identifying and reporting another type of new crime (here, hate crime) are better at human trafficking identification, it is possible that other innovative experiences have different associations with human trafficking response and identification. Additionally, the findings of this study should be limited to municipal police agencies that serve medium-to-large populations. Smaller municipal agencies, as well as county or state agencies, may have different experiences due to different organizational arrangements and missions.

Despite limitations, this research suggests experience with change is an important factor in understanding agency response to new law. There are a number of potential explanations for the importance of agency experience with change. Some agencies may be more attuned to cutting-edge changes in the profession. The new professionalism movement in policing suggests that agencies should be continuously innovative (Stone & Travis, 2011). Agency leaders adopting this approach are encouraged to follow the recommendations of professional organizations and other progressive police agencies who suggest new practices or, in the case of human trafficking, new responses to identified problems. In response to pressure to adopt new practices, some police agencies have developed planning units whose personnel monitor research in policing and crime control and regularly attend professional conferences to learn about emerging problems. These units also ensure that police agencies apply for grants that commonly promote particular enforcement strategies or development of new programs in response to legal change. Previous innovations may be evidence of organizational capacity to respond to changes that are promoted by the profession.

The fact that agencies who engaged in early hate crime reporting are now, nearly a decade later, adopting responses to human trafficking and identifying cases may be evidence of responsiveness rather than innovation. In the case of both hate crime reporting (the measure of innovation) and human trafficking training, policy implementation, or dedication of personnel (the outcome measured here), agency responses may reflect a willingness to adopt policies and practices that are mandates of the federal government, as opposed to determining agency priorities and responses based on concerns that emerge from the local community. Following the passage of the TVPA, the U.S. Department of Justice released public statements suggesting that local police agencies learn about the problem of human trafficking and also provided funding for local police agencies to develop multiagency task forces to promote the identification of human trafficking cases. Similarly, in the case of hate crime reporting, the federal Hate Crime Statistics Reporting Act put pressure on local agencies to develop a system to identify and report hate crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice similarly promoted local responses through FBI training. What we see here may be evidence that some police agencies take the charges by federal authorities more seriously and respond with organizational change while others dismiss such mandates as unnecessary to the mission of their agency.

Using the case of police agency responses to new crimes of human trafficking, this research suggests that for medium-to-large agencies, experience with change plays an important role in explaining institutional responses to new law. Contrary to the expectations of previous research, experience with change is a stronger predictor of agency responses and outcomes than openness to change. Additional research is needed to understand the specific motivations of agency leaders to adopt programs or change practices in the wake of new laws. Qualitative methodologies such as case studies would be a superior method for understanding the motivations for change. Research is also needed to understand how agency responses affect the actions of frontline officers responsible for enforcing new laws who have historically been resistant to change (Bittner, 1980; Crank & Langworthy, 1992; Manning, 1997).

Though the present research does not explore the process of implementation of an institution’s responses fully, it suggests that such responses are not merely symbolic—cases of human trafficking are more likely to be identified in agencies where officers have been trained and policies guide their responses. As noted earlier, these findings should be approached cautiously. While there are not good measures of the realities of human trafficking problems in local communities, it is possible that it is the identification of human trafficking cases that promotes organizational responses. Better data on police identification of human trafficking cases that are collected over a longer period of time are needed to understand whether organizational responses drive identification or identification drives organizational responses. Despite limits in our ability to determine the direction of this relationship, there is value in programs such as training that develop capacity within police organizations to respond to human trafficking victimization, whether this response is motivated by legal change or the existence of a problem in the community. This research suggests such efforts may be most successful in agencies with a history of innovation and change in response to new law.

With a problem such as human trafficking, where legal change has been rapid despite limited understanding of the problem in local communities, it is critical to examine the complex institutional processes that facilitate programs or polices to promote the identification of cases. Efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of new human trafficking legislation will be incomplete without attention to the institutional mechanisms that facilitate enforcement of new law.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported by Award No. 2005-IJ-CX-0045 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice.

Notes

Author Biography

Amy Farrell is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. Her scholarship seeks to understand arrest, adjudication, and criminal case disposition practices. Recent research focuses on criminal justice system responses to new crimes such as human trafficking. Professor Farrell has led studies of police responses to human trafficking and state and local prosecution of human trafficking for the National Institute of Justice. She has testified about police identification of human trafficking before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Professor Farrell was a corecipient of NIJ’s W. E. B. DuBois Fellowship on crime justice and culture in 2006. She received a BA in government from Beloit College, MA in sociology from the University of Delaware, and PhD in law, policy, and society from Northeastern University.

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