Lessons Learned: Benefits and Challenges in Interagency Coalitions Addressing Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation

ABSTRACT

Over the last few decades, service providers and community members have organized and created interagency coalitions to address issues of sex trafficking. Such efforts include grassroots and government-funded coalitions, which typically provide education, training, and awareness about sex trafficking and encourage collaboration and coordinated services among community partners. However, the benefits and challenges of such coalitions within local contexts remains understudied. The current study draws from an inductive analysis of 24 interviews with coalition members representing 18 organizations in one Midwestern city whose service populations included those involved in commercial sex through trafficking, exploitation, or sex work. Findings suggest benefits of coalitions included increased service collaboration and heightened public awareness. Tensions revolved around conflicting viewpoints of commercial sex and competing service populations. Interrelated challenges also involved competition over funding, funding restrictions, and altered funding streams, which resulted in coalition fragmentation. Recommendations for community-based interagency coalitions to replicate benefits and to address tensions and challenges are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Commercial sexual exploitation
• community-based responses
• coordinated community responses
• interagency coalitions
• sex trafficking
• sex work

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding

Ms. Gerassi’s doctoral studies are funded by TranSTAR T32 Predoctoral Fellow through the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). There are no other funding sources to report for the other authors of the article.

Notes

¹ This article draws from data derived from a larger research project. Additional questions also examined respondents’ views of commercial sex, preferred use of terms, and policy preferences, among other questions. However, the data used for this article are largely derived from interview questions indicated in this article.

² Beyond the national model, Rescue and Restore, all names of organizing coalitions were changed to protect confidentiality.

³ All names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Additional information

Funding

Ms. Gerassi’s doctoral studies are funded by TranSTAR T32 Predoctoral Fellow through the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). There are no other funding sources to report for the other authors of the article.