Prevalence Rates from a Pilot Project to Implement Universal Screening for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Background:  Despite recent legislation in California (SB 855) clarifying that the Child Welfare Dependency Code includes commercially sexually exploited children as dependents, there is no uniform data tracking system to count the number of allegations or substantiations of commercial sexual exploitation (also called human trafficking) among child welfare or juvenile justice agencies in the state. The number of official allegations appears to be small and self-disclosure by youth is rare, resulting in a likely undercount in the official numbers. Yet policymakers and public system leaders need valid, reliable, and timely information on the scope of a problem in order to set funding priorities and make evidence-based decisions about where and how to allocate public resources. This study presents results from a pilot project in four urban California counties to estimate the prevalence of children and youth with child welfare and juvenile justice involvement that present with the indicators of commercial sexual exploitation.

Methods: The four counties in this study piloted the use of a validated screening tool for commercial sexual exploitation – the Commercial Sexual Exploitation-Identification Tool (CSE-IT). Each county had a slightly different implementation of the CSE-IT, though all are screening youth age 10 and older without waiting for signs or suspicion of exploitation to screen. Agencies in this study include county child welfare agencies in each of the 4 counties, one county juvenile probation agency, and a self-selected sample of community based organizations (CBOs) that serve vulnerable youth. Demographic and screening data about 2033 youth were collected over 12 months.

Results: Prevalence rates for youth with the indicators of exploitation differ substantially by county and by agency type. Among child welfare agencies, rates range from 7.6% to 14.6%. Rates also differ between systems, where the average rate among the four child welfare agencies in the study is 12.4%, compared to 8.8% in the juvenile probation agency and 14% among the participating CBOs. Rates by gender differ significantly from the average, with rates for girls significantly higher than for boys, and the rate for girls in probation at 30.3%, significantly higher than for boys or girls in any other agency.

Implications: This pilot to implement a validated screening tool for commercial sexual exploitation of children demonstrates the feasibility of conducting routine, universal screening for this form of abuse in agencies that work with vulnerable youth. Since official numbers of youth with human trafficking allegations or substantiations likely undercount the true number experiencing this abuse, adopting a universal screening procedure using a standardized instrument improves prevalence estimates and cross-system communication regarding the number of potential victims in a jurisdiction. Though this study is from a non-probability sample and is not generalizable to the entire state of California, it demonstrates the feasibility of developing a state-wide prevalence estimate using a common, validated instrument. This would provide a scientific measure of the scope of child exploitation that is not available from current measures and would facilitate evidence-based decision-making.