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From its unanimous support in the Hawaii Legislature, it might seem that it should be a no-brainer for Gov. Linda Lingle to sign an anti-human trafficking bill into law. After all, the state is just one of six without such a law.

But law enforcement and prosecutors — at least publicly — oppose the measure. They lined up against , arguing that it’s too broadly written and does not do enough to help victims. Yet, its supporters say the law is a necessary first step toward acknowledging the seriousness of human-trafficking crimes, and tackling an immensely complicated problem.

So to cut through the conflict, Civil Beat decided to look at how New York, a state with a widely respected and tested — at least for a few short years — law, is tackling the same issue.

In New York, the law ushered in by in 2007, created the crimes of sex and labor trafficking and spelled out penalties for each. New York also vastly expanded victims’ services, mandated that law enforcement be trained to recognize human trafficking crimes and required the creation of an interagency task force to oversee the new law’s implementation.

None of these measures, or anything like them, are included in Hawaii’s anti-trafficking legislation.

“What New York tried to do was try to address it holistically,” said Ken Franzblau, director of anti-trafficking initiatives for the group Equality Now, and a former coordinator for law enforcement training for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. “We tried to get at the pimps and traffickers, we tried to get at the demand side of it by increasing penalties for patronizers of prostitutes as well as sex tours, and we provided services for victims.”

The multi-pronged approach that Franzblau describes is something for which local advocates for anti-trafficking legislation have long lobbied. But the bill approved by Hawaii lawmakers didn’t take that approach.

Even lawmakers who voted unanimously for it admit that they have doubts about its effectiveness. They say it does little beyond what’s already covered by other Hawaii laws.

“It’s an extra law on the books, but I don’t know how useful it would be,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jon Riki Karamatsu. “The current law covers pretty much everything this law tries to do.”

One of the reason Karamatsu said he voted for the bill anyway, is that it recommends witnesses in prostitution cases be given priority for eligibility into the Attorney General’s witness protection programs. Still, that recommendation doesn’t specify or require any funding for such cases. Under current law, prostitutes aren’t specifically listed as eligible for entry into such programs.

By comparison, New York’s 2007 trafficking law makes assistance programs available to many different kinds of victims. For example, it partners law enforcement with federal officials to help foreign victims obtain refugee status to remain in the country.¹

New York law also requires training for law enforcement to understand the new law and victims’ rights under the new law, and provides additional tools to help law enforcement officials work effectively. Victims in New York are eligible for assistance from the New York Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which helps secure housing, mental health counseling, drug treatment, language services and job training. Again, none of these measures are included in the proposed Hawaii law.

“With the Hawaii law, I think advocates were hoping for something more comprehensive to help the victims and to help law enforcement,” said Franzblau.

“In terms of providing protection for victims who agree to testify, it would have been good if there was a more specific recitation of the kinds of services victims could get. I don’t want to be overly critical of the bill — I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good — but if police say to a trafficking victim who is scared to death of her pimp, ‘We have no place for you to live, we can’t guarantee your safety, we can’t get you income,’ then it’s really hard to get people to cooperate. That’s maybe the most important tool they could get.”

Victim Services Named Critical Component of Bill’s Success

According to an by the interagency task force created under New York’s anti-trafficking law, less than a year after that law was enacted, officials had already worked with three-dozen trafficking victims in the state. All 36 victims—30 of whom were foreign nationals—were given access to case management services, housing, nutritional assistance, health care, mental health counseling, job placement assistance, transportation, language translation services and assistance in establishing permanent residence in the United States.

In that short time period, the report found victims’ services had already proved to be an important part of combating sex trafficking in New York, where officials say empowering victims to leave the sex industry in turn helps law enforcement find and prosecute those who essentially enslaved those victims.

“In two and a half years, we’ve got at least 28 indictments, 7 convictions, and that’s just as knowledge of the law is starting to take hold,” said Franzblau. “So, now, sex trafficking is a Class B felony under New York law. That’s pretty serious, at the same level as rape, basically. We made sure that law enforcement had the tools they need to investigate these crimes in the same way they do to investigate these other serious crimes.”

Although victims’ services aren’t required by Hawaii law or included in Senate Bill 2045, there are local options for those seeking help. On Oahu, the Sex Abuse Treatment Center — which offers a 24-hour hotline, medical exams, crisis counseling, preventative information and other educational services — has been providing victims of sexual assault access to confidential care for more than 30 years. There’s also the Hawaii Crime Victim Compensation Commission, which was one of the first of its kind in the nation when it was established in 1967. The commission helps victims of violent crimes by providing counseling and funding for lost wages and medical expenses, among other services.

While Hawaii doesn’t have a human trafficking bill that explicitly makes victims of human trafficking eligible for assistance by the commission, its executive director says other statutes are already in place to ensure those same victims are served. In other words, since victims of human-trafficking crimes are also often victims of crimes like assault or terroristic threatening, they become eligible for services as victims of those crimes.

“Sex assault, assault, kidnapping,” said Pamela Ferguson-Brey, executive director of the Hawaii Crime Victim Compensation Commission Executive Director Ferguson-Brey. “All of these are current offenses related to human trafficking, and eligible to receive services.”

Limited Resources Hamstring Support Services

But funding is a persistent problem. The commission relies on federal grants and fees collected from offenders who don’t always pay. Even state-funded entities, like the witness protection program, have been largely drained.

“We just need more victim support,” said Dennis Dunn, director of the Victim Witness Kokua Services division in the Honolulu Department of the Prosecuting Attorney. “I mean, right now, even for basic things, we have to go begging to churches for things … The most glaring thing has been prostitutes who are here from the mainland and they just want to go home. Finding the money to transport them to send them home? We don’t have it. There should be something that’s covered by our witness protection statute. The Legislature has not funded it very well.”

Ferguson-Brey, a former prosecutor, said she favors programs like john schools, and insists the bill on Lingle’s desk would do more harm than good.

“I think this bill should be vetoed,” said Ferguson-Brey. “It will not help human-trafficking victims. You know, the tragedy about this approach is it fritters away our ability to go back and pass a bill that will really address human trafficking issues that need to be addressed. It gives away our ability to engage in a meaningful dialogue and address problems and concerns raised by the human trafficking task force.”

The task force to which Ferguson-Brey refers is a statewide coalition convened within the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General. She says the task force declined to take a position on an earlier draft of Senate Bill 2045, and did not endorse the current bill.

What Senate Bill 2045 would do, if signed into law, is establish felony charges for sexual human-trafficking offenses. Perhaps the key component of the bill — and one that lawmakers say earned their endorsement for the bill — is that it enables prosecutors to convict a pimp based on testimony from one prostitute, rather than at least two, as current law mandates.

“On a practical level, when they potentially have a victim that they want to use in a prosecution against a pimp, now they don’t have to say we’ll have to get another person,” said Rep. Blake Oshiro. “That was always a problem because it’s difficult enough to get one victim to turn on her pimp.”

Still, law enforcement and prosecutors have lined up against Senate Bill 2045 in part, Karamatsu says, because the language of the new law lumps together offenses that now elicit separate charges, making successful conviction more of a challenge.

“Currently, prosecutors will charge as much as they can against one individual on various counts — you know, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault,” said Karamatsu. “But this law is all lumped together, and if you lose one of the criteria, you can end up losing the case.”

That’s not so in New York, where the list of offenses that would enable a prosecutor to pursue sex trafficking charges are not mutually exclusive. Both Karamatsu and Oshiro said their greatest concerns involve omissions in Hawaii’s measure that were at the heart of drafting New York’s anti-trafficking law: mainly, comprehensive victims’ services.

“You can do as much as you want with the criminal code,” said Oshiro. “You’re making this a Class A felony, akin to murder. OK. But if you’re not going to do anything to support the victims, all you’re doing is a useless, circular exercise.”