Exploring Private Investigation Agencies’ Experience of Collaboration with Law Enforcement in Investigations of Human Trafficking Cases

In their forefront role to address human trafficking, law enforcement agencies (LEAs) have often faced challenges in efforts to investigate this crime. Non-traditional partnerships should be explored to improve strategies to investigate human trafficking. Could private investigation agencies (PIAs) collaborate with LEAs to help improve human trafficking investigations? The present study examines PIAs’ experiences of collaboration with LEAs for human trafficking investigations. A mixed research method design was used. Purposive sampling was used to select 81 participants representing 81 PIAs for a survey. Follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 of the 39 survey participants who reported that their agencies had collaborated with LEAs for human trafficking investigations. The findings show varying levels of success and challenges for PIAs in interagency collaboration with LEAs. The challenges to collaboration identified could be mostly explained by LEAs’ misperceptions of private investigators, their over-reliance on a criminal approach instead of a victim-centered one in investigating trafficking cases and recovering victims, and legal or ethical limitations. Positive aspects of PIA–LEA partnerships regarding human trafficking investigations were discussed and so were strategies to address inherent challenges to interagency collaboration. Several policy implications were discussed for developing and improving partnership initiatives with law enforcement in an effort to prevent human trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute trafficking cases.