On Thursday, August 27, 2020, Office for Victims of Crime Principal Deputy Director Bill Woolf spoke at the 2020 Virtual Law Enforcement & Human Trafficking Conference.
Principal Deputy Director Woolf, a former detective and human trafficking task force lead investigator, provided information to law enforcement personnel about the involvement of gangs in sex trafficking. He discussed the economics of sex trafficking and how gangs recruit and control victims.
Victims of human trafficking can be difficult to identify for a number of reasons. National Institute of Justice-sponsored research found that as little as 6 percent of potential human trafficking victims were captured in police records of two of the three participating study sites.
Mr. Woolf provided an overview of tactics that law enforcement can use to identify victims of gang-controlled sex trafficking and investigate and prosecute offenders.
For more information about OVC’s efforts to combat human trafficking, visit the Human Trafficking section of our site.