Targeted Outreach to State Legislatures on Human Trafficking

In May 2013, OVC released the Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services Final Report. The Vision 21 initiative examined the current framework of the victim assistance field in the United States. The initiative was the first comprehensive assessment of the field in nearly 15 years. The FY 2015 Vision 21 Innovation Grants: Enhancing and Transforming Services for Victims of Crime solicitation furthers the goals of Vision 21 through eight purpose areas. Purpose Area 2 proposes targeted outreach to state legislators on human trafficking. OVC was seeking an experienced applicant to disseminate distilled federal research and programmatic information on human trafficking to all state legislators in the United States; prepare information briefs on specific human trafficking issues such as labor trafficking, sex trafficking including domestic minor sex trafficking, safe harbor laws, and other critical policy and programming issues; respond to requests directly from state legislators looking to identify model policies and practices on human trafficking; and create a Web presence where legislators can find resources, suggested readings, and other policy-relevant materials on human trafficking.

With this award, the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) will implement its “Targeted Outreach to State Legislators on Human Trafficking” project to enhance state legislative knowledge on human trafficking issues and to foster leadership capacity in legislatures that can further the goals set forth in OVC’s “Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services.” Project objectives in support of this goal will involve using a variety of prominent and recognized NCSL forums and formats to provide objective, specialized information to assist state legislators in reviewing needs and assessing trafficking policy approaches. Deliverables will be to create a specialized human trafficking web page as part of the Civil and Criminal Justice collection; develop an online database of human trafficking enactments; plan and convene two meeting programs at NCSL’s Annual Legislative Summit or Forum over the three-year period addressing current legislative issues in human trafficking; research and prepare three human trafficking briefing papers during the three-year period; plan and convene webinar on human trafficking during the second year of the project; prepare a blog piece on a human trafficking topic during the second year of the project and respond to information requests from legislators, legislative staff and interested others on human trafficking throughout the three-year period.
CA/NCF