Criminology and Public Policy 9(2)

Identifying Human Trafficking Victims

Improving our approach to human trafficking
Mohamed Mattar, Shanna Van Slyke

Where are all the victims?: Understanding the determinants of official identification of human trafficking incidents
Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt, Stephanie Fahy

The passage of new laws that criminalize the trafficking of persons for labor and sexual services has raised public awareness about the problem of human trafficking. In response, police must understand the problem, identify human trafficking victims, and make arrests. The numbers of victims identified to date, however, has paled in comparison with official estimates, which leads some to question the existence of a human trafficking problem. Missing from this debate is information about how frequently police encounter human trafficking and how well prepared officers are to handle these cases. Analyzing survey responses from a national sample of police agencies in the United States, we found that less than 10% of police agencies identified human trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Larger agencies were more likely to identify cases of human trafficking but the agency leader perception about the problem in their local communities as well as taking steps to prepare officers to identify and respond were the most important factors to increasing human trafficking identification by police.

This study provides much needed information about why U.S. officials have identified so few human trafficking victims. By understanding how often and under what conditions police find, investigate, and prosecute cases of human trafficking we will be in a better position to identify and overcome barriers to police responses to trafficking and understand the limitations of official statistics about human trafficking. Data from a national survey also provide a baseline measure of police identification of human trafficking against which we can gauge the progress of future anti-trafficking efforts.

Building the infrastructure of anti-trafficking: Information, funding, responses1
Fiona David

Identifying child victims of trafficking: Toward solutions and resolutions
Elzbieta M. Gozdziak

Measuring the immeasurable: Can the severity of human trafficking be ranked?
Kristiina Kangaspunta

Human trafficking: Policy
Barbara Ann Stolz

Crime Costs across Offender Trajectories

Finding the path to optimal deterrence by tracking the path that leads to crime: An introduction to "Studying the costs of crime across offender trajectories"
David A. Anderson

Studying the costs of crime across offender trajectories
Mark A. Cohen, Alex R. Piquero, Wesley G. Jennings

Longitudinal studies of delinquency and crime have generated an important source of descriptive information regarding patterns of offending across the life course, and have helped inform and spur theoretical and methodological contributions. One particular method that has received considerable attention is based on offending trajectories, but applications of this method have not extended much beyond descriptive accounts of offending. This study links offender trajectories to monetary costs associated with criminal offending by members of the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort. Results indicate that chronic offenders who frequently commit crimes when they are young turn to more serious crimes when they are adults and impose far greater costs than low-frequency chronic offenders and those whose offending peaks during adolescence.

Preventing individuals from becoming high-rate chronic offenders would yield significant cost savings of more than $200 million. In terms of overall costs, offending frequency accounts for the bulk of costs in the juvenile years, whereas the seriousness of individual crimes drives total costs in the adult years. Moreover, because some trajectory groups impose higher costs in their juvenile years, whereas others impose higher costs in their adult years, policies that target particular (high-rate chronic) trajectory groups as opposed to all at-risk youth, for example, have the potential to provide significantly greater benefits at lower costs. These findings suggest that the allocation of prevention and intervention efforts should be targeted differentially across the offender population, with those individuals exhibiting early, frequent, and chronic offending deserving the most attention. Promising programs aimed at such individuals include early childhood prevention programs, such as those based on family–parent training, self-control improvement, and cognitive therapies.

The costs of crime
Jens Ludwig

Offender trajectories, crime trends, and costs: An invited policy essay on studying the costs of crime across offender trajectories
Robert M. O'Brien

Juveniles' Right to Counsel

Juvenile law reform: Ensuring the right to counsel
Donna M. Bishop

The right to counsel in juvenile court: Law reform to deliver legal services and reduce justice by geography
Barry C. Feld, Shelly Schaefer

The U.S. Supreme Court in In re Gault granted delinquents the right to counsel in juvenile courts. Decades after Gault, efforts to provide adequate defense representation in juvenile courts have failed in most states. Moreover, juvenile justice administration varies with structural context and produces justice-by-geography. In 1995, Minnesota enacted juvenile law reforms, which include mandatory appointment of counsel. This pre- and post-reform legal impact study compares how juvenile courts processed youths before and after the statutory changes. We assess how legal changes affected the delivery of defense services and how implementation varied with urban, suburban, and rural context.

We report inconsistent judicial compliance with the mandate to appoint counsel. Despite unambiguous legislative intent, rates of representation improved for only one category of offenders. However, we find a positive reduction in justice by geography, especially in rural courts. Given judicial resistance to procedural reforms, states must find additional strategies to provide counsel in juvenile courts.

Does having an attorney provide a better outcome?: The right to counsel does not mean attorneys help youths
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard

When a "right" is not enough: Implementation of the right to counsel in an age of ambivalence
Robert G. Schwartz, Marsha Levick

Forensic Evidence Processing

Forensic identification evidence: Utility without infallibility
Simon A. Cole

Unanalyzed evidence in law-enforcement agencies: A national examination of forensic processing in police departments
Kevin J. Strom, Matthew J. Hickman

This study investigated forensic evidence processing in a nationally representative sample of state and local law-enforcement agencies (n = 3,153). For a 5-year period, agencies reported that 14% of all unsolved homicides (an estimated 3,975 cases) and 18% of all unsolved rapes (an estimated 27,595 cases) contained forensic evidence that had not been submitted to a forensic crime laboratory for analysis. Approximately 40% of these unanalyzed homicide and rape cases were reported to have contained DNA evidence. The lack of a suspect in the case was the most frequently cited reason for not submitting forensic evidence for analysis.

Despite an increased diffusion of knowledge regarding the value of forensic evidence in the prosecution and defense of criminal cases, the investigative capabilities of forensic science are not being realized by law enforcement. Additional training for law enforcement on the use of forensic science to develop investigative leads is critical, as is the creation of departmental policies that prioritize and streamline the analysis of forensic evidence for homicide and rape cases—even in "no-suspect" cases. Ensuring adequate resources and information sharing for forensic processing especially of violent crimes, is also critical.

The promises and pitfalls of forensic evidence in unsolved crimes
Kevin M. Beaver

An economic perspective on "Unanalyzed evidence in law-enforcement agencies"
E. James Cowan, Roger Koppl

Database-driven investigations: The promise—and peril—of using forensics to solve "no-suspect" cases
Andrea Roth

Criminology and Public Policy, May 2010: Volume 9, Issue 2