SJI continues to addresses the impact of federal and state human trafficking laws on the state courts, and the challenges faced by state courts in dealing with cases involving trafficking victims and their families.  These efforts are intended to empower state courts to identify victims, link them with vital services, and hold traffickers accountable.  Several new resources are now available:

The National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project (NIWAP) at the American University/Washington College of Law, working in partnership with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ)  is launching a National Judicial Network: Forum on Human Trafficking and Immigration in State Courts (“The Network”).  The Network will provide a forum for judges to: engage in peer-to-peer learning sessions with judges from across the country; participate in webinars; communicate with other judges in a member-only confidential Listserv; access topic-specific publications; and attend future in-person trainings on issues that arise in state courts involving human trafficking and immigrant victims.

The U.S. Department of Justice/Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) continues to provide resources that can help organizations and programs increase identification of, and enhance service delivery to, survivors of human trafficking:

• The Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center helps organizations and tribes start, sustain, or expand their anti-trafficking work. Visit the new website for more information about the Center, its services, and a wealth of downloadable anti-trafficking resources.
• The Development and Operations Roadmap for Multidisciplinary Anti-Human Trafficking Task Forces publication, produced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police with funding from OVC and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, provides new and experienced anti-human trafficking task forces with guidance to assess and plan task force development from start to sustainability.
• The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC TTAC) recently released the Human Trafficking Action Research Toolkit. The toolkit provides information, strategies, tools, and other resources to help organizations and programs understand and conduct action research.
• The Understanding Human Trafficking training, another resource offered by OVC TTAC, provides foundational learning on trauma-informed and victim-centered approaches to human trafficking through five interactive online modules designed so that a wide audience can benefit.

For more information and resources on anti-human trafficking efforts, please visit the Human Trafficking section of OVC’s website.