ON NATIONAL HUMAN TRAFFICKING AWARENESS DAY, AG HEALEY LAUNCHES TRAINING VIDEO TO DETECT LABOR TRAFFICKING AND HELP VICTIMS
AG’s Office
Partners with Local Officials and Community Advocates to Distribute Training
Materials
BOSTON—On National Human
Trafficking Awareness Day, Attorney General Maura Healey is launching a new
training video to help identify signs of labor trafficking and generate
referrals to her office for potential investigation and prosecution. The AG’s
Office is partnering with local officials, including the City of Boston, and
community organizations to distribute the video and other training materials
and has also created
a digital toolkit for widespread distribution and use.
“Labor trafficking is significantly
underreported because it can be difficult to detect—it’s a crime that often
leaves victims hidden in plain sight,” said Attorney General Maura Healey.
“My office created this training video to help assist victims and hold
perpetrators accountable. I want to thank our partners across the state who’ve
agreed to distribute this important information through their networks. My hope
is that by working together, we can eradicate labor trafficking in
Massachusetts.”
The AG’s Office has created a
five-minute animated training video—available in English
and Spanish—that
is designed to aid local officials, inspectors, first responders, and law
enforcement in formal training, and also aims to raise general public awareness
about labor trafficking. The video helps people to understand and uncover signs
of labor trafficking and allows them to refer suspicious information to the
AG’s Office for potential investigation and prosecution. Since forced labor
scenarios are often imbedded within legitimate commercial enterprises and
within private homes, labor trafficking and the victims impacted can be
difficult to identify and these crimes often go undetected and unreported.
The AG’s Office has partnered with the City of Boston to
implement trainings for Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s Office of Workforce Development
and for Boston’s Inspectional Services Department field staff, reaching key
municipal workers. The City of Boston will also be sending the video to tens of
thousands of city permit holders, including active construction permit holders,
food service permit holders, and permit holders within the long-term rental
housing and short-term rental registration database.
“Boston is a proud partner of the
Attorney General’s efforts to reach out to and inform staff and workers of ways
to prevent labor trafficking,” said Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “Our
workers will be equipped with knowledge and tools to identify and report labor
trafficking so it does not occur in any of our communities."
The AG’s Office has also
distributed the training video and digital toolkit to the following partners,
who will disseminate it to their staff, members, networks and on their
platforms and will facilitate additional language translations:
Alliance
for Inclusion and Prevention
Centro
Comunitario de Trabajadores (Community Workers’ Center)/CCT
Chinese Progressive Association
Greater Boston Legal Services
Lynn Rapid Response Network
and Pathways, Inc.
Massachusetts
Alliance of Portuguese Speakers
Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational
Safety & Health
Massachusetts Health Officers Association
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee
Advocacy Coalition
Metrowest
Worker Center/Casa Do Trabalhador -
Casa Del Trabajador
The AG’s
digital toolkit is designed to assist in pushing out the video on various
digital platforms. The AG’s Office has also recorded a webinar geared toward municipal
employee audiences. The
webinar provides an overview of labor trafficking and ways that building and
health inspectors, code enforcement officers, assessors, licensing staff, human
services staff, school department personnel, police, fire, and emergency
management departments can help to identify and combat it.
This training
video
is a part of the AG’s efforts to combat human trafficking, and to raise
awareness about this crime throughout January, which is Human Trafficking
Prevention Month.
AG Healey has made combatting human
trafficking a priority of her office and her office’s Human Trafficking and
Fair Labor Divisions have been working together to address labor trafficking in
Massachusetts. In
Oct. 2019, AG Healey, faculty from Boston
University School of Law, and representatives from the BU Spark! Initiative at
BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing announced a new tool, the RESULT (Recognize & Evaluate Signs
to Uncover Labor Trafficking) web-based app,
which they jointly developed to help identify potential labor trafficking cases
and connect victims to resources. The Office has also conducted
trainings about labor trafficking for municipal employees, including a webinar
designed for health and building inspectors, first responders, social services
providers, and others. In Jan. 2020, AG Healey hosted
the office’s first Human Trafficking Summit, a
two-day conference to provide attendees with tools and information to help
address human trafficking in Massachusetts.
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