Combating Child Trafficking With Accessible Resources

In place of a thesis or dissertation, second-year students at the Bush School of Government and Public Service complete a capstone project in teams of approximately ten students. My team, under the advisement of Dr. David H. McIntyre, contracted with the Human Trafficking and Transnational/Organized Crime Section (HTTOC) of the Office of the Attorney General of Texas.

Our Project

Our client tasked us with researching and creating a comprehensive resource guide for use by child sex trafficking victims. HTTOC commissioned us to create the resource guide to be handed off to coalitions within the state of Texas. The client's goal was to make resources and information more accessible for victims to ease their burden during the investigative and trial process. The coalitions will then maintain and distribute the guide to child sex trafficking victims. The resource was also intended to allow for duplication in counties across the state. The purpose for users, the trafficking survivors, is to be able to access a variety of resources in their areas. HTTOC is a new office that developed and changed as our project progressed. However, as a team, our mission stayed the same: to address the significant issue of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a pervasive issue that affects people of all backgrounds and ages, but, unfortunately, not every entity recognizes the problem. Many people have the mindset that "those are not our girls," meaning they do not believe that trafficking happens in their communities. Knowing this mindset, our team researched victims' resources in two counties, Montgomery and Waller County, as an expansion of last year's capstone project, which focused on the Brazos Valley. We then used the resource guide, a list of available resources compiled by the previous year's team. We expanded it by adding Spanish translations and visual symbols to make it more accessible to a broader audience. In our final briefing, we will be presenting the updated resource guides, a new resource website, and our academic findings to our client. Throughout the semester, I learned valuable teamwork and ethics skills that will serve me well as an attorney (discussed in other sections) as well as experienced significant personal development and curiosity.

Personal Development

As a result of Capstone, I am now much more curious about the larger issue at hand: human trafficking as a whole. Through our literature review, we discovered how widespread the "this is not our girls" mindset is, which prompted us to explore the reasoning behind the mindset, as well as make recommendations to address the issue. We found that some people do not believe that trafficking happens in their communities because of a false sense of security and a gap between communities and trafficking victims. The mindset is dangerous because people do not work to address the issue until it is too late. The research completed and work done for the capstone project has made me more passionate about the overarching theme of human trafficking. When searching for law schools, I made it a point to inquire about what work they do with human trafficking. Capstone shifted my perspective; I now want to work with human trafficking victims and find justice for them. In law school, I hope to work with clinics to work on human trafficking cases and conduct further research, starting with the mindset issue.

Why don't people believe in the issue of human trafficking? What can stakeholders do to shift this mindset? Does this mindset affect jury trial outcomes?

I believe it was our project that shifted my focus and prompted these questions for my future research.

Initiative

As a result of Capstone, I developed the critical skill of initiative. Initiative involves quick learning, confidence, and innovative thinking in order to solve a problem or answer a question. Attorneys need to take initiative when addressing the issues that arise during trials so they can best represent their clients. An example of when I took initiative to solve a problem during our Capstone was when we needed someone to work on graphics for the project. Although I did not know much about graphic design at the beginning, I learned how to design logos, reports, and templates and applied what I learned to the visual aspects of our project. I designed our cover page, transferred our report into a professional document template, created a team logo, designed the symbols to be used on deliverables, and collaborated with another team member on our slide presentations. This work forced me to learn about graphic design quickly, step out of my comfort zone, and confidently present visual products. My experiences working on these projects helped me develop initiative that I believe will serve me well as an attorney. I expect that legal work will require me to learn new skills to address different types of cases, evidence, and testimony. I am prepared to explore resources that will help me learn these new topics with little to no supervision from others.

My capstone experience will serve me well in the legal field

My participation in Capstone encouraged personal development and allowed me to develop valuable skills, including ethics skills, teamwork skills, and initiative. These skills will serve me well in the future as I work with different types of testimony and evidence and conduct research during and after law school.