Iowa leaders consider ways to combat human trafficking

DES MOINES - Maggie Tinsman, a former state senator from the Quad-Cities, first recommended legislation to address human trafficking in Iowa in 2006. The initial responses dripped with skepticism, she said.

'Everybody said, ‘It's not here, Maggie,'” Tinsman recalled.

But Tinsman pressed the issue and educated state lawmakers. That first year, the state passed her bill that made human trafficking a felony in Iowa.

Nearly a decade later, the effort to educate state lawmakers and the public about the prevalence and dangers of human trafficking continues.

Tinsman - on behalf of Braking Traffik, a Quad-City advocacy group that provides information to the public and training to organizations that respond to trafficking offenses - spoke at a public forum on human trafficking Wednesday at the Iowa Capitol.

The forum was hosted by outgoing Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, and Sen. Kevin Kinney, D-Oxford, and included input from state agencies and the public.

Paulsen said the work Tinsman did in 2006 to educate lawmakers about human trafficking continues today.

'If you ask 150 different legislators in the building, ‘What's human trafficking, and is it an issue,' you're going to get 149 different answers,” Paulsen said. 'Because it's such a hidden crime, the awareness just doesn't exist.”

One hurdle to spreading awareness is a lack of reliable data. State officials said it is difficult to know how many cases of human trafficking occur in Iowa annually.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Roxann Ryan said there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, just not hard numbers.

'We don't at this point have a very good sense of just how many (cases) there are,” Ryan said. 'We'd like to get a better handle on what the scope of the problem is so we can get … enough resources to respond appropriately.”

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 20.9 million human trafficking victims across the world and that trafficking is a $150 billion industry.

Tinsman said human trafficking is modern-day slavery.

Paulsen and Kinney held the forum to generate ideas for what more the Legislature can do to address human trafficking in Iowa. Paulsen said one possibility is creating a state office on human trafficking, housed by Public Safety or the Attorney General's Office.

Ryan and Tom Ferguson, a former Black Hawk county attorney who now works in the Attorney General's Office, recommended training for law enforcement officials and prosecutors.

'The traffickers are very well-organized, which means if we're going to be successful in our response, we're going to need to be very well-organized,” Ryan said.