Date
2-19-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Human Services
Abstract
Law enforcement leaders must consider how their agency can effectively investigate human trafficking in their jurisdiction. These leaders are tasked with creating an agency culture that prioritizes ethical decision making, which directly affects variables such as officer training and officer treatment of trafficking victims during investigations. Ethically sound decision making has rewards, such as inspiring other leaders to act in a similar fashion. Human trafficking training with an emphasis on the thought-behavior link will enable officers to understand the motivations of both traffickers and victims. Untrained officers rely on biases and assumptions when interacting with sex workers. This is because human trafficking is a nuanced crime that requires specialized training. Leaders can proactively combat human trafficking by developing a detailed action plan that considers specialized training, funding, partnership with local victim advocacy groups, implementation of policy, and community input. Due to the complicated nature of human trafficking, it is impossible to create a universal template for use by every law enforcement agency. Rather, agency leaders can draw information from this paper and improve their trafficking investigation policies and procedures.