This portion provides practical investigative strategies to build successful prosecutions of the owners, operators, and accomplices of IMBs. The presenters discuss enhancing investigations through partnerships with civil and criminal allied investigative agencies and service providers. They also provide an analytical framework for developing investigative strategies designed to identify and preserve evidence supporting a wide range of charges that can be prosecuted with or without victim participation.
Investigating and Prosecuting Trafficking in Illicit Massage Businesses: Part 1
IMBs are venues disguised as legitimate massage or bodywork businesses in which women are forced, coerced, and defrauded into performing countless sex acts with strangers on a daily basis. This portion of the three-part series provides an overview of the illicit massage business (IMB) organizational model, which typically exists within one of many nationwide networks. The presenters discuss how women are recruited, harbored, and exploited within those networks. They also explore the challenges facing law enforcement and prosecutors, demonstrating the need for strategies to build evidence-based cases that can ensure that offenders are held accountable for their wide-ranging criminal activity.
Investigating and Prosecuting Labor Trafficking: Exploitation for the Sake of the Bottom Line
Trafficking manifests in many areas of the labor market – including but not limited to – manufacturing, agriculture, construction, entertainment, service industries and domestic labor, often overlapping with sexual violence. It is critical to connect victims of labor trafficking, involuntary servitude, and debt bondage with critical and comprehensive services while also focusing on holding offenders and business entities accountable. This webinar highlights the importance of collaboration with allied professionals to support a victim-centered response and an offender-focused approach. It also explores a variety of best practices and provides law enforcement and prosecutors with the tools to refine their own strategies
This webinar recording should qualify prosecutors for 1.5 hours of continuing legal education (CLE) credits. Prosecutors are encouraged to contact their state bar association in reference to application requirements and related fees.
A Study in Labor Trafficking: Modes, Means, and Methods of Organized Trafficking Operations
Labor trafficking organizations often operate clandestinely in legitimate venues and industries, causing victims to routinely go undetected or be misidentified. This webinar uses a case study to highlight the key findings from a recent Urban Institute/Northeastern University report. The presenters offer strategies for overcoming some of the barriers in identifying, investigating, and prosecuting labor trafficking, including how to apply the research to practical investigative techniques, overcome common misconceptions about labor trafficking, and effectively coordinate with allied professionals in the justice system, business community, and community-based programs.
This webinar recording should qualify prosecutors for 1.5 hours of continuing legal education (CLE) credits. Prosecutors are encouraged to contact their state bar association in reference to application requirements and related fees.
