Policy Recommendations (Part II)

For my last post, I want to focus on the policy changes that Kentucky stakeholders can make without any legislative changes to the state's CSEC statutes.

Develop new models of gender-responsive treatment and services for CSEC youth: as I have noted in many previous posts, the existing services for CSEC youth in Kentucky are primarily targeted to girls. But there are boys in Kentucky who are involved in the CSEC population and need access to services too. This same problem exists in other states, in part due to a lack of screening or assessment for boys, a bias within agencies about the needs these boys may have, a lack of outreach among anti-trafficking advocates and service providers to boys, and a lack of self-identification as being sexually exploited among boys.

As a result of these dynamics, there are very few evidence-based models for boys who are trafficking victims; in fact, many of the “promising” programs for trafficking victims (not all of them have been rigorously evaluated but they are being replicated) are specifically designed for girls. This problem cannot be completely addressed by stakeholders in Kentucky, but there needs to be more awareness of the issue in this state. There have been positive steps in this direction; for example, Kentucky researchers have already begun interviewing boys in child welfare and the juvenile justice system about their experiences with commercial sexual exploitation. More work in this area needs to continue, and it should be a focus of the state's Human Trafficking Task Force.

Develop more community-based placement options and therapy options for CSEC youth: as I noted in other posts, Kentucky has long relied on residential placement providers in its child welfare system. Some of these residential providers have focused on emergency shelter or crisis intervention centers for CSEC youth, but longer-term community-based shelter (e.g. two-week Safe Houses) are needed in Kentucky. In addition, as Kentucky expands its community-based services in behavioral health, state stakeholders need to examine how they can target these services to CSEC youth.

For youth who are in urban areas, the state can build upon existing networks of treatment providers who provide counseling, emergency services and transition housing, counseling, and victim support groups. However, much of this state is rural – very rural. I’ve driven through I don’t know how many of these fields during my time in Kentucky:

How can CSEC youth in these rural areas get services? This is where therapeutic foster care and quality in-home services become crucial. Identifying foster care parents who have necessary training to foster CSEC youth is crucial for these youth to have good outcomes in the child welfare system. For youth who return to their biological family, family members need in-home services to help the youth in any treatment they may engage with in the community. These services need to be developed in more rural parts of the state.

Provide more training for agency staff and service providers: in addition to child welfare, DJJ, the courts and law enforcement, private residential placement providers need to be trained on human trafficking prevention and treatment practices. If youth in the child welfare system are at risk of trafficking - particularly in group home environments that pimps and recruiters target - staff in these placements need to be trained on how they can work with these youth and prevent them from being further victimized by traffickers or exploiters.

Coordinate the Human Trafficking Task Force with other cross-agency initiatives: as I know from my juvenile justice work, Kentucky has numerous agencies working on child welfare and juvenile justice reform implementation efforts, including the Juvenile Justice Advisory Board, the Juvenile Justice Oversight Council, Foster Care Review Boards, and the State Interagency Council run by Behavioral Health. These interagency groups have committees on coordinating services, improving screening and assessment across agencies, assessing programs, and targeting technical assistance resources to service providers in Kentucky. The state’s Human Trafficking Task Force can coordinate with these agencies to ensure that CSEC issues remain a priority for them, and that they can draw upon resources within these groups to help meet the needs of CSEC youth.

Increase data collection and reporting to the legislature about the characteristics of CSEC cases: currently, the Cabinet's report to the legislature only includes the gender, age and jurisdiction in which the case occurred. Knowing the circumstances in which the youth were trafficked will inform the legislature about further reforms they may consider.


On that note - I want to thank WAPPP and the Cultural Bridge Fellowship program again for supporting my work. It has been a fun summer of research! I will continue to explore this issues when I return to HKS this fall.

Policy Recommendations (Part I)

Photo of Kentucky General Assembly Capitol during Session

What can the Kentucky legislature do about the challenges of implementing CSEC legislation? That's been the question I've been seeking answers to as I determine which policy recommendations may be appropriate for the state.

The sentiment towards HB 3 in Kentucky is still positive, so there is not much momentum to make significant change to the state’s CSEC policies. The legislature has passed additional anti-trafficking bills since 2013, but these bills have focused primarily on enhancing penalties for human traffickers. In 2014, the General Assembly passed SB 184, which allowed for the expungement of non-violent offenses resulting from being a victim of human trafficking and the use of trafficking victimization as an “affirmative defense” against prosecution. In 2015, the legislature passed HB 427, which increased penalties for child pornographers and removed the “age ignorance” defense for child sex offenders. However, neither of these policies deals with the implementation challenges of Kentucky's CSEC reforms.

DCBS has identified 125 CSEC victims since the legislation passed, and its reports to the legislature have not presented any issues with providing care to these youth. These reports do not describe the details of CSEC cases or the youths’ history, but we do know that at least some of these CSEC youth had been in foster care. Considering the research that shows the link between human trafficking and child welfare involvement, this is not surprising. However, it does beg the question, “should all CSEC victims go back into child welfare custody?”

If child welfare custody is not appropriate for these youth, are there organizations in Kentucky that exist (or could be developed) to provide supportive housing for them? One interesting aspect of the CSEC response in Kentucky is that the non-governmental organizations that work with trafficking victims are the same service providers who work with victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. The Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Providers (KASAP) and Catholic Charities are the main trainers of state agencies on human trafficking and HB 3 implementation. KASAP works primarily with adult victims of sexual assault and sex trafficking, but has been involved in the CSEC issue since 2008 as a member of Kentucky's Rescue and Restore task force. Attorneys at KASAP also worked with Rep. Overly and legislative staff to draft HB 3. Child Advocacy Centers across the state provide similar services to KASAP and domestic violence agencies, but they only work with child victims of human trafficking.

Although some of Kentucky's service providers have raised concerns about the lack of attention to young male victims, the majority of the services they provide are targeted to female victims of domestic violence, as opposed to male victims or to older male children of female victims. These non-governmental agencies can provide community-based services for CSEC victims, but they cannot take custody of the youth or provide safe and secure housing environments for youth who are not in DCBS custody.

Unlike DCBS, non-governmental service providers in Kentucky have much more discretion in how they work with CSEC youth. Even if DCBS is not able to substantiate a human trafficking allegation, non-governmental organizations can still work with the youth and provide treatment and victim advocacy support to them. Kentucky’s non-governmental service providers had worked with child victims of human trafficking from 2008-2013, before these youth were required to be placed in DCBS custody.

If CSEC youth cannot live with their families and do not go into DCBS custody, another option for the youth is emancipation. Emancipation would mean that the youth would become his or her own legal guardian while he or she is still a minor. This may be appropriate for older youth, but not younger ones. For these older youth, DCBS could invest resources in supportive independent living options and work with service providers to provide community-based treatment to them. However, the question of what to do with younger victims is still unanswered; DCBS may be the only option for these youth, and some of these youth may be at risk of future trafficking when they are in DCBS foster care or residential placement.

These policy options could address some of the issues of responding to older CSEC youths' needs, but they would require additional resources and training. However, they will not address the issues that younger CSEC victims face. In my final posts this summer, I will focus on policies that could address the needs of these youth in Kentucky, and build support for services across the state.

Political Dynamics of Passing Trafficking Legislation

"For those of you who think that human trafficking is something that happens in big cities…the sad news that I’m here to report is that it’s also going on in our backyards. So the time is now, the time is right, for this [legislative] body to take the action this morning to strengthen those laws."
Quote from Rep. Sannie Overly, introducing HB 3 on the floor of the Kentucky House of Representatives, March 5th 2013

Every state experiences political dynamics in attempting to pass human trafficking legislation. My research has shown that the story of Kentucky's HB 3 is quite interesting.

In 2013 state legislators in Kentucky were feeling significant pressure to pass CSEC legislation. The legislature had previously failed to pass HB 350, prior human trafficking legislation introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly, in the previous year's session. In 2012, HB 350 passed the House, but stalled in the Senate in the final weeks of the 2012 session. In the final hours of session, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill, but did not meet the reading requirements to bring the bill to the floor for final passage. The Senate President called it an “oversight” and argued that failure to pass the bill did not “indicate any lack of Senate support for wanting to deal with the problem.”

Despite the Senate President’s words at the end of session, Kentucky stakeholders who supported the trafficking legislation believed the legislation failed in 2012 because of a lack of buy-in from the state legislature. The 2012 session was a budget year (the Kentucky General Assembly passes a two-year budget every other year), and bills have a history of failing in the last hours of the session because many are held until the budget passes, at which point the General Assembly has too little time to vote on legislation before it must adjourn for the year.

Given the failure of HB 350, human trafficking advocates decided to convene a group of policymakers (including other legislators) over the summer of 2012 to plan for the following session. The legislature also decided to form another state policy group in the summer of 2012: the Unified Juvenile Code Task Force. The Unified Juvenile Code Task Force had identified a primary issue for their work: status offenders (particularly runaways and truant youth) who were being incarcerated in juvenile detention. The fact that status offenders were being held in detention in Kentucky was a huge media issue and a symbol of how Kentucky was “falling behind” the rest of the country in its responses to children in trouble. In addition, the Rescue and Restore task force identified that a large proportion of trafficking victims in Kentucky. More than 100 trafficking victims had been identified since 2008, and more than half of them were children. Because of the specific issues related to the trafficking population in Kentucky, and the political focus on status offenders, the human trafficking policy group decided to focus the 2013 trafficking legislation on child trafficking victims in Kentucky.

The product of this human trafficking policy group was HB 3. HB 3 was introduced in the 2013 legislative session with more than 80 co-sponsors. In March 2013, it unanimously passed the General Assembly and the following week it was signed by the Governor.

As I begin to formulate policy recommendations, I am considering the political implications of each of them - particularly those that would require legislative changes.

Gender Disparities in CSEC Cases

Before I talk about more of my research findings, enjoy photos of this gorgeous sunset above the Rupp Arena in Lexington!

Another key area of my research this summer has been identifying gender disparities in CSEC cases. In Kentucky, 90 percent of the 125 trafficking cases that DCBS has investigated involve girls, and 10 percent (13 cases) involve boys. However, service providers who work on trafficking issues in Kentucky are aware of many more incidents with boys who are involved in the sex trade, either because they are trading sex for food or shelter, or they have an exploiter or pimp. Two questions follow from this: 1) why have so few trafficking incidents involving boys initiated trafficking referrals to DCBS, and 2) if the referrals have been made to DCBS, has DCBS not classified the referral as a trafficking case?

Local police departments, the state police, court-designated workers, and DJJ staff refer the majority of trafficking cases to DCBS. Stakeholders speculate that particularly in the law enforcement community, officials may not see boys as CSEC victims in the same way that they see girls as CSEC victims. For a girl, low-level criminal activity may initiate a trafficking investigation, but for a boy, low-level criminal activity may initiate criminal charges. These different responses would make it difficult to identify all of the trafficking victims in Kentucky, and determine whether the state has systems in place to meet the needs of all CSEC youth.

There are a number of other reasons why boy CSEC victims may not be identified. In Kentucky, many of the services that exist for CSEC youth are designed primarily for girls. Many of these services were built from existing sexual assault and domestic violence community programs, and these organizations work primarily with female victims. This is similar to the situation in other states; for example, recent research on LGBTQ youth and young men who have sex with men (YMSM) who are engaged in survival sex in New York City suggests that there are limited (if any) services or resources that are specialized for boys and transgender youth who have been sexually exploited or are involved in the commercial sex market. Given that this research was done in New York City, which has treatment and victim support services specifically designed for boys and transgender youth, the problem may be more significant in states like Kentucky with a less robust provider network to serve these youth.

These questions relate to the larger question of whether there are adequate services and placement options for CSEC victims in Kentucky. The policy recommendations I am developing will focus on building the capacity to serve these youth, and identifying resources to fund new programs.

Storms! And Conference Updates...

This time of year, storms in Kentucky are particularly bad...this was not so fun to fly through!

But the research has been great! In June, I met with Kentucky stakeholders as they attended the Court Improvement Conference, where the focus this year was human trafficking. The meetings were very fruitful for Kentucky, where the group determined that a primary focus in the coming year should be developing a universal screening and assessment tool for child trafficking.

Another June conference in Kentucky - the Behavior Institute - also included a presentation on youth in juvenile detention who had experiences with human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This researcher uncovered some interesting gender dynamics with human trafficking, which I will focus subsequent posts on. I will also shift towards focusing on policy recommendations and conclusions from my research.

CSEC Youth in the Juvenile Justice System

As I have noted in my previous posts, child trafficking advocacy in recent years has focused primarily on diverting victims from the juvenile justice system and handing responsibility over to the child welfare system. But in practice, what does that look like?

HB 3, Kentucky’s 2013 human trafficking legislation, required juvenile justice agencies to take certain steps to identify youth in their system who may have been victims of trafficking. The first agency affected was the Court Designated Worker program (CDW) in the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), the statewide court system in Kentucky. The CDWs take all complaints on all juveniles for any kind of delinquent offense or status offense, regardless of who is filing the complaint (law enforcement, schools, parents, etc.) After taking the complaint, the CDW conducts a preliminary inquiry into the incident; this preliminary inquiry includes a number of questions about the youth’s background and the youth’s perspective on why the offense occurred. CDWs had this responsibility prior to the passage of HB 3, but HB 3 gave them additional responsibilities to screen for potential human trafficking victimization during this intake process. The legislation required Court Designated Workers (CDWs) to perform an initial human trafficking screening on all juvenile cases and, if the youth answers affirmatively to certain screening questions, refer the case to child welfare for an investigation. The CDWs provide an additional early screening point before youth progress into the juvenile justice system, which is particularly important given that many CSEC youth may be picked up by law enforcement and that law enforcement officer may not be able to identify the youth as a potential trafficking victim.

HB 3 anticipates that not all CSEC youth will be identified at the front-end of the juvenile justice system, and therefore requires the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to build additional trafficking screening questions into their intake processes. Youth are placed in DJJ custody when they are detained before their court proceedings, or when they are sentenced to detention or long-term commitment for a delinquent offense. DJJ has developed a human trafficking protocol to identify trafficking victims when they enter detention centers or residential placement. If DJJ identifies a trafficking victim at any point, the agency must file a report with child welfare, notify the youth’s attorney, and petition the court to transfer custody of the trafficked youth to DCBS. The only exception to this rule is if DJJ determines the child poses a threat to public safety, in which case DJJ is required to provide treatment for human trafficking (although the legislation does not specify how the agency should determine the youth poses a risk to public safety, or what kind of treatment the agency is supposed to provide).

As AOC and DJJ have just begun to implement their screening processes, no one knows at this point is how many juvenile justice-involved youth will be identified as trafficking victims. Given that CDWs process nearly 40,000 referrals each year, and thousands of those youth end up in DJJ custody, it is possible that many more trafficking victims will be identified in the next year.

Treatment and Placement Options for Youth who are Commercially Sexually Exploited

As I have been researching the challenges that states have encountered in implementing CSEC legislation, I have identified one key area of focus: the lack of resources to invest in treatment and placement options for the CSEC population. Part of this challenge stems from the fact that there is a limited evidence-base for programs specifically designed for the CSEC population. While research has clearly shown that mental health treatment, specifically trauma-informed care, is a crucial component of child trafficking victim treatment programs, there is much less research on what type of placement or environment this care should be provided in.

Like many states, for many years Kentucky has been dependent primarily on out of home placement options for children in child welfare or juvenile justice custody. Few community-based service providers exist in many parts of the state, particularly those that can provide tailored treatment to child trafficking victims. However, the landscape of behavioral health services in Kentucky is changing. Through numerous policy changes, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services has expanded access to community-based services throughout the state, and created new incentives for providers to provide quality, evidence-based treatment for adolescents. Though this work is not specifically related to child trafficking issues, the hope is that this service expansion will create more treatment options for the CSEC population.

In Kentucky, service providers that work with trafficking victims have identified the need for a continuum of services and placement options for CSEC victims. These options range from trafficking victim-specific shelters that could provide emergency shelter, to long-term supportive independent living for CSEC victims who may be aging out of foster care. These programs have not been extensively researched, but examining which ones may be most appropriate for the Kentucky's CSEC population will be the primary focus of my work for the remainder of this summer project.