Proposal describes trafficking offenses, penalties, and protections

The proposal describes human trafficking to include certain debt-related work arrangements and sets felony penalties by the victim's age. The provisions cover labor, services, and commercial sexual activity; a victim under 18 brings a first-degree felony penalty. The debt-related provision applies when the person enforcing the debt does not pay as state and local law requires, controls or appears to control the worker, and the worker has no reasonable way to end the arrangement. A person who benefits from another person's labor, services, or commercial sexual activity must know or should have known force, fraud, or coercion was used.

The proposal describes offenses involving profiting from, hiring, or knowingly permitting a child under 18 to engage in prohibited sexual acts, and lists defenses that cannot be used in trafficking prosecutions. The child-exploitation-by-prostitution provisions cover a person who profits from, hires, or knowingly permits a child under 18 to engage in a prohibited sexual act. In a trafficking prosecution, a defendant could not rely on a minor's consent, a mistake about the victim's age, or the victim's sexual history. In a child-exploitation-by-prostitution prosecution, a defendant could not claim the intended child was a peace officer posing as someone under 18.

The proposal lists human trafficking and sexual exploitation of children as criminal offenses under the Victims of Crime Act. This concerns people harmed by human trafficking or sexual exploitation of children.

The proposal lists human trafficking as a serious violent offense for earned sentence deductions. This applies to people imprisoned for human trafficking. This concerns earned meritorious deductions, which can reduce time served; it does not describe every form of sentence reduction.

The proposal sets a six-year limit for starting a prosecution for second-degree human trafficking, measured from when the crime is reported to law enforcement. This applies to second-degree human trafficking crimes. The six-year period would start when the crime is reported to law enforcement.