334 – Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking, with Derek Marsh

Derek Marsh joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss the role of law enforcement in preventing human trafficking.

Derek Marsh

Derek Marsh is the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is a retired Deputy Chief of the Westminster Police Department, CA, with over 26 years of service. He co-founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force and has been a national and international leader in anti-human trafficking training, investigations, and advocacy. A former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow, Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and task force collaboration. He holds master’s degrees in Human Behavior and Police Management & Leadership and continues to advance education, outreach, and justice initiatives through GCWJ.

Key Points

• It is important to shift law enforcement’s focus from a traditional reactive approach (arresting perpetrators) to a proactive model that prioritizes prevention of human trafficking through holistic strategies.
• There is a strong focus on utilizing victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches in law enforcement to provide appropriate support for victims while addressing the dynamics between victims and perpetrators, rather than solely relying on arrests and punitive measures.
• There are financial implications of preventative versus reactive responses. Investing in preventive measures could ultimately be more cost-effective than dealing with the long-term consequences of exploitation and incarceration.
• Collaboration among various stakeholders—including law enforcement, social services, and community organizations—is necessary to effectively address human trafficking and to support prevention strategies that mitigate risk factors for exploitation.

Resources

• Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force
• Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellows 
• Health and Human Services
• gcwj.org
• Department of Social Services
• Enhanced Collaborative Model

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14
Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #334: Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Derek Marsh, an old friend and frequent guest on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. Derek serves as the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is adjunct faculty in the criminal justice major, a retired deputy chief of Westminster Police Department, and co founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force. He’s also been a former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow. Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and Task Force collaboration. We are so grateful that he’s on our Global Center for Women and Justice team, and we’re eager to dive into this conversation. Derek, welcome.

Derek Marsh 1:42
Thank you for having me again.

Sandra Morgan 1:43
Yeah, it’s kind of hard not to run into you around here.

Derek Marsh 1:47
You being the boss and telling me what to do kind of helps.

Sandra Morgan 1:49
I know I love it, though, when you were the boss, but I get to have that role now, so it’s great. I’m excited because you know how much I love talking about prevention, and usually you’re talking about finding the bad guys, locking them up, and making sure they can’t do what they did ever again. But now, we’re going to look at this from the perspective that law enforcement has a role in preventing human trafficking. Let’s start with that question: How do we change our lens so that we’re more proactive instead of reactive?

Derek Marsh 2:35
It’s a difficult lens to change, because a lot of our work in police work is we’re rewarded financially, or through evaluations, or through the public perception, by reacting to issues quicker. The sooner, the more long term that impact has, the greater we get that positive feedback. Human trafficking, unfortunately, isn’t always one of those situations where you can just pop in, make a quick arrest, refer a victim to a victim services provider, and think you have a win. I guess it is a win in the short term sense, but it’s not a win in the long term sense. After being retired, and thinking about these things, and teaching in the CJ, the Criminal Justice Department, I’ve come to think of prevention as being a much more holistic, complete response, as is just opposed to putting people in jail. Which I enjoy doing, I probably still would enjoy if I had the option, but I don’t know if that’s the actual answer in the long term for eliminating, or at least mitigating significantly, human trafficking.

Sandra Morgan 3:39
Well, we’ve talked about prevention a lot on this task force, my background in pediatric nursing. I want to find how do we teach people to brush their teeth, that equivalent, so that we can end trafficking, really do prevention? And we’ve looked at prevention through the lens of the prevention framework at Health and Human Services, which really focuses on a primary prevention strategy, a public health agenda, and as well as a socio-ecological model. So can you help us see that in the context of criminal justice and law enforcement?

Derek Marsh 4:27
Well, sure. So human trafficking has frequently been referred to as a public health crisis these days, and for good reason, there’s physiological issues, cognitive issues, societal issues, financial, economic issues that result as a result of the crime of human trafficking. Health and Human Services and most of the anti trafficking world these days, in our federal world, focus on the public health model, which has three different levels of prevention, if you will. You have your primary level which focuses on actually what we consider prevention, stopping something before it happens. We have secondary and tertiary, both which deal with reacting to an event, whether the person is a perpetrator or they’re experiencing exploitation or trafficking. The secondary deals with short term, basically arresting someone, putting them in jail, or just immediately identifying someone and offering them assistance. The tertiary deals with long term, so basically, how are you going to make that person stop being a perpetrator? Or how are you going to make sure that person who’s been a victim, survivor, not recidivate anymore, not go back, not get sucked back into the life, or not be further exploited by other people.

Sandra Morgan 5:42
Give me an example, tell me a story that I can understand that.

Derek Marsh 5:48
Well, here’s the thing. I’ll go back to the days of the dinosaurs when I was working on it. I mean, you go to a house, you get a report. Someone says there’s something fishy at this residence. It turns out to be a residential brothel. You go through your surveillance, you get your information about who owns the place. You get license plates, you see people repeatedly.You see if they have any warrants or anything like that. You go to a judge eventually say, “Well, this type of activity appears to be related to either drugs,” because they’re very similar in residential brothels, “or maybe it’spotentially human trafficking,” or some kind of pimping and pandering. So then you convince the judge based on your experience, and you move in, and you do a search warrant, and you find people who are being victimized. You find people who are victimizing them, and you find people who are offering them. From the idea of trying to figure out what’s happening ahead of time, we’re not. What we’re doing is we’re responding basically to a call for service, or to an observation from a citizen. We go there, we deal with the immediate situation, we close down the residential brothel. We identify who the perpetrators are and who the victim survivors are going to be, and in that short secondary prevention aspect, you’re dealing with the issue. We’re actually preventing, in a sense, right? Because that’s how that public health model works with that. On a long term basis, you’re looking to see how long can they be put in jail? Or maybe they can get some kind of restorative or rehabilitative justiceapplied to them so when they come out, they won’t do it again. On the victim/survivor side, you’re saying, how can we help them and provide services, we’re working with them so they don’t go back and fall into that, in this particular example, sex trafficking situation. But it works the same for labor as well. How can we make sure that they have a long-term, sustainable plan where they can get what they need as a person and realize and restore their personal dignity, while the same token not being subject to being victimized, exploited again?

Sandra Morgan 7:47
So what that looks like in a day to day routine, I remember the day when if there was a call out on a brothel, which is illegal commercial sex, everybody got arrested. That model has changed now and there is more intentional concern for the people that are there, that might actually be there under coercion. Now, how does that fit into this scenario as an element of a prevention strategy?

Derek Marsh 8:33