The harm caused by human trafficking—the exploitation of individuals through force, fraud, or coercion for commercial sex or forced labor—is profound: survivors are often left with a myriad of legal, financial, social, medical, and mental health issues, particularly those who are people of color or belong to other marginalized communities, such as transgender people.
To address these harms, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast) was launched in 1998 with a mission of education, advocacy, and the empowerment of survivors of human trafficking through social and legal services.
Creating a guide to improve screening of human trafficking survivors for forced criminality
In 2023, supported by the Microsoft Catalyst Grant Program and with support and technical assistance from the Urban Institute, Cast developed Documenting Forced Criminality: A Guide for Anti-Trafficking Practitioners, which outlines best practices for screening survivors for “forced criminality.” Recognizing that professionals in a range of roles, including staff attorneys, case managers, and shelter advocates, may screen clients, the guide included insights for professionals in different roles as well as broad recommendations. For example, confidentiality protections may differ in important ways between professions. At Cast, intake is conducted by attorneys and is thus protected by attorney-client privilege, whereas at some other organizations, intake is conducted by staff in social services roles who may be mandated reporters. In either case, program staff serving trafficking survivors need to convey the scope and limits of confidentiality to clients when asking sensitive questions.
Forced criminality, also known as criminal exploitation, occurs when people perpetrating human trafficking force survivors to engage in illegal activities. It can include forced drug trafficking, theft, assault, and criminalized forms of sex work. Despite the US Department of State’s recognition that “victims of trafficking should not be held liable for their involvement in unlawful activities that are a direct consequence of their victimization,” survivors are often arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for crimes their traffickers forced them to commit. As a result, they end up with criminal records and collateral consequences, such as barriers to housing, employment, education, and even participation in community events. The social stigma and institutional discrimination that come with an arrest record also leave many people vulnerable to further revictimization and trauma.
By creating a guide to help antitrafficking practitioners improve screening procedures, Cast has helped fill a gap in the social services sector and made it easier to identify survivors who have experienced forced criminality and provide them with the services and support they need to begin to heal and move forward.
Engaging people with lived experience in creating the guide
Cast’s approach to developing the guide was rooted in community engagement and meaningfully involved people with lived experience of human trafficking. From the outset, Cast recognized survivors’ direct experiential knowledge and expertise. Three of the people on the five-person project team—one Cast staff member and two consultants from Cast’s National Survivor Network—had lived experience of human trafficking and played a crucial role in shaping the project’s direction and outcomes.
Cast initially envisioned creating a short, closed-ended screening tool that it would incorporate into its intake process for new clients. But feedback from the consultants led to a more nuanced approach: having a semistructured conversation rather than presenting survivors with rigid questions. This shift in approach resulted in a more client-centered process that better meets the needs of survivors.
Cast took the valuable lessons learned from this community engagement and summarized its findings in a brief guide that is available for other antitrafficking practitioners. Instead of offering a standardized screening tool, the guide emphasizes taking a conversational approach to documenting forced criminality among survivors, avoiding closed-ended questions, and using clear, nonstigmatizing examples. It also highlights the importance of considering survivors’ time, privacy, and overall comfort during the screening process. In addition to the importance of being mindful of these factors when beginning the conversation, the guide highlights the importance of adopting a trauma-informed approach when deciding when to ask about forced criminality.
Cast's work provides a clear example of the importance of meaningfully engaging people with lived experience of human trafficking on research project teams. By ensuring that those involved in the development work had actually lived through the experiences being addressed, Cast was able to improve the guide and make it more responsive to the needs of survivors. While Cast has historically highlighted the expertise of survivors, particularly through the work of the National Survivor Network, this project further outlined the difference lived experience and community engaged methods can make to the end result of a product, research project, or team.
Piloting the guide
After completing the guide, Cast piloted it within its organization as a tool for intake sessions with new clients. In practice, the guide is used by staff to direct conversations with new clients and includes prompts for asking questions about clients’ trafficking experiences, needs for social services, and legal needs. Using the guide has enabled staff to identify a broader range of experiences and ultimately to provide more tailored support to survivors. Implementing the guide in its intake process led to significant improvements in Cast’s data collection on forced criminality and to a dashboard highlighting its findings. Although the dashboard was designed so the general public could use it, it was designed primarily for people doing antitrafficking work, such as practitioners and survivor leaders.
Cast’s project exemplifies the power of community engagement and survivor-centered approaches in addressing the complex challenges of human trafficking. By incorporating the insights and expertise of people with lived experience, Cast was able to develop a guide that not only improves the identification of forced criminality but improves the care provided to survivors and highlights the importance of creating opportunities for survivors to use their lived experience in research to help others.
The Catalyst Grant Program is a collaboration between the Urban Institute and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative to help nonprofit organizations use data and technology to advance racial equity and reform in the criminal legal system. Visit the Catalyst Grant Program Insights page for more resources and stories about the grantees.