Country: United States

Organization: North Carolina Department of Justice Attorney General''s Office

Innovation: The purpose of this task force is to develop a strong multi-disciplinary response team to human trafficking in the State of North Carolina. This task force will have three critical intersections that will has been identified for a successful operational model to respond to trafficking in North Carolina. Those intersections are legal services and victimýs services/advocacy through the Attorney Generalýs Office, law enforcement, and finally training. This response team will be responsible for identifying the gaps in services in North Carolina. We plan to have an operational handbook for law enforcement, victim/legal service providers, and policy makers to respond to a trafficking case when faced with a case in their community.

Impact: The task force on trafficking of persons has broken itself down into four subgroups to effectively review and recommend suggestions in this State. Those groups are legal/law enforcement, immigration/legal services, victimsý services and public health. To facilitate the implementation of response protocols for agencies. We will develop an investigating and responding to human trafficking courses for our law enforcement and human services training academies in this State. We will also recommend to the North Carolina General Assembly researched based recommendations on developing law and policy addressing human trafficking in particular prosecution and victim/legal services for communities throughout North Carolina.

Tipping Point: We will know if the activity has reached a tipping point if we see a spike in the number of suspected or actual human trafficking cases reported to law enforcement and victimsý services providers. The data that we will collect from organizations serving victims will help in educating citizens in North Carolina about this problem. We have a gap in our capacity to do outreach due to the lack of adequate funding from government to produce outreach and educational materials for this project, with funding we will be able to effectively reach the State and by doing so will change for the better the response in our state because law enforcement, victim services providers, policy makers and the general public will be aware of this problem.

Replication: We will enable and encouarge replication of our training materials to all law enforcement, victim/legal service providers, and human service agencies in North Carolina. Our goal is to cover all 100 counties with these materials and also provide hands on training for law enforcement and victim/legal service providers.

Sustainability: To ensure that this project will continue to be stable and sustainable for the long run, we have worked to identify and collaborate with community stakeholders in an effort to eliminate trafficking in human subjects. We have already reached agreements with victimsý service providers and community stakeholders in every region of our state to work with the task force.

Position in the Human Trafficking Mosaic of Solutions:

Factor: Vulnerability of High-Risk Populations

Principle: Ensuring Law for All