PHOENIX — The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is partnering with the Arizona State University Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research to educate, detect, and investigate crimes involving sex and human trafficking. The first-of-its-kind partnership is made possible by a $495,000 grant, officials said at a news conference on June 6.
“Human trafficking, sex trafficking continue to plague our community,” MCSO Sheriff Russ Skinner said.
The ASU STIR office opened in 2012 and focuses on both sex and labor trafficking, educating community organizations on sex trafficking and training community partners on how to detect and investigate sex crimes.
“Sex trafficking has existed in our world since the beginning of time and people have bought and sold people for sex and we know that to be true,” Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, MSW, Ph.D., director of the STIR, said during the news conference. “Human trafficking happens every single day in every city in the United States."
STIR has trained about 20,000 individuals and Roe-Sepowitz said STIR works with MCSO to identify current victims, potential victims and those who are using the jail system for human trafficking. Through this collaboration, over 300 MCSO civilian, detention and sworn staff have received sex trafficking training.
Roe-Sepowitz came to MCSO in 2018 to give officers “sex trafficking 101” training and 300 employees have been trained, officials said. Additionally, training called “sex trafficking behind bars” was debuted to help law enforcement identify potential victims inside the jail or those who are being trafficked in the jail. This includes trauma-informed interviewing.
“It is a first in the nation where a jail is working with a university and we’re addressing human trafficking as it is behind bars,” Roe-Sepowitz said.
MCSO uses a questionnaire on a tablet to help identify inmates who may be victims of sex trafficking, officials said. The questionnaire is translated in English and Spanish, and is able to be translated into other languages if needed, officials said.
Since July 1 of 2023, 191 inmates who completed the survey were identified as victims of sex trafficking. Officials said of those 191 inmates, 109 were connected to services.
ASU STIR has done research that shows nine out of 10 women who are arrested for prostitution are victims of sex trafficking, which is a population segment that MCSO officials said they sometimes miss.
Officials said often women who are arrested facing charges of prostitution are often released within 24 to 48 hours and do not take the survey available on tablets.
“A lot of times sex trafficking involves prostitution. What we want to identify is, is this someone who has been lured in to do sex trafficking," Skinner said. “If they’re out there doing sexual acts or committing crimes, for survival a lot of times, not that they want to be in this but… unfortunately they get in the lifestyle. What we want to do is to help catch that and get them out of that cycle.”
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