Fuxiang li(week5 assignment)

There are several reasons why it is hard to prosecute sex trafficking cases in the US.
The first reason is the prosecutors are tough to be available. For one thing, the victims are scared to testify. Take the victim for an example，the 19-year girl had been conditioned by those who brought her to Okaloosa County to fear law enforcement. The young woman was so terrified that she trembled with fear and wouldn’t utter a word to sheriff’s deputies and investigators, let alone cooperate with an investigation aimed at prosecuting her exploiters. In addition, according to U.S Constitution, someone has the right to face their accusers in court, which undoubtedly makes accusers feel full of worries. Another thing is the unwillingness of victims to cooperate with the authorities. Practically, either finding the victims or identifying perpetrators took a long time. Furthermore, there’s surveillance over what was done and multiple jurisdictions. Both of with resulted in seeing an arrest for a trafficking case needs long time. But for the victims, they preferred to get back home as soon as they could rather than to spend long time on testifying against exploiters. Anna Rodriguez, the founder of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, said “If the offenses have escalated to criminal offenses that would warrant a jury trial, convincing victims to stay in the United States for another year to testify at trial is nearly impossible…. These victims don’t want to stick around for two years and put their life back home on hold to testify. They want to go home and forget about it….” The unwillingness of victims to cooperate with the authorities is one of the biggest obstacles in putting criminals behind bars.
The second reason is arrests and prosecutions are hard to come by.
With human trafficking, given the international crime syndicates often involved in operations across the country, which obviously made both investigation and arrest extra tough.
The third reason is tipstaff's personal demarche makes traffickers away from punishment. For example,Inspector George Collins, a criminal intelligence specialist at the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said he measured his success not by arrests and prosecutions but by how many people he could rescue from potentially dangerous situations and then relocated them out of harm’s way. Likely, Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris also claimed sometimes they had to prosecute other offenses to shut down the operation, he was going to be persistent in doing everything as he could to put traffickers out of business in Okaloosa County.
The fourth reason is rules and regulations of U.S law make exploiters free of law enforcement. Firstly, Some of the programs are legitimate and above board. Secondly, prosecuting human traffickers must comply with the administration and procedure of U.S. law. Undoubtedly,prosecuting sex trafficking cases should not be operated beyond law. “Some of these operations are above board and some are completely crooked from the ground up.” Collins said, “Prosecuting the crooked organizations can be difficult because more often than not, worker exploitation cases are handled in a civil and administrative manner, in accordance with U.S. labor law.” The legality and handle restriction are obvious obstacle of effectively prosecuting human traffickers.
The fifth reason is a conflict exists between rescuing victims and prosecuting sex trafficking cases. Police officers shoulder responsibilities of both rescuing victims and prosecuting sex trafficking cases, sometimes they had to balance between these two things and made a choice. Anna Rodriguez, the founder of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, said “Yes, we want to see people in jail for these crimes but our first priority is rescuing these victims as soon as possible.” That implies testifiers against prosecuting sex trafficking cases were probably lost if the victims were eager to go home as soon as possible. The conflict between rescuing victims and prosecuting sex trafficking cases is a factor of why it is hard to prosecute sex trafficking cases in the US.
In conclusion, victims' unwillingness,unavailability of criminals, cop's personal demarche and law's restriction construct a block of prosecuting sex trafficking cases , and make putting criminals in jail extremely tough.