Sex Trafficking and US Legislature Slide Show

This post is the final product of my research. It's not a complete report but it does present my resources and the main topic. If you would like to see the slide show, please click the link below.

Sex Trafficking and US Legislature

Research Question and Annotated Bibliography

Research Question: How effective has the United States Legislative Branch been in addressing human sex trafficking?

Anonymous. (2015). Survivor story: Boyfriend turned trafficker. Polaris. Retrieved from https://polarisproject.org/blog/2015/04/14/survivor-story-boyfriend-turned-trafficker

This article gives a story of a trafficking victim and gives insight on the different types of trafficking cases that occur. It will help me to see why cases are not prosecuted in court. The story was provided by Polaris, a non-profit advocacy group that helps trafficking victims and lobby legislature. The site is trustworthy because the links work and the information provided on the US laws are accurate. I am familiar with their ambassadors, in which two are well known actors.

Busch-Armendariz, N., Nsonwu, M., Heffron, L. & Mahapatra, N. (2013). Trafficking in persons. In Judy L. Postmus (Ed.), Sexual violence and abuse: An encyclopedia of prevention, impacts, and recovery. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Retrieved from https://libris.mtsac.edu/

This article provides background on human trafficking and its main focus is on sexual violence and abuse. The article will help me understand the different aspects of the subject thereby enabling me to analyze laws enacted in the United Sates to see if they are making effective progress to stifle the issue. This source is from an encyclopedia and is therefore considered a tertiary source.

DeStefano, A. M. (2007). War on human trafficking : U.S. policy assessed. New Brunswick, NJ, USA: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

This book will provide an account of the effectiveness of US policies regarding human trafficking from before 2007. It will help me gauge the effectiveness from then until more recent times. The book also has a chapter on how the effectiveness is measured and gives accounts of the various types of human trafficking victims, and I think that will be very useful in my research. The author discusses reasons for non-prosecution of human trafficking cases, that will be helpful as well. Regarding the credibility of the book, it has citations listed by chapter, everything is well organized. The author spent a decade on gather information for his book, it's very detailed and shows that it's an important issue to him. It was also published by a university.

Farrell, A., Owens, C., & Mcdevitt, J. (2014). New laws but few cases: Understanding the challenges to the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases. Crime, Law and Social Change, 61(2), 139-168. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9442-1

This article reveals that local law enforcement and prosecutors have to work together to make the laws effective. It discusses how it's challenging to even identify victims. The article indicated that the laws even affect the strength of evidence in prosecution cases, so I think is article will be good for answering my research question and formulating solutions.

George, S. (2012). The strong arm of the law is weak: How the Trafficking Victims Protection Act fails to assist effectively victims of the sex trade. Creighton Law Review, 45(3), 563-580. Retrieved from https://libris.mtsac.edu/

This article describes the challenges of sex trafficking and how the supply and demand work so to speak. It provides an analysis of US legislature and has a great deal of references to expand upon. It will help with forming solutions to my research.

Kiener, R. (2012). Human trafficking and slavery: Are governments doing enough to eradicate the illicit trade?. CQ Global Researcher 6(20), 473-496. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/

This article gives some historical content of the laws ratified throughout recent history. It also gives insight on the history of human trafficking and why it has increased in recent years. The article also gives a chronological order of events and a short feature titled, ” Trafficking Exists in 90 U.S. Cities". The article also has a good bibliography to explore for more sources. This source is considered a secondary source.

Tricked [Video file]. (2013). In Films On Demand. Retrieved from: http://libris.mtsac.edu:2082/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=19580&xtid=66039

This video source will be an excellent addition to help me see and understand human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular. I think that it will help me to formulate solutions to answer my research question. The documentary has segments on how the perpetrators gain trust of the victim, how a pimp operated, the likelihood of an arrest and even how difficult it is to prosecute these cases. The release of the film is roughly two years ago so it will be useful to evaluate the progress of US legislation part of my research question as well. The film was made by a nonprofit called 3 Generations that document human rights abuses.

Web searching experience

My web search experience from the past was totally different, I never used to think about a site's trustworthiness. I also didn't know what to check a site even if I wanted to. Now I look for currency, if the links and buttons works, I check where the links would send me to, I would back track to the main web address if necessary, and I would google the site to see if it's trustworthy. 

These are now my main go to checks without have to refer to any notes, and I think that the process does a good job of determining if a site real or not. Subjectivity would also be another test point to determine if I stay on the site regardless if it's real.

Google Searching

I used Google Advanced search with the terms "Sex Trafficking" and United States Legislature as shown in the image below:


In the 'terms appearing' section I selected 'anywhere in the page', I also did the same search by selecting 'in the text of the page' the results were different. They were more filtered or narrowed down with the 'in the text of the page' option. Using Google advanced search is different because you can select options to narrow your search results, before I didn't even know Google had an advanced search option because the option is not clearly visible in the main search page.

I found a source that list current Human Trafficking laws in the United States that are listed by type and by State: http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/human-trafficking-laws-in-the-states-updated-nov.aspx

Citation Searching

The article citation I searched for,

Farrell, A., Owens, C., & Mcdevitt, J. (2014). New laws but few cases: Understanding the challenges to the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases. Crime, Law and Social Change, 61(2), 139-168. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9442-1

To perform a citation search, I used the Mt.SAC library website and went to the 'Books, Articles & More' tab and selected 'A-Z List for eResources'. I was direct to the following website:

http://mtsac.worldcat.org/openurlresolver/search

I searched "Crime, Law and Social Change" journal with a 'Match all words' search option. 

Screen Capture of the Citation Search Results

From there I selected the full text from ProQuest because that database is familiar to me. The search listed two other full text options but I haven't used those databases before. I selected the article year and then the volume number along with the associated issue number.

Browse by Year, Volume and Issue Number

 My article is #2:

Full Text Results

This method for searching for citations is really fast and gets you full text results to help you verify references and gain additional references. The ProQuest option also has a 'Cited by' link in which you can see other articles that cited your article in question.