| Since 2006, research continues to find law enforcement unaware of human trafficking legislation and minimally able to respond to human trafficking. The understanding that human trafficking crimes is not the sole responsibility of federal authorities is becoming clear to state and local law enforcement that are on the frontlines of human trafficking. As such becomes clear, states need to address the issues relating to law enforcement responses to human trafficking, or the problem of victim under-identification will continue. This study applies systems theory and model of multiple goal agencies to assess law enforcement approaches to human trafficking in the presence (or absence) of anti-trafficking legislation. This research utilized a quantitative secondary data analysis to assess the research questions and hypotheses. The data analysis uses a one-way MANOVA to answer the primary research question and a two-way ANOVA to answer the research subquestions. A one-way MANOVA determined that in states that have trafficking legislation and states that do not, there will be a statistical difference in law enforcement's knowledge of human trafficking, identification of trafficking cases, and familiarity with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. To counter the limitations of this study and strengthen the results of this study's empirical findings, the final part of the data analysis analyzed law enforcement responses to the question in the original survey, "Does your state have a trafficking law?" This analysis of law enforcement responses determined that law enforcement surveyed from fifteen states did not answer this question correctly. The goal of the empirical findings of this research is to provide support for the adoption of appropriate state human trafficking legislation as a solution to law enforcement's under-identification of trafficking victims. |
