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10 03 24 Common Sense Institute's DJ Summers discusses human trafficking in Colorado
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It's a G.W. group for where prohibited by law, 18-plus terms and conditions apply. Step into a world of unparalleled brightness and lifelike color with Vizio's Quantum Pro TV. This premium QLED TV, available in 65 and 75-inch sizes, is designed for those who demand the best in picture quality. Breath-taking brightness brings every scene to life, while wide viewing angle delivers the perfect picture from any seat in the room. Enjoy all your favorite apps built in, so you can blast your top songs through the iHeartRadio app straight out of the box. Head to Walmart to find your Vizio Quantum Pro TV today. Human trafficking levels in Colorado reaching new highs for 2023. According to a recent report, the state is among the worst in the nation for such crimes. And this follows a country-wide trend where human trafficking is a growing concern, reaching a 15-year peak last year on what this now to talk about it in some greater detail about what we're seeing here in Colorado and Denver and the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline, Director of Policy and Research for the Common Sense Institute, it's DJ Summers. Welcome back, DJ. These are very disconcerting numbers. How far back does your data go? This data goes back to 2008, and it's really just very simple and plain. It's as simple as it is horrifying. Human trafficking has never been worse in the U.S. and it's never been worse in Colorado, and we just don't know as much about it as we would like to know. DJ, when we're looking at this report, what is considered a human trafficking report in this study? There are two major categories of human trafficking, both here in Colorado and nationally in the U.S. The first is human trafficking for commercial sex purposes. That's when someone is coerced into some kind of position where they need to give regular commercial sex acts. The second is the same with involuntary labor. Now, the former of those commercial sex acts, both in the U.S. and in Colorado, is the far more common type. That's usually why people are being trafficked. That's usually their end. I have a tendency to, when I think of sex trafficking, I always think about young people held up in barges and those containers. Is that the wrong way to look at it? Not that that doesn't happen, but is that too simplistic of a view to just think of it as the dirty downside and not the side where it may be, I don't know, one or two individuals that are doing this? That's very accurate. Most people tend to think about exactly that. They tend to think about a context container full of people from the Ukraine or somewhere in Eastern Europe. This fanciful kind of vision that we've gotten from a lot of Hollywood, and that's not always the case. That does happen, but sex trafficking can be anything from someone trafficking their younger sister to somebody bringing in someone relative or a friend from over the border for commercial sex purposes. The fact of the matter is that a lot of crime, human trafficking tends to be higher rate amongst people who know each other. It's mostly relatives and friends of the victims who are doing it. DJ, when we look at these numbers, I want to almost compare it to safe to tell reports. If we see more safe to tell reports, is it because people are getting more comfortable with reporting it? When we look at these, is human trafficking really on the rise or are people getting better at detecting it and reporting it and making it known? I wish I knew the answer to that. I do know that there's a lot more awareness of human trafficking now than there used to be. They are listing it more often as crime just generally, and there are more resources for human trafficking victims, and I believe law enforcement might have some greater willingness to go the extra step and classify something as a human trafficking crime, but generally across the globe and in the U.S., the fact is that human trafficking simply is worse. I know you all look at the data, but do we know the why? Are there less prosecutions? Is somehow this a slippery issue for crime and we can't find and discover these numbers? I'm trying to figure out why we see, aside of what Gina said, maybe the reporting piece, but why are we seeing the rises? Is it just easier to do? Globally, there is a connection between major migration events and human trafficking. In 2021, the UN did note that globally, this was a problem. There were a lot of disruptions globally in 2021, and that did lead to some attending human trafficking uptick. Now, that was the same case as in the U.S., and we did have a spike here in 2021 as well in Colorado, but there's no data really to support that being the case here. We don't have enough data about the victims or the offenders to really isolate any trends specific to either of them, to know why and nail that down. That's one of the suggestions we make in our papers that in order to get a grip on this, considering that 2023 was such a record year, we just need to know more about the offenders and about the victims to see whether or not there is a common trend that we can get a grip on. And while it doesn't show the trends in this specific report, the Common Sense Institute does break down a little bit of where we're seeing the highest reports of human trafficking in certain counties, what are some of those and do we have any factors that may contribute to those as well? The counties where we've seen the most human trafficking are different over time. In the last 15 years from 2008 up to the current year, there are three counties that have the majority of the human trafficking in Colorado. That's Adams County, El Paso County, and Denver County. Now, in the last year, it has shifted just a little bit. Now it's Adams County, Denver County, and Boulder County. That was what happened in the 2023. That was the rough breakdown last year in that record year of Colorado human trafficking. So a little bit of that has shifted slightly further north away from El Paso County, which has the second highest count of human trafficking victims over time. Is it mostly underreported communities? Because when I think of Adams, I think of that's a community that has a lot of people of color, maybe more from other parts of the country, Boulder is a little more affluent. I don't know the reason there, but I'm wondering if we're seeing this more in counties where there could be an underreporting underrepresentation of those that are easily taken advantage of. I really wish I knew the answer to that. Unfortunately, that's one of those items that I really can't get to finally enough inside of the Colorado-specific data. Wrapping up with you, DJ, you have the data here. Do you present it to law enforcement? They take it. They digest it. Look at it more. The end goal is what? To share this with them so they can be more aware or at least see some data in numbers? The end goal is to simply make everybody more aware. This has been a problem in the United States in the last couple of years. It's gotten the worst it ever has in the last year. The same is true in Colorado. The State House, the legislature, they already recognized this. There was a bill passed last year and signed by the governor earlier this year that increased penalties for human trafficking offenders. People are aware of this. Now we need to take the appropriate steps to learn how to prosecute it the right way and learn how to get the best grip on it that we possibly can. And that comes, as always, from having the right data to know the right trend. The report titled Human Trafficking in Colorado 2023 New Record Year for Trafficking Crimes. You can find more at commonsenseinstituteco.org, Director of Policy and Research for CSI. It's DJ Summers. What if there was a day when we could come together to give to the causes we're most passionate about? Great news! There is! December 10th is Colorado Gives Day, and it's easily the best day to give. All the causes you care about are in one place, so let's start a wave of generosity across the state. Join us in lifting up our local communities. Give now through December 10th at ColoradoGivesDay.org. 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