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The Office of Justice Assistance’s study marks the first attempt to gauge trafficking in the state. It concluded international and domestic trafficking involving dozens of victims is taking place in urban and rural areas across much of the southern two-thirds of the state.
But three-quarters of the justice agencies and more than a third of social services providers surveyed in the study said trafficking is not a serious problem or isn’t a problem at all.
“This is an indication of the lack of awareness,” the report said. “At the very least, the results indicate a need for training and education.”
Tim Dewane is the director of the School Sisters of Notre Dame’s Office for Global Justice and Peace in Elm Grove and a member of the Milwaukee Rescue and Restore Coalition, which was launched by the federal government to raise human trafficking awareness. He said the report’s findings aren’t surprising.
“When Wisconsin or anywhere else has taken a closer look at human trafficking, they realize for most law enforcement it hasn’t been on their radar screen,” Dewane said. “This isn’t just a global issue but has local ramifications as well. Hopefully (the report) will open up some eyes.”
The state Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would outlaw human trafficking. Anyone caught trafficking a person for sex or labor would face up to $100,000 in fines and 25 years in prison. Anyone caught trafficking a minor could get 40 years.
Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, the author of the bill, said the report may drive him to amend it to include police training.
The report calls human trafficking the third largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world. Federal justice and immigration officials estimate as many as 17,500 people are trafficked annually into the U.S. for sex and forced labor, the report said.
The highest profile case in Wisconsin involved a pair Brookfield doctors who forced a Philippine woman to work as their maid for nearly two decades. The couple was convicted in 2006.
But hard data on victims in the state is nonexistent. The Office of Justice Assistance sent out a survey to police, sheriffs and prosecutors as well as social service providers early last year hoping for more information.
Of the 261 justice agencies that responded, only 6 percent said they had run across a case they considered slavery or human trafficking.
Thirteen percent said they didn’t know if they’d ever encountered a case, and 7 percent said they’d had any training on human trafficking.
Of the 136 service providers that responded, 26 percent said they had come across a slavery or human trafficking case. More than a third said they didn’t know if they’d ever encountered one. Only two-fifths said they’d received any training.
Identification percentages rose slightly when the agencies were given federal definitions that tie human trafficking to forced commercial sex or labor.
Eleven percent of the justice agencies and 30 percent of service providers said they had run across adults involved in forced commercial sex. Fifteen percent of justice agencies and 21 percent of service providers had encountered minors involved in commercial sex, while 8 percent of police and 33 percent of the providers had seen laborers forced to work in bondage.
Individual justice agencies estimated they’d seen between 19 and 35 cases of human trafficking. When presented with the definitions, that increased to 57 to 122.
Individual providers estimated they’d seen between 95 and 126 cases of human trafficking, but when they considered the definitions, that rose to between 134 and 193.
Thomas Fischer, vice president of the Milwaukee Police Association, said officers need better definitions of human trafficking and training to spot it.
“Unless it’s something encountered on an every day basis, officials in law enforcement may not know what it all encompasses,” he said. “There are cases there. We just have to be able to identify them properly, which isn’t being done.”
Reporting agencies were located across the state, including agencies in Chippewa, Clark, Dane, Green, La Crosse, Marathon, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Outagamie and Polk counties.
The report said agencies may be underreporting cases because human trafficking is difficult to identify and track and victims may not realize they’re victims. It went on to say it’s alarming that most of the respondents consider human trafficking a non-issue, despite dozens of victims.
