SPRINGFIELD — A Senate committee passed a bill this week that would give specialized training on human trafficking and establish coordination across multiple state agencies and partners.
Human trafficking is defined by the U.S. Justice Department as “a crime that involves compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services, or to engage in commercial sex acts.”
Senate Bill 2323 follows multiple recommendations from the state Joint Human Trafficking Working Group formed in 2023. The recommendations included victim screening, multi-agency coordination, victim-focused training and more.
Advocate and Chicago-native Brenda Myers-Powell, who was a victim of human trafficking for 25 years starting as a child, spoke at the state Capitol on Wednesday in support of the bill.
“I wish someone had recognized the signs when I was vulnerable,” Myers-Powell said. “The expanded screening for youth in state care could have identified my situation before it escalated. The creation of standards of care means survivors like me won’t have inconsistent, sometimes retraumatizing responses I encountered.”
If the bill is implemented, multiple state agencies would have to make new units that work across jurisdictions and have specialized training to work with victims and potential future victims.
“As a transportation hub, Illinois ranks among the highest in the number of human trafficking cases in the whole United States,” Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Deerfield, the bill’s lead sponsor, said Wednesday.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, one of the agencies involved in the bill, would be required to maintain a human trafficking unit, which has the main goal of helping victims with case management and other services.
In a Senate committee hearing Tuesday, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said there were fewer than 600 victims of human trafficking reported to state agencies between 2021 and 2023. Another 966 possible cases of child trafficking were reported to DCFS over the same period. But Kelly said the reported numbers are likely only a fraction of the actual cases.
“We know that human trafficking exists in our state but is sometimes unrecognized, as victims aren’t identified, and underlying crimes are unreported,” Kelly said Wednesday.
Kelly said law enforcement knows how to recognize “the bad guy” but is not always as good at recognizing that the person with a perpetrator might be being victimized.
“We have to have a comprehensive approach to this so that … when we encounter someone who’s a victim, that there is a handshake between law enforcement and all these social service providers because it’s simply not enough just to hand them a pamphlet or a phone number or just go on to the next bad guy,” Kelly said Wednesday. “We have to break the cycle but making sure we’re better serving victims.”
The bill also repeatedly mentioned improving “victim-centered, trauma-informed” responses from law enforcement and other agencies.
Kelly said training on the complex trauma of human trafficking and taking input from survivors like Myers-Powell will make combatting the problem easier.
The bill now goes to the full Senate for a vote.
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