334 – Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking, with Derek Marsh

Derek Marsh joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss the role of law enforcement in preventing human trafficking.

Derek Marsh

Derek Marsh is the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is a retired Deputy Chief of the Westminster Police Department, CA, with over 26 years of service. He co-founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force and has been a national and international leader in anti-human trafficking training, investigations, and advocacy. A former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow, Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and task force collaboration. He holds master’s degrees in Human Behavior and Police Management & Leadership and continues to advance education, outreach, and justice initiatives through GCWJ.

Key Points

• It is important to shift law enforcement’s focus from a traditional reactive approach (arresting perpetrators) to a proactive model that prioritizes prevention of human trafficking through holistic strategies.
• There is a strong focus on utilizing victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches in law enforcement to provide appropriate support for victims while addressing the dynamics between victims and perpetrators, rather than solely relying on arrests and punitive measures.
• There are financial implications of preventative versus reactive responses. Investing in preventive measures could ultimately be more cost-effective than dealing with the long-term consequences of exploitation and incarceration.
• Collaboration among various stakeholders—including law enforcement, social services, and community organizations—is necessary to effectively address human trafficking and to support prevention strategies that mitigate risk factors for exploitation.

Resources

• Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force
• Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellows 
• Health and Human Services
• gcwj.org
• Department of Social Services
• Enhanced Collaborative Model

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14
Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #334: Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Derek Marsh, an old friend and frequent guest on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. Derek serves as the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is adjunct faculty in the criminal justice major, a retired deputy chief of Westminster Police Department, and co founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force. He’s also been a former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow. Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and Task Force collaboration. We are so grateful that he’s on our Global Center for Women and Justice team, and we’re eager to dive into this conversation. Derek, welcome.

Derek Marsh 1:42
Thank you for having me again.

Sandra Morgan 1:43
Yeah, it’s kind of hard not to run into you around here.

Derek Marsh 1:47
You being the boss and telling me what to do kind of helps.

Sandra Morgan 1:49
I know I love it, though, when you were the boss, but I get to have that role now, so it’s great. I’m excited because you know how much I love talking about prevention, and usually you’re talking about finding the bad guys, locking them up, and making sure they can’t do what they did ever again. But now, we’re going to look at this from the perspective that law enforcement has a role in preventing human trafficking. Let’s start with that question: How do we change our lens so that we’re more proactive instead of reactive?

Derek Marsh 2:35
It’s a difficult lens to change, because a lot of our work in police work is we’re rewarded financially, or through evaluations, or through the public perception, by reacting to issues quicker. The sooner, the more long term that impact has, the greater we get that positive feedback. Human trafficking, unfortunately, isn’t always one of those situations where you can just pop in, make a quick arrest, refer a victim to a victim services provider, and think you have a win. I guess it is a win in the short term sense, but it’s not a win in the long term sense. After being retired, and thinking about these things, and teaching in the CJ, the Criminal Justice Department, I’ve come to think of prevention as being a much more holistic, complete response, as is just opposed to putting people in jail. Which I enjoy doing, I probably still would enjoy if I had the option, but I don’t know if that’s the actual answer in the long term for eliminating, or at least mitigating significantly, human trafficking.

Sandra Morgan 3:39
Well, we’ve talked about prevention a lot on this task force, my background in pediatric nursing. I want to find how do we teach people to brush their teeth, that equivalent, so that we can end trafficking, really do prevention? And we’ve looked at prevention through the lens of the prevention framework at Health and Human Services, which really focuses on a primary prevention strategy, a public health agenda, and as well as a socio-ecological model. So can you help us see that in the context of criminal justice and law enforcement?

Derek Marsh 4:27
Well, sure. So human trafficking has frequently been referred to as a public health crisis these days, and for good reason, there’s physiological issues, cognitive issues, societal issues, financial, economic issues that result as a result of the crime of human trafficking. Health and Human Services and most of the anti trafficking world these days, in our federal world, focus on the public health model, which has three different levels of prevention, if you will. You have your primary level which focuses on actually what we consider prevention, stopping something before it happens. We have secondary and tertiary, both which deal with reacting to an event, whether the person is a perpetrator or they’re experiencing exploitation or trafficking. The secondary deals with short term, basically arresting someone, putting them in jail, or just immediately identifying someone and offering them assistance. The tertiary deals with long term, so basically, how are you going to make that person stop being a perpetrator? Or how are you going to make sure that person who’s been a victim, survivor, not recidivate anymore, not go back, not get sucked back into the life, or not be further exploited by other people.

Sandra Morgan 5:42
Give me an example, tell me a story that I can understand that.

Derek Marsh 5:48
Well, here’s the thing. I’ll go back to the days of the dinosaurs when I was working on it. I mean, you go to a house, you get a report. Someone says there’s something fishy at this residence. It turns out to be a residential brothel. You go through your surveillance, you get your information about who owns the place. You get license plates, you see people repeatedly.You see if they have any warrants or anything like that. You go to a judge eventually say, “Well, this type of activity appears to be related to either drugs,” because they’re very similar in residential brothels, “or maybe it’spotentially human trafficking,” or some kind of pimping and pandering. So then you convince the judge based on your experience, and you move in, and you do a search warrant, and you find people who are being victimized. You find people who are victimizing them, and you find people who are offering them. From the idea of trying to figure out what’s happening ahead of time, we’re not. What we’re doing is we’re responding basically to a call for service, or to an observation from a citizen. We go there, we deal with the immediate situation, we close down the residential brothel. We identify who the perpetrators are and who the victim survivors are going to be, and in that short secondary prevention aspect, you’re dealing with the issue. We’re actually preventing, in a sense, right? Because that’s how that public health model works with that. On a long term basis, you’re looking to see how long can they be put in jail? Or maybe they can get some kind of restorative or rehabilitative justiceapplied to them so when they come out, they won’t do it again. On the victim/survivor side, you’re saying, how can we help them and provide services, we’re working with them so they don’t go back and fall into that, in this particular example, sex trafficking situation. But it works the same for labor as well. How can we make sure that they have a long-term, sustainable plan where they can get what they need as a person and realize and restore their personal dignity, while the same token not being subject to being victimized, exploited again?

Sandra Morgan 7:47
So what that looks like in a day to day routine, I remember the day when if there was a call out on a brothel, which is illegal commercial sex, everybody got arrested. That model has changed now and there is more intentional concern for the people that are there, that might actually be there under coercion. Now, how does that fit into this scenario as an element of a prevention strategy?

Derek Marsh 8:33
Exactly. You’re talking about like 20-30 years ago, where you go into a residential brothel, or you know wherever you go. You can go online now, same idea, “I need to find someone at a hotel,” the difference is minimal, but basically everyone who’s there is arrested. There’s no consideration for victim-centered, trauma-informed, culturally-aware, all those issues we now deal with, with human trafficking. From that non preventative at all, just strictly enforcement, deterrent, kind of, capacity mindset, you move into more of a reactive prevention sense that, “Hey, I see an issue. We’re going to address it. We’re victim-centered, trauma-informed, so we’re not going to try to trigger our folks,” I know that’s not the word we use, but we’re not going to try to trigger them. We’re not going to try to further traumatize them. We’re going to treat them as victim survivors, make sure they have agency in this process, we’re not going to put handcuffs on if we can avoid it, all those other things. Whereas we’re still arresting the perpetrators and keeping them separate. From the old school way of just taking them all to jail and we’ll sort them out there, to understanding there’s a victim/perpetrator dynamic that we need to be aware of, and that they’re not just victims and we’re not there to save them, we’re there to help liberate them so they can come to better terms and restore their dignity, and understand that we need collaborative effort to make that happen. The police aren’t solo. So that’s the evolution that we’re talking about when it comes to prevention. What the next level of evolution would be, would be to actually prevent it from ever happening at all, if that makes sense. You have, according to the public health model, your primary prevention is what you’re focusing on. You really want to, in the long run, create a space for people where they never get exploited, where they never feel they have to exploit others to get ahead, so that these people can live without having to go through this sexual trauma, the trauma of commercial labor, the idea of being exploited by people for financial ends, the idea of exploiting others for financial ends, that there are other alternatives that are more viable. That’s where the long-term end goal, if you’re asking me about anti trafficking, is to create a planet where that doesn’t occur.

Sandra Morgan 10:52
So when we’re talking about prevention, then, we can imagine a continuum. We missed it, we didn’t teach them how to brush their teeth when they were one year old, and now they’re already in the midst of decay. They’ve been exploited. Our prevention is preventing further exploitation.

Derek Marsh 11:18
Right, it’s always public health. Let’s look at a health example. You catch somebody and they have a cold, or a disease, or something like that. You break your arm? Okay, well that happened. We’re going to fix that arm, we’re going to reset it, we’re going to do what we need to do. It’ll be good as new. But they still broke their arm. You didn’t stop them from breaking their arm, or flu or whatever. But you could have avoided that through wearing a mask, washing your hands more frequently, or other things like that. You probably could have but again, we’re reacting to the public health world. I’m not saying that’s everything that public health does, but a lot of times it becomes reactive. What I’m saying is here, while we are very good and technically we are doing prevention by arresting people, referring them to resources, both short and long term, and that’s important, I’m not minimizing it. I’m saying it would also be good to focus on the third, the initial, the primary aspect of prevention, which is never have it happen at all. But these are often dealing with bigger issues, like poverty, like educational opportunity, like medical health access, like job opportunities, all those things that police aren’t normally associated with handling, which I agree with. However, you’re also in areas where you have to feel safe and secure, like your neighborhoods or your communities or your inner cities, and that is something police can partner with and help in an element of creating a safer, more secure environment that minimizes those factors that can promote the possibility of people being at risk of being exploited, or exploiting others because they feel they have no other options in their world.

Sandra Morgan 12:59
So when I, as a nurse, approach something like this. I’m looking how to identify, how to find the protective factors. But in criminal justice, you have a model called Sarah. How does Sarah help you?

Derek Marsh 13:18
In a public health world, there’s like four different levels, roughly. I’m taking this from the Health and Human Services Anti- Trafficking Framework, but they’re right. I’ve read others, and they’re very similar. You start with finding a problem, you want to monitor it. Then you want to ID your risk, maybe come up with some protective factors that would keep you from doing it. You develop and test some preventative strategies, and in the end, you walk away saying, “Okay, well, we’re going to adopt this worldwide and make it stop.” Well the criminal justice world does the same kind of thing, they call it problem oriented policing. Basically they have what they call the ceremony.

Sandra Morgan 13:54
They call it what?

Derek Marsh 13:55
Problem oriented policing. They identify an issue. Initially they survey something, they go, “Okay, well, we’re going to survey an issue,” let’s say burglaries or auto thefts, “and we’re going to look at and analyze this area, and figure out what’s going on.” So first, you’re going to survey it and see if it’s really a problem. Next, you’re going to analyze issues in your city, maybe there’s a particular parking lot, or maybe the mall, where a lot of people park, that’s where they’re losing their catalytic converters, or whatever the case may be. Then you’re going to find out, what are the MOS, how are people perpetrating these steps? At what times? How many people are involved? Are people ever seeing it happen? Those types of things. What kind of cars are being targeted? Then you’re going to say, “Okay, well, I want to respond a certain way.” As you’re patrolling a mall or you’re patrolling a larger parking lot space, then you can say, “Okay, well, I’m looking for this kind of car at this time of the day. Those seem to be the target areas by these people to focus on,” the perpetrators of it. At that point, you do a response for, let’s say, a month, and then you look at your monthly response, see how many people you’ve arrested or questioned, and does it lower the overall crime rate that’s reported there? Successful, not successful, and you go on to repeat the Sarah process again. Same thing that’s happening with public health, we just made it a little bit more simple for patrol officers and for people that are not trying to be researchers, they’re trying to address particular issues. So that’s the difference.

Sandra Morgan 15:18
Okay, so this actually changes my frame of reference in my collaboration with my local law enforcement partners. Because I think in my mind, and I kind of feel like some of my listeners may identify with me, I think when I show up as the victim service providers, that you’re off duty now. You’re not helping with prevention anymore. I showed up, I’m taking care of this, but this makes it sound to me, more like you’re actively creating a strategy for that specific call out, when it gets repeated, that is going to also have the opportunity for widespread adoption, just like in the HHS plan.

Derek Marsh 16:14
Sure, there are lots of programs in police work that you started, and for instance, even the Sarah if you think of it as a system of approach, or crime analysis, or things like that, where people started doing it, seeing the system works. It does work, whether you call it hotspot policing, whatever you want to call it, and you identify those issues that seem to be perpetuating and seem to be true issues in your particular community, and then you work on it. But again, it starts off as a reactive because you’re for things that are already happening, and then you try to figure out a strategy or process where you can, by doing a normal patrol, or by doing focus patrols, you can keep it from happening in the future. It’s easy to metric for police because we’re measuring the number of, let’s say, catalytic converter thefts. You know what it was six months ago or for the last six months, then you implement your program for three months, and you compare the numbers. Did it go down? Did it not go down? Or did it go down here but it went up in another part of the city? Prevention for human trafficking is that much harder to do, because while we are addressing on the secondary and tertiary ways of the immediate rest and identification of a potential victim survivor, giving them the care they need, and addressing the criminal justice consequences of perpetrating that crime. Are we really able to go back now and find issues that we can address, and mitigate those factors that make people vulnerable? That’s harder to measure, because how do I measure someone not being a victim? Especially when we went around telling everybody, “Hey, we’re not counting well to begin with.” We’re only hitting the tip of the iceberg, right? Maybe we only had two reports, and now, after you implement a program, you have only two reports. But think about it, maybe there were five reports you would have had, as opposed to the two reports, if you hadn’t done what you were doing. For instance, people being recruited outside of high schools. Why not stick a cop car ,or person out there, or a collaborative partner, whatever, to help make sure that those people don’t get to interact? All the underlying things, the things that are behind the scenes, behind the curtain, are those being stopped? You want to hope so, but you don’t know until later on, until you’re able to take an entire look at the history of how it’s working.

Sandra Morgan 18:23
Don’t we have to consider how much that’s going to cost, to have somebody parked outside a high school every day at three o’clock when the bell rings?

Derek Marsh 18:31
Sure. We’re paying for people to be there anyway, though. You’re paying for law enforcement to be there. Now, they have to respond to calls for service, and so you’re looking at special programs. But what’s the cost of treating someone who’s a victim of human trafficking? What’s the psychological cost? It’s very difficult to put a number on. What’s their impact, as far as their ability to work in our society? What’s the cost of someone you arrest who’s exploiting people? How much do we pay for them in prison? I think the last numbers I’d seen were anywhere from 35 to $55,000 a year, to house and feed somebody in jail, in prison. So that’s a lot of money. The idea here is that if you get a school resource officer, for instance, and then have them be at the school and be aware of these things, and just take their time when school ends, instead of hanging out in an office space or whatever, go outside and just walk outside the school, see who interacting with the students.

Sandra Morgan 19:22
If we start looking at primary prevention, because you want us to measure things. Measuring victims isn’t working very well because we can only measure what we find, and that’s very spotty, depends on resources for recovery, who has a grant to pay salaries, those kinds of funding issues. So if we look at the cost of prevention over the cost of deterrence, by putting somebody in jail, or the cost of prevention compared to the cost of restoration, then maybe we start placing higher value on prevention strategies. Because in our 5 P model, prevention typically does not get as well funded.

Derek Marsh 20:21
Again, as we’re thinking of prevention in the 5 P model, or as we think about it from the federal level, even while HHS has come up with this three-level, public health model of prevention, again, technically, we are doing prevention by funding police and funding social service providers to handle situations that are already occurring. To intervene and help people stop, or help liberate them from their situation so they can get better care and self care, to arrest perpetrators or people pursuing those types of trafficking activities. From a secondary and tertiary perspective, they are funding prevention. But it’s that difficult to measure, because we’re so obsessed with measurement and making sure we get it right, which is important, but difficult to measure, quantitative way of saying, “Hey, how do I show that my efforts prior to that, my community outreach efforts, my environmental design efforts, where I’m trying to create better lighted neighborhoods, neighborhood watch, things like that, help actually prevent people from being victimized or susceptible to financial poverty issues, to being susceptible to poor schooling?” Those are things that you have to have partnerships, because it’s not criminal justice anymore, it’s partnerships with other people, other groups in the community, other federal groups, local groups, that can help mitigate and change those issues.

Sandra Morgan 21:45
You’re sliding into the socioecological model, and that feels overwhelming to address. How do we break it down so that everyday people, like me, can keep it all organized in my thinking?

Derek Marsh 22:05
I would say that if you’re going to break it down, or you’re going to look at these different elements or factors, we’ve known the Steven model, for instance, that you and I have developed. You look at what Steven stands for; sociocultural, then you have T for technological issues online. There’s a lot of issues with those, access and things like that. You have ecological, you have your economic, you have your political, you have your historical, and when you put all these things together, then you can look for their connectivity, their issues, how people are networking together, the collaborations, and you come up with strategies and tactics on how to address those issues. We have the Steven which is the same as their socioecological model, and that’s fine in some ways, but again, on a line level, cop on the street, ‘how do I do prevention?,’ it doesn’t help. Because they don’t have that skill set. Their job is to enforce laws to make sure people are safe and secure. How do you do that day to day? You do it through programs. We did a program once where we were called out to ahousehold where gang activity was occurring, or to a place where drug activity was occurring, or even domestic violence, we would actually refer the kids who were experiencing this, through observation, hopefully not directly through abuse, to schools. We would have a whole program set up for them to show that they could work together with the police, and with educational groups, and with nonprofit organizations, to show there’s much more to life than just watching their parents, or the people in their homes, or their brothers or sisters or whoever, abuse each other, exploit each other, take advantage of each other. We gave them a more positive example, if you will. Those things are possible, it takes some finances to back them up, but we put a lot of money into arresting people, and we put a lot of money into treating people. And guess what? I think treating people and arresting people are important things to do, but I also think that you can’t arrest your way out of the crime. We talked to John Cotton Richmond, he said that multiple times. I don’t think you’re going to, in a way, you can help people get better from a psychological, emotional, cognitive perspective, and that’s important to do, but I think not ever having them experience those types of issues is way better. From a financial perspective, and also from a personal perspective, from a societal perspective, probably just a lot more healthy people walking around.

Sandra Morgan 24:28
Does this then support the enhanced collaborative model for task forces?

Derek Marsh 24:35
100%. I mean prevention was like, I look at the original three: prevention, protection, prosecution, and in a sense, those are the three groups, or even one of those is people, but three activities that are really at the heart of anti trafficking. We look at prevention, we’re looking at the same things we always have before. You want to identify what’s going on, you want to come up with solutions, you want to make sure that you can intervene, to make sure people don’t even get involved. If that doesn’t work, then you fall back on your people who need support for what has occurred to them already, or what they are doing to others. And that’s okay, it’s a necessary part of the entire system, but I would hope that as we get more mature, and as we’ve been doing this now, it started in 2000 and we’re in 2024, so 24 years down the line, we could keep putting a lot of money into arresting people and treating people, and those are important things to do, and I’m not minimizing the importance of it, but I think an equal, and if not, greater, amount of money could just be put into programs or research that can help us identify how you mitigate these factors in society, in individuals, in communities, that can create an opportunity for people not to have to experience any of that at all.

Sandra Morgan 25:48
Well, and no one can have the attitude that, “My particular role in this process is the key piece to this.” I remember when we did a study abroad with our students here from Vanguard in Romania, and we were invited to do a training for all the domestic violence police sergeants, I’m not sure about…

Derek Marsh 26:18
In Bucharest.

Sandra Morgan 26:19
Yeah, in Bucharest, and they wanted to understand how to do a better job of intervening in domestic violence, and learn to apply that in the work on anti sex trafficking. What we discovered, I still remember trying to answer some questions, because in our presentation, we had the experience of we had a list of people to call when we had something happening. They didn’t have a number to call for somebody to show up, and so the only place to take the victim was to the police station, and that, to me, sounds like a criminal justice adjustment that requires that Enhanced Collaborative Model, and with this socioecological prevention strategy, we start integrating that in all five P’s, instead of only having it in the first P.

Derek Marsh 27:29
I agree, and I think that you have to understand the historical context. We went in there with the great intention of helping them understand anti trafficking. Within five minutes of that presentation, they wanted to talk about domestic violence, because for them, that was the more immediate issue that led to people potentially being exploited and maybe even being pimped or pandered. We switched gears right away. We’re like, okay, that’s what you need to talk about, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. We had two hours of a great training with a room full of cops in Bucharest, to understand what it took to address domestic violence, which, again, is a type of exploitation, a type of physical, powerful exploitation, where you have victims and you have perpetrator. It is an element, in many cases, of some human trafficking situations as well. So mission accomplished, we worked on anti trafficking, but we understand the historical context. They had just gotten the idea of a restraining order, which was brand new to them. They were just starting to be allowed to actually go into someone’s home if there was a report of domestic violence, as opposed to standing outside the door and hearing things without being able to do anything about it. Those were issues that they were working through, and that mindset was changing.

Sandra Morgan 28:39
And the other thing that happened, because we’ve got to tell you guys the rest of the story, is the nonprofit that we were working with suddenly realized that they could help. They created a contact card that these police officers could have in their cargo pants when they needed to reach out for victim services in one of those situations. They had a community partner so they could do this enhanced collaborative model. It was a game changer.

Derek Marsh 29:13
Sure, and again, the local line level officers aren’t usually going to be able to recognize who those players are, who those NGOs are, who those service providers are. They may have a General Department, like Department of Social Services, but they’re not going to be able to say, how can we help if we just want to get independent help, short of the Department of Social Services. Because nobody wants to be on the radar in a federal, or municipal, or city sense. They can go to get individual help without making it aware to their partner ,if they’re being abused or whatever. The idea being that the whole collaboration makes sense. Again, instead of having to get a call for service, or experience excessive or any kind of domestic violence, those cars can potentially save people, not just people there, but if they’re shared out, they can share it with people who might be a victim, but realize there are other ways that they can handle those issues.

Sandra Morgan 30:06
Derek, you and I have worked together for a very long time, 20 years. Wow.

Derek Marsh 30:13
Sorry.

Sandra Morgan 30:14
I’ve changed my mind on a few things, especially when it comes to working with police officers, federal agents, investigating. What have you changed your mind about?

Derek Marsh 30:30
I would say, definitely the importance of the victim-centered, trauma-informed approach. I think I had that, to some degree more esoterically, like theoretically, it made sense, but seeing it on the ground helped me just bring it into my heart. But also the idea that it’s great to arrest people, again, love doing it. I know it sounds bad but there’s certain closure to taking somebody who’s abusing somebody and putting them in jail. However, much better in the long run, I think much better for the people involved, that they never get in those situations before. I’ve kind of lost my cop hat to some degree, after being retired as long as I have, and seeing that prevention and understanding that people, if we can keep them from even being exploited or exploiting others, is a much more long term, societally comprehensive solution than just throwing on some handcuffs and throwing them into a jail cell. Liberating a person who’s been exploited and providing them with services, but them having to struggle with those issues and the trauma for the rest of their lives.

Sandra Morgan 31:34
Yet I still remember you teaching me that we can’t have tree huggers only, and I was the resident tree hugger, at a scene, because it wasn’t safe. If you could just tell me again, teach me again why we do have to have cops, police officers who are there for the public safety, and why that’s important for the victim as well as the rest of us in the room.

Derek Marsh 32:13
Yeah, I’m perilously close to hugging trees when I talk like I’m talking.

Sandra Morgan 32:16
I know, oh my gosh.

Derek Marsh 32:18
It’s killing me, I see the tree. It’s close, I can almost reach it. But the reality is that police serve a function. I think we’ve seen our lane. The idea here that we’re trying to enforce laws, but we’re also trying to keep communities safe. There needs to be a line. And then people, as a community, draw that line themselves, awesome. That’s what it should be, really. But if they can’t, or they won’t, then there needs to be other people, like ourselves, police, to go up and say, “This is the line, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.” If you cross that line from a criminal perspective, there are consequences, accountability. But also if you’re a person who’s being victimized in a crime, then you need someone there to be able to say, “Look, I can take you out of this space when you’re not thinking clearly yourself, when you’re in a horrible situation, when mentally and habitually you’re just used to that kind of experience, and you think it’s normalized, then you need someone to help liberate you from that, or a group to help liberate from that.” Not that we’re riding white horses or we’re knights, or that you can’t liberate yourself, I get all that. But sometimes we all have weak moments, or we have times in our lives where having somebody there to support you and to offer you the options, is important. I think that’s where police fit in. I would be a horrible person to provide long term counseling. Definitely not, too many trees around, I’ll get confused. But I mean, can I identify someone who haspotential challenges and needs some help? 100%. Then I can direct them to people who are experienced, have that training and education, to give them the best opportunity to engage in a way that they can help heal themselves and make that informed decision. Then I win too. Not only do I get somebody into handcuffs, if that’s what’s needed, but I also have somebody who has been liberated from not just physical handcuffs maybe, but also from a psychological exploitation and the handcuffs that people put upon them through coercion, force, and other ways of manipulating others.

Sandra Morgan 34:24
That’s good. That’s so good. To close out this episode, Derek Marsh runs our anti human trafficking certificate program. Derek, would you tell our listeners how to access that and what the breadth of it is.

Derek Marsh 34:44
We have an anti human trafficking certificate program. It works for both professional level folks and for people who want to do academic as well. The professional costs are much less than the academic because you don’t get units. However, we have 13 different courses. We’re always adjusting them for current activities and things that are going on in the world. We have people who teach who are active in the field, or have been in the field, have actually worked in anti trafficking before, so it can help in a mentor perspective. They are eight weeks, and if you do four courses, the Basic Human Trafficking Overall View, the Ethics and Human Trafficking are the core, if you will, required courses. Then we have other courses, CSEC, actually Prevention is one of the courses I’m teaching right now. There’s Sex Trafficking, Labor Trafficking, Immigration Issues. We have a bunch of different courses that, depending on where your bent is and where you want to look at, can work. Faith Based and Faith Based Work With Human Trafficking, reflected on by your book that you wrote with your partner. Again, the idea here is to make people more informed about what trafficking is about. You take the courses, you get a certificate saying that you’ve been through what we’re doing and we’re providing. I think in the end, being more informed at that level, whether you’re going to be a police officer or a social worker, you can work at a church or you can work in a business. You can work in a medical facility, it doesn’t matter, all of us can apply some of that information, some of those techniques and strategies where you work, to help people understand what’s going on and maybe intervene in those situations as they go.

Sandra Morgan 36:20
Where are you going to find that?

Derek Marsh 36:22
You’re going to find it online. You just look under vanguard.edu, and we’re there. If you go to our gcwj.org, you can find that information there, and there’s links there to go to Vanguard. It’s a very straightforward process. You don’t have to have a degree to get in the program. You have to be pursuing a degree to get in the program, though, of course, you can get units. All those are options you can do. In fact, I’ve been very blessed in a sense, that a lot of times when people look for anti trafficking education, we populate on the first page in Google, which I have no idea how that worked out, but great for us, and hopefully great for you if you’re able to take advantage of it.

Sandra Morgan 36:57
We love being a resource, because we do believe education is key to prevention. Derek, thank you so much for helping out today on episode #334.

Derek Marsh 37:12
Thank you for having me.

Sandra Morgan 37:14
Listeners, we want you to know that in the show notes there will be links to all the things Derek and I talked about. If you have more questions, you can go to feedback and send those questions in. Your next step, if you’re not already a subscriber, is to go over to endinghumantrafficking.org and sign up. You’ll get a newsletter every two weeks, telling you that a new episode is dropped with information about what was in that episode. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and tell your friends to join us as we study the issues so we can be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking.