Natalie Gonnella
This week, Governor Bobby Jindal called on state legislators to strengthen anti-trafficking laws in Louisiana.
Louisiana currently criminalizes the kidnapping, recruitment, and transportation of minors for the purposes of sexual exploitation, however the Governor's new proposal would seek to expand on existing legislation.
In an effort to the address the wide spread trafficking and exploitation of minors, Jindal is pushing for a new law that would punish those who knowingly facilitate the trafficking of children via methods such as listing sexual service on the internet.
In a statement supporting the new law, Jindal this week said:
This is a black market crime, so we must broaden our scope of what crimes are labeled human trafficking…This includes the crime of advertising children for those awful, awful purposes.
He went on to address the need for greater efforts to combat modern day slavery:
This is a crime that exists all around the world, including Louisiana, which is typically under reported and difficult to detect...We must expand and utilize our laws to secure lengthy sentences and send a message that the crime of human trafficking will not be tolerated in Louisiana.
Alarmingly, 145 years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States there are more people enslaved today than at any other time in history. And yet there are still a number of US states which "have failed to enact basic human trafficking provisions or have provisions that fail to adequately address the growing crime."
While Louisiana still has room for improvement, Governor Jindal's enthusiasm to enact new measures to combat trafficking is an example which all elected officials should feel compelled to replicate. With a quarter of a million US children at risk of exploitation and abuse it is imperative that all states take steps to improve anti-trafficking efforts.
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