DOJ to host National Trafficking Conference in New Orleans in October 2006

From the August 2006 issue of the Anti-Trafficking Bulletin published by the Department of Justice (also available in PDF format). The Justice Department has selected New Orleans for the first of three annual conferences designed to advance the federal government's knowledge base about human trafficking within the United States and to improve access by practitioners to usable research about human trafficking. As Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Wan J. Kim explained: "We hope to take the first steps toward acquiring a broader research base that will inform law enforcement managers about where to allocate investigative resources. For example, we want to learn more about informal labor markets where some labor brokers engage in criminal exploitation of laborers." The conference will also build on the Department's initial national conference held in 2004 in Tampa, Florida. [Photo of Assistant Attorney General Wan Kim] That conference led to the creation of 20 multi disciplinary task forces designed to undertake proactive investigations. "By the time of the conference we will have 42 task forces, so once again we will invite key team members from each task force to participate," said Kim. "We are expecting each participant to help us understand what they need in the area of research to do a better job of targeting our law enforcement resources." The conference, to be held October 3-5, 2006, is the first of three congressionally funded annual conferences that the Justice Department will implement. human trafficking, forced labor, fleshploitation