Category — Author: James L. Dold

Collaborative Effort Urges West Virginia to become the 49th State to Criminalize Human Trafficking

In the summer of 2011, Polaris Project’s Policy Team reflected on a year of great accomplishment after helping pass 17 new anti-human trafficking laws across the country, including criminalizing human trafficking offenses for the first time in Hawaii, Virginia, and Vermont. Despite these victories, we looked across our State Ratings Map with a sense of overwhelming urgency of what the next year would bring. Two states remained that had never criminalized human trafficking – West Virginia and Wyoming – and we were committed to addressing this gap. [Read more →]

On November 15, Polaris Project hosted the first ever National State Legislators Conference Call on Human Trafficking. More than 40 legislators from 26 states joined a conference call and webinar put together by Polaris Project to collaborate, share ideas, and advocate for anti-trafficking legislation. Each state has taken its own approach to combatting human trafficking and the purpose of the call was to give legislators an opportunity to learn more from each other on what has worked and the challenges others have confronted in successfully carrying anti-trafficking legislation.

Executive Director and CEO Bradley Myles provided an introductory statement on the need for strong local action against trafficking. Then, legislators that worked closely with Polaris Project offered their insight and guidance to veteran and freshmen legislators on how to pass anti-trafficking legislation. [Read more →]

After countless hours of research, the Policy team is proud to announce the release of the 2011 State Ratings map! The Polaris Project annual state ratings process tracks the presence or absence of 10 categories of state statutes that Polaris Project believes are critical to a comprehensive anti-trafficking legal framework. [Read more →]

Charmed by Hollywood images of Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” a misconception of the life of young girls and women trapped in prostitution has spread through American consciousness. It is important to reveal to people what really happens to many of the girls and women. However, the enormity of the task means that just one organization cannot do this alone. This is why we often collaborate with other organizations, on international, national, and local levels, to ensure that we can make the biggest possible impact with the limited resources we have available. [Read more →]

Part I of this blog discussed two of the factors that played a significant role in the passing of anti-human trafficking legislation in the Commonwealth of Virginia: the Change makers and a bi-partisan coalition. In this entry, I will go on to discuss two equally important reasons for these monumental changes.

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Dire does not quite describe the situation we faced when we first began trying to pass anti-human trafficking legislation in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For years we worked to establish a strong legal framework for combating human trafficking. Sometimes we were successful, other times we weren’t. My predecessors successfully navigated difficult waters to help criminalize abduction for the purpose of forced labor, as well as extend asset forfeiture to vehicles used to traffic children. These were no minor feats and took countless hours of hard work, dedication, and passion on the part of many. Despite these successes we were still plagued by our inability to pass strong sex trafficking legislation and provide effective assistance to survivors of human trafficking. Another equally pressing problem in the Commonwealth was the revelation in the Crime Commission Report that none of the statutes currently used to arrest and prosecute traffickers had been used. While there is no one magic item that helped us pass paradigm-shifting anti-human trafficking legislation this year, I do think our success can be attributed to several noteworthy factors:

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