Victimless Proactive Trafficker Intervention (VPTI)- Charging Traffickers with Pandering without a Victim
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, MSW, PhD & Noel Roberts | September 21 | 3:15-4:15 pm
Topic: Research, Law Enforcement | Knowledge Level: Intermediate
Las Vegas, Nevada is a known hub of sex trafficking in the United States (Bahouth, 2021). The number of sex traffickers and victims in the city at any given time is overwhelming to law enforcement and precision policing is critical. The goal of law enforcement intervening in sex trafficking situations in Las Vegas is to hold sex traffickers accountable without forcing a victim to participate in their trafficker's prosecution. Victim participation in prosecution until now has been essential to prosecution but has caused great harm to victims. This study explains a policing technique using undercover police officers to create situations when sex traffickers reveal themselves and their intention of sex trafficking to the undercover officers. Once a trafficker was identified and they were linked to potential victims, the victims were offered services to exit the sex trafficking situation. The research questions for this study included: 1) What are the characteristics of the sex traffickers? 2) Did they also sell drugs and were they gang involved? and 3) What did they offer the undercover officers? From January 2021 to December 2022, 303 sex traffickers were identified and arrested for pandering with no victim involvement. The sex traffickers were 99% male. They were from 18 other states and nearly 100% had previous criminal involvement. Recommendations from this study include intervening with males in juvenile corrections, communicating with Nevada State Police about the movement of traffickers from different states, and communicating with other divisions in LVMPD about gang and drug involvement of the sex traffickers.
Presentation Objectives:
· Provide an overview of the VPTI
· Provide a description of the study of the VPTI over 2 years including the research questions, methods used, and findings
· Describe the implications and recommendations from this study