Alcohol vendors may soon be playing a part in helping Oregon legislators spread public awareness of human trafficking in the state.
On Tuesday, legislators unanimously passed House Bill 3623, which aims to raise awareness about human trafficking in Oregon and is now undergoing readings in
the Senate.
The bill allows the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to choose whether to send informational stickers to beer and liquor distributors throughout the state. The stickers will include a hotline number for victims, reporting tips or for general information regarding human trafficking and would likely be displayed around bars and liquor stores.
“Oregon has become a hub for human trafficking on the West Coast,” said Rep. Brent Barton, D-Clackamas, one of the bill’s sponsors. “Human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms trade as the second largest world-wide illicit activity after the drug trade, and it is growing more rapidly than either. Oregon is not immune to it.”
With the bill, Barton hopes to set a precedent for laws dealing with human trafficking.
“It’s a pretty modest bill,” Barton said. “I consider it a first step, but we need to completely transform the way government interacts with this issue.”
Washington and California adopted laws defining and restricting human trafficking in 2003 and 2005, respectively. Oregon lawmakers have been slower to act.
In 2007 the legislature passed ORS 163.266, trafficking in persons, and ORS 167.017, compelling prostitution. Both statutes identify their respective crimes as Class B felonies — the former for people taking any part in human trafficking and the latter for inducing others to engage in prostitution. Class B felonies result in a maximum prison sentence of 10 years or a $250,000 maximum fine.
However, Barton said trafficking in persons is difficult to prosecute consistently. Because it is an unranked offense with no set repercussions for the offender, district attorneys rarely use the 2007 statute and instead use ORS 167.012, promoting prostitution,
whose “punishment is clearly defined.”
Deputy Keith Bickford, Multnomah County sheriff’s detective and director of the Oregon Human Trafficking Task Force, said legislative actions like the bill passed Tuesday are crucial for him to do his job.
Bickford said Oregon’s human trafficking laws lack specificity and severity, but “There are several folks who are trying to beef up laws and make trafficking a higher-level crime.”
The Task Force considers Portland a troublesome city for human trafficking because of its ports, major waterways and the intersection of Interstate 5 and Interstate 84. Located along the I-5 corridor, Eugene and Salem are also on the Task Force’s radar.
No agencies track the number of people trafficked through Oregon, but the FBI estimates about 18,000 people are brought into the United States each year.
“We don’t even have a number yet; it could be hundreds, it could be thousands,”
Bickford said.
Professor Chuck Hunt, whose social inequality course at the University addresses human trafficking, said the number of people in forced-labor situations is unprecedented in
historical terms.
“This is a huge, huge problem. There are more slaves today than in 1863,” Hunt said. “Any effort to publicize it or blow a whistle is certainly something I’d be inclined to support. My only question would be, is this the most effective way to
attack the problem?”
Hunt also said that, although sexual slavery is the most publicized, military and industrial slavery both pose daunting threats to the humanitarian interests of the global community.
Bickford plans to hold informational meetings in cities across Oregon.
“The Task Force also supplies free classes; I’m in charge of the whole state of Oregon, as dumb as that sounds,” he said. “A lot of folks don’t even know what human trafficking is. If I wanted to put it in layman’s terms, it’s modern-day slavery.”
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