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C. 7

To:	Board of Supervisors
From:	Federal D. Glover, Board of Supervisors District V
Date:	January 22, 2013

Contra

Costa

County

Subject:

Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention Month

APPROVE	OTHER
RECOMMENDATION OF CNTY ADMINISTRATOR	RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE

Action of Board On: 01/22/2013

APPROVED AS RECOMMENDED

OTHER

Clerks Notes:

VOTE OF SUPERVISORS

AYE:

John Gioia, District I Supervisor
Candace Andersen, District II Supervisor
Mary N. Piepho, District III Supervisor
Karen Mitchoff, District IV Supervisor
Federal D. Glover, District V Supervisor

Contact:

Devorah Levine, 925-313-1524

I hereby certify that this is a true and correct copy of an action taken and entered on the minutes of the Board of Supervisors on the date shown.
ATTESTED: January 22, 2013
David Twa,

BY:	, Deputy

RECOMMENDATION(S):

ADOPT Resolution No. 2013/67 declaring January as Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention Month, as recommended by Supervisor Glover.

FISCAL IMPACT:

None.

BACKGROUND:

Ten years ago, the Board of Supervisors approved the Zero Tolerance Initiative which led to the creation of the Zero Tolerance Against Domestic Violence Collaborative. Since then, Zero Tolerance has been expanded to work against all forms of violence against other human beings, including human trafficking.

BACKGROUND: (CONT'D)

Human Trafficking is modern slavery.

Even though slavery has been outlawed since 1865 in our country, human trafficking, which includes sex trafficking,is the world’s fastest growing crime. California, and the Bay Area in particular, is near the epicenter.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the victims are not people from foreign countries. Most of the victims of human trafficking in America are from the U.S. Seventy-two percent of human trafficking victims whose country of origin was identified are American, according to the 2012 State of Human Trafficking report from the Attorney General’s Office.

What that means is that the victims -- primarily the sex trafficking victims -- are our daughters, sisters, cousins, nieces or the girl next door.

What is disturbing is in the five years since California's first human trafficking report in 2007, the problem has grown. “Transnational and domestic gangs have expanded from trafficking guns and drugs to trafficking human beings,” said California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Domestic street gangs like the Bloods and Crips have set aside traditional rivalries to set up commercial sex rings and maximize profits from the sale of young women, says the report.

The fairly recent involvement of street gangs in exploiting young women has provided another illegal source of money for their activities. Sex trafficking is safer than dealing drugs and is a renewable source of income that can be used over and over.

The gangs prey on the most emotionally vulnerable. Sometimes, other female gang members act as enforcers to keep the other girls in line. In return, the girls get a false sense of belonging and get the impression of being protected, even loved.

The reality is harsher than that, according to a study by the Witherspoon Institute:

“With state and national crackdowns on drug trafficking, gangs have turned to sex trafficking for financial gain. Unlike drugs, girls can be used more than once, and it is the girls, not the traffickers, who run the greatest risk of being caught and prosecuted. Case records show that gangs still utilize traditional methods of recruiting, employing the modern equivalent of wining and dining a young girl (‘skip parties’ and ‘love showers’), winning her heart and then slowly ‘seasoning ‘her for the street by sharing her with other gang members. One young woman described her trafficker’s request for a ‘love donation’: sex she had to provide to other men to win her place in the gang.”
Gangs and traffickers are using technology to lure young girls under their influence by advertising on websites and dating services. They visit school campuses and other places where kids hang out. They look for the loner or the outcast.

The reason girls join gangs are similar to reasons boys join gangs with the mistaken belief of finding someone who will understand why they don’t feel understood by their parents, disengaged from school, or the lack of respect from their peers.

The Bay Area is a hotbed of human trafficking. Contra Costa and Alameda counties are among the nine regions to form the Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition, a cross-agency partnership to tackle the problems associated with human trafficking.

That is also the reason that the East County Gang Task Force, which was formed by Supervisor Federal Glover seven years ago, hosted a presentation by the coalition because of the strong overlap of the perpetrators who may be trafficking as a gang activity and the victims who join gangs and find themselves being sexually abused by male gang members and/or Johns.

It is ironic that even though America ended slavery over 150 years ago, we have more people enslaved in the world today than at any other time: 27 million.

California easily passed Proposition 35 last November, which toughened state penalties against human trafficking, a strong indication of the universal revulsion we have for slavery. Yet, it is a $32-billion business worldwide, second only to drug trafficking in terms of profitability.

Besides sex trafficking, human trafficking encompasses the smuggling of foreign workers who enter this country illegally and are subsequently abused and exploited by their employers to have them work as cheap labor.

CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:

Human trafficking will continue to expand without the education of the public of how to prevent the abuse and exploitation of workers and women.

CHILDREN'S IMPACT STATEMENT:

Human trafficking will continue to expand without the education of the public of how to prevent the abuse and exploitation of workers and women.