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POLICY BRIEF-HUMAN
TRAFFICKING
S. 178, 114th Congress
Caleb Vinson
Word Count: 1700 Words

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S. 178 Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 20151

Title 1 - Justice for Victims of Trafficking
Section 101 of the bill amends the current federal criminal code to impose
additional financial penalties of $5,000 on any person convicted of peonage,
slavery and trafficking in persons, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of
children, transportation for illegal sexual activity or human smuggling in
violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act2.
Section 102 Amends the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 20003 to allow
U.S. citizens who are victims of trafficking to obtain benefits without official
certification.
Section 103 amends the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of
20054 to replace the pilot program and establish residential treatment
facilities for juveniles subjected to trafficking that are administered by the
Department of Justice to improve domestic child human trafficking
deterrence programs that will result in improved rescues for trafficking
victims. Additionally, the section authorizes grant funds use for the
enhancement of law enforcement concentrated in prevention of trafficking.
1 Proposed by Sen. John Cornyn [R-TX], 33 Cosponsors, Bill Status: Reconsidering vote on
second cloture in Senate

2 H.R. 5678, 82nd Congress (1952-1953)

3 H.R. 3530, 113th Congress (2013-2014)
4 H.R. 898, 113th Congress (2013-2014)

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Section 104 expands the definition of child abuse to include human

trafficking and the production of child pornography while also authorizing
grants to identify and provide service to victims of child pornography.
Section 105 provides for the forfeiture of property involved in human
trafficking crimes and authorizes the DOJ to transfer assets.
Section 106 expands the DOJs authority to intercept communication related
to peonage, involuntary servitude, forced labor and trafficking.
Section 107 amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of
19685 to classify severe forms of trafficking as violent crime for the purpose
of allocating funds to prosecute this activity.
Section 108 makes buyers and traffickers equally culpable for sex trafficking
offenses.
Section 109 expresses Congress sense with respect to criminal liability of
buyers of commercial sex acts.
Section 110 requires the DOJ to ensure that all groups within the Innocence
Lost National Initiative6 engage in programs to increase the investigative
capabilities of law enforcement officers in investigating and prosecuting
people who solicit children for sex and all task forces with jurisdiction to also

5 H.R. 5037, 90th Congress (1968-1969)

6 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/vc_majorthefts/cac/innocencelost

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engage in operations to increase the capability of such components to

punish child labor trafficking.
Section 111 classifies producers of child pornography as traffickers engaged
in illicit sexual conduct. It also increases the burden of proof in prosecutions
for transporting minors to engage in illicit sexual conduct from
preponderance of the evidence to clear and convincing evidence.
Section 112 classifies crimes involving peonage as crimes of violence under
the federal criminal code.
Section 113 expands the defense rights of victims by requiring notice of the
right to be informed in a timely manner and to inform these victims of their
rights under the Victims Rights and Restitution Act of 19907.
Section 114 requires the DOJ to ensure that all DOJ anti-human trafficking
program includes technical training on investigation and prosecution of
buyers subject to severe human trafficking and facilitating the provision of
physical and mental health services to persons subject to trafficking.
Section 115 establishes the United States Advisory Council on Human
Trafficking to provide recommendations to the Senior Policy Operating Group
establishes under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

7 H.R. 5368, 101st Congress (1989-1990)

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Section 116 amends the Crime Control Act of 19908 to require reports on
missing children to include a photograph of the child, reduce the period for
verifying and updating records on missing children, require notification to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for each child missing
from a foster care or childcare institution and grant permission to the
National Crime Information Center Terminal Contractor to update the missing
person record.
Section 117 requires the DOJ inspector general to conduct annual audits of
grant recipients under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act
of 2005.

Title II - Combating Human Trafficking

Subtitle A enhances services for Runaway and Homeless Victims of Youth
Trafficking.
Subtitle B Improves the Response to Victims of Child Sex Trafficking to clarify
that the cyber tipline for reporting internet-related exploitation includes child
prostitution.
Subtitle C reforms the Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking9. Section 222 requires the organization to conduct a review on
research and academic literature on trafficking in person in the United States
8 S. 3266, 101st Congress (1989-1990)
9 http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/reports/pitf/

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and to make the information publicly available. Section 223 requires the
Government Accountability Office to submit a report to Congress that
includes information on efforts of federal and state law enforcement groups
to combat human trafficking and each federal grant program for combatting
human trafficking. Section 224 authorizes the DOJ to provide housing for
victims of trafficking.

Title III - the Hero Act of 2015

Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to direct the Department of
Homeland Security to operate within U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement to provide assistance to support investigations by ICE of cyberrelated crimes. Within the Cyber Crimes Center, the DHS shall operate a
Child Exploitation Investigations Unit that will provide numerous services to
combat child exploitation and trafficking. The DHS shall operate a Computer
Forensics Unit that will provide technical support to ICE personnel in
investigating crimes as well as participating in research in digital forensics
while helping the DOD to hire wounded veterans and transitioning service
members through the HERO Child Rescue Corps Program. Finally, the DHS
shall operate a Cyber Crimes Unit that oversees the cyber security strategy
for ICE, enhances the ability of ICE to combat criminal enterprises operating
on the Internet, provide training for ICE personnel, participate in cyber
investigation and recruit participants for investigative and forensic positions.

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Analysis:
Strategies of Title I
(1)Harsher Penalties for Offenders (including monetary loss and property
forfeiture), (2) greater legal powers (including expanding definitions for
easier prosecution, increasing culpability, and informing victims of their
rights), (3) organizational changes (including changes in requirements on
reporting on missing children and mandating improved methods of
investigation and prosecution) and (4) victim programs (in which victims
are given needed care and assistance after the traumatic experience of
trafficking and exploitation).
While these policies are certainly a step in the right direction, they may end
up falling short of their desired results. They assume that increased
prosecution will stop trafficking, however, scholars in the field have long
held that trafficking is not being minimized through increased prosecution.
The bill also makes the assumption that most victims are sex victims when
research shows that they are most often trafficked for labor purposes.10
Additionally, these methods focus primarily on prosecuting traffickers, as
opposed to protecting trafficked persons. This approach tends to overlook
the socioeconomic root causes of the problem and some scholars
recommend that promoting basic rights would better cease the trafficking
phenomenon.11 Jennifer Chacon makes similar observations towards the
existing legislation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act which has
10 David A. Feingold, Human Trafficking

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resulted in very few prosecutions for trafficking offenders because of its

ignoring of the importance of human smuggling to the undocumented
migrant labor market.12 This need for a multidisciplinary approach is
expanded upon by Kristof Van Impe who advocates for an approach that
includes the protection of human rights, stricter border control and the
removal of the root causes of irregular movements.13 While the legislation
does provide a vast, multidisciplinary approach, it could be improved upon
by thinking outside of the box and looking at the roots of the issue rather
than the results.
Strategies of Title II
Provides for increased cyber-prevention methods of human trafficking as well
as compiling and providing to the public research on child and human
trafficking as well as mandating an accountability report on the effectiveness
of these methods.
It is difficult to address the problem of human trafficking on a global scale
but even more-so in the U.S. where the internet and advanced technologies
create a unique situation where it is much easier to be covert for traffickers

11 Janie Chuang, Beyond a Snapshot: Preventing Human Trafficking in the Global

Economy
12 Jennifer M. Chacon, Misery and Myopia: Understanding the Failures of U.S. Efforts
to Stop Human Trafficking
13 Kristof Van Impe, People for Sale: The Need for a Multisciplinary Approach
towards Human Trafficking

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and increased vulnerability results from a very free society.14 The problem is
exacerbated by the crusade ideology postulated by U.S. government policy
and practice that presents trafficking as a moral conundrum rather than a
social phenomena: this clouds the real issues and solutions.15 At the forefront
of these is the existing research on the topic which has its own subset
entitled domestic minor sex trafficking. Social workers should be given the
tools to identify potential victims and for better understanding the issue at
hand.16 With these case specific factors at play, the legislation does a
reasonably effective job in addressing the unique niche of human trafficking
in the United States as opposed to other nations.
Strategies of Title III
Provides for the Department of Homeland Security to assist other
organizations in cyber security and defense from criminal affiliates that may
seek to compromise the efforts of federal organizations to prevent child and
human trafficking, as well as providing improved personnel for investigating
crimes that are facilitated through the internet.
This title succeeds in establishing an authority to moderate and streamline
the process of identifying criminals but may be counter-productive by not
14 T.K. Logan, Robert Walker, Gretchen Hunt, Understanding Human Trafficking in
the United States
15 Ronald Weitzer, The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and
Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade
16 Kimberly Kotrla, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking in the United States

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further elaborating the applicability of protections and the grounds of

trafficking as merely a human rights claim.17 This approach also fails to
prioritize prevention, and instead focuses on the potential backlash that
large criminal affiliates might take in the wake of the prosecuting legislation.
By focusing on those issues, governments might be able to develop more
effective responses to the problem of trafficking.

18

This portion of the

legislation might be a little unnecessary and misguided, as scholars in the

field have a consensus that the primary offenders of trafficking laws are not
big money criminal organizations, but rather individual actors across a wide
variety of professions and walks of life. The money might be better
appropriated on the other titles within the bill.

Final Suggestion:
With the additional considerations given to the articles above, this seems like
appropriate legislation to endorse to make strides in combatting the problem
of human and child trafficking on a domestic scale. However, additional
legislation and a global conversation are necessary to truly combat this issue
as human rights are not merely domestic and this is a problem that is in
clear violation of both economic law and human dignity. This needs to be a

17 Vanessa E. Munro, Of Rights and Rhetoric: Discourses of Degradation and

Exploitation in the Context of Sex Trafficking
18 Johnathan Todres, Taking Prevention Seriously: Developing a Comprehensive
Response to Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation

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moral crusade, yes, but a moral crusade grounded in an approach that

focuses on analytical reasoning and preventing the initial crime too.

Citations:
Chacn, Jennifer M. "Misery and myopia: Understanding the failures of US
efforts to stop human trafficking." Fordham Law Review 74 (2006): 2977.
Chuang, Janie. "Beyond a snapshot: Preventing human trafficking in the
global economy." Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13, no. 1 (2006):
137-163.
Human Trafficking
David A. Feingold
Foreign Policy
No. 150 (Sep. - Oct., 2005) , pp. 26-30, 32
Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30048506
Kotrla, Kimberly. "Domestic minor sex trafficking in the United States." Social
work 55, no. 2 (2010): 181-187.
Munro, V. E. (2008), Of Rights and Rhetoric: Discourses of Degradation and
Exploitation in the Context of Sex Trafficking. Journal of Law and Society,
35: 240264. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6478.2008.00437.x
Ronald Weitzer

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The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of

a Moral Crusade
Politics & Society September 2007 35: 447475, doi:10.1177/0032329207304319
Soderlund, Gretchen. "Running from the rescuers: New US crusades against
sex trafficking and the rhetoric of abolition." nwsa Journal 17, no. 3 (2005):
64-87.
T.K. Logan, Robert Walker, and Gretchen Hunt
Understanding Human Trafficking in the United States
Trauma Violence Abuse January 2009 10: 330, doi:10.1177/1524838008327262
Todres, Jonathan. "Taking prevention seriously: Developing a comprehensive
response to child trafficking and sexual exploitation." Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 43
(2010): 1.
S. 178, 114th Congress (2015-2016)
Van Impe, K. (2000), People for Sale: The Need for a Multidisciplinary
Approach towards Human Trafficking. International Migration, 38: 113191.
doi: 10.1111/1468-2435.00117