Ramsey County Law Library Blog

Human trafficking doesn’t often make headlines in the Minnesota legal news, but now and then a case with local connections can arise.  A well-meaning practitioner can easily be at loss for how best to serve the needs of a trafficking victim client outside of conventional legal tools. This is why The Immigrant Legal Resource Center has published a valuable resource book, Representing Survivors of Human Trafficking: A Promising Practices Handbook (ILRC 2010).

Based on their ten years of working with trafficking survivors, authors Ivy Lee and Lynette Parker created this book to assist survivors’ advocates, which include case managers, health care providers, and law enforcement agencies, in addition to attorneys. The result is not a conventional legal treatise per se, but rather a guidebook to serve as a social roadmap of real cases and lessons learned firsthand. As well as an overview of the basics, the book contains tips for identifying a potential victim of human trafficking, answers common questions about trafficking situations, and offers suggestions on how to deal with the practical challenges of a trafficking case. There may be diverse options for relief available to the practitioner and client, as well as the service providers of a trafficking case.

Despite its non-law book layout and its California-slanted perspective, the extensive experience of the authors makes this handbook particularly thoughtful, relevant, and comprehensive. It is available for checkout at the Library.