The following are excerpts from recent research related to justice and law enforcement and reflect the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the organizations for which they work. To access the full reports, please visit the website links at the bottom of each summary.
Compiled by Katherine Aldred
Hidden in plain sight: challenges to identifying, investigating and prosecuting human trafficking
Amy Farrell and Jack McDevitt
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery in which people are coerced, tricked or forced into exploitive labour or sexual services. It doesn't always involve a person being physically bound into work through violence or moved across international borders. Psychological coercion or fraud can be used to keep a person in a position of exploitation and the trafficking can even occur in the victim's hometown.
To better understand the challenges of identifying, investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases, we, in partnership with colleagues from the Urban Institute, reviewed a sample of 140 closed human trafficking cases and conducted in-depth interviews with law enforcement, prosecutors and victim service providers who participated in those cases in 12 U.S. counties.
In the sites studied, the overwhelming majority of all cases identified by law enforcement were sex trafficking cases (86 per cent of 152 cases). A much smaller percentage of all investigated cases of human trafficking were labour trafficking (nine per cent) or both labour and sex trafficking (five per cent). The majority of human trafficking victims identified were female (89 per cent).
Proactive investigation
Human trafficking victims are hidden, often in plain sight. Although victims may be in the public while engaged in work, traffickers control their ability to leave the situation in a variety of ways.
Some victims are threatened with violence. Some are controlled through various forms of psychological coercion, such as being deprived of food and water, having their access to information controlled, and receiving threats that their trafficker will report them to the police, to keep them in servitude.
Victims often blame themselves for their victimization. When victims in the cases we studied did come forward, they often needed a period of time to develop a relationship with a police officer or more often a victim service provider before they opened up and trusted that the police would be able to protect them.
In the cases we studied, the most frequent method of identification of human trafficking cases was a tip (either from a community member, from a victim services organization or through a hotline call), cited in 39 per cent of human trafficking investigations. Rarely, in only 10 per cent of cases, did victims self-report their victimization to the police. In only three per cent of the cases, human trafficking was identified in response to a call for service.
Since many victims will never come forward to report their victimization, the police must develop proactive strategies to identify victims in their community. Agencies should consider adopting techniques from organized crime investigations for developing cases against traffickers. Some of these techniques could include cash flow and money laundering investigations, and analysis of real estate and business incorporation records of those who run brothels and businesses employing victims.
Additionally, the police should broaden the scope of their human trafficking investigations beyond sex trafficking.
To date, few labour trafficking cases have been prosecuted across the United States. Identifying these cases may require local law enforcement to develop partnerships with regulatory agencies, such as the state Department of Labor and municipal code enforcement agencies, to begin proactive investigations into potential labour trafficking situations in their communities.
To access the full report, please visit www.nij.gov.
Covered in blue: Police culture and LGBT police officers in the Province of Ontario
Joe L. Couto
Interviews with 21 LGBT police officers suggest that the police culture in Ontario is shifting from a traditional hypermasculine, heterosexual orientation to one that is becoming more inclusive.
While participants generally agreed that police culture is still conservative and male dominated, most also agreed that it has evolved toward inclusivity over the past 20 years as more women, members of racialized groups and LGBT people are recruited and rise through the ranks.
The shift toward greater inclusivity may be being driven more by legislative requirements (laws, human rights codes) than by a substantial shift in the police culture ethos.
Participants who have been in policing for more than 15 years particularly emphasized that the greater presence of LGBT and other diverse groups in police organizations indicates a shift away from the hypermasculine, heterosexual focus of the culture toward greater inclusivity.
As raids on bars and bathhouses serving LGBT clientele have been abandoned and some police services are aggressively recruiting from LGBT communities and promoting LGBT officers into leadership positions, participants felt organizational culture is also changing, albeit in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary manner.
Some participants suggested that organizational resistance toward inclusivity in the organization centres primarily on middle managers 50 years of age and older who retain more traditional and negative attitudes toward LGBT police officers.
The perception that police organizations are moving toward greater inclusivity is subjective and influenced by the discourse represented by the police artefacts. Artefacts such as service mottos, organizational statements, uniform and grooming regulations, and accommodation policies emphasize conservative values associated with police professionalism.
While some LGBT police officers interviewed have experienced overt discrimination and harassment in their careers, most report a greater presence of "microaggressions" in the workplace.
Participants did express concern for what they perceived as the disconnection between what organizations say (often expressed through its artefacts) and how "things really are" in the workplace.
Despite the challenges for LGBT police officers, this study found strong support among participants for policing as a profession and for their organizations in particular. All 21 participants agreed with their organization's general goals of maintaining public order and solving crimes (Colvin 2012). This indicates that policing as a profession maintains a strong ability to bind its members to its goals of law enforcement and crime prevention regardless of their personal characteristics.
Conclusion
This study confirms that LGBT police officers in Ontario continue to experience the influence of the traditional police culture, which has been dominated by white, heterosexual males, in their policing workplaces. But participants also believed that the culture is evolving to be more reflective of the broader society's greater acceptance of LGBT people.
Organizationally, police services are exhibiting greater sensitivity to diverse groups. However, they need to be more intentional in recognizing their LGBT police officers, as more openly LGBT police officers come into their organizations.
To access the full report, please visit www.royalroads.ca.
Mental illness and the criminal justice system
Alison MacPhail and Simon Verdun-Jones
Research confirms that people with various forms of mental illness are highly over-represented in the criminal justice system. What isn't as clear is the exact relationship between mental illness and criminal behaviour, including violence, and how best to reduce offending in people with a mental illness who have come into contact with the criminal justice system.
While many studies have identified an apparent link between mental illness and both violence and recidivism, other research has found that serious mental illness (primarily schizophrenia and other psychoses) alone is not significantly predictive of criminal behaviour.
The more important factors are antisocial personality, psychopathy, neuro-cognitive brain impairments and substance abuse, and having antisocial associates and living in a chaotic and antisocial environment with few positive social supports.
Relationship to police
It's clear that police time is disproportionately consumed dealing with people living with a mental illness. However a significant proportion of this is due to behaviour that is not criminal.
It may be in relation to seeking assistance in a crisis, or the behaviour may not be significant enough to justify arrest and criminal processing, but which is still viewed as problematic in the community. As well, this group consumes a disproportionate amount of health resources, through repeat visits to hospital emergency rooms and primary care physicians, as well as various other social services.
With respect to arrest, most studies seem to show that people with mental illness aren't arrested more frequently than others committing the same offences. Indeed there is some suggestion that police are less likely to arrest if they suspect a mental illness, especially if they can divert to a mental health program, and when they do arrest it is sometimes because the mental illness is not identified or suspected.
Recommendations
- Ensure that diversion strategies, sentencing and case management address criminogenic factors such as antisocial personality/psychopathy and substance abuse, as well as social welfare needs, in addition to connecting offenders to appropriate mental health treatment.
- Given the correlation between mental illness and substance use disorder, including the likelihood that substance misuse may mask a mental illness:
- integrate treatment strategies while addressing the environmental factors such as inadequate housing and supports
- integrate criminal justice responses, such as drug courts and mental health courts
- Address the complex issues facing mentally disordered offenders through the use of integrated teams with members from mental health, social services and criminal justice. To ensure effective co-ordination of services, the authority to ensure access to required services should ideally reside in a single individual.
- Particular attention needs to be paid to the specific needs of female offenders.
To access the full report, please visit www.icclr.law.ubc.ca.