KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Diahann Gordon Harrison, says her office is unable to confirm whether some of the island’s police officers could be involved in human trafficking.

The unsubstantiated allegation levelled against the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) was made by the United States (US) State Department in its 2021 Trafficking in Person Report.

When asked by Observer Online on Monday whether she had come across any allegation of police officers being involved in sex trafficking, Gordon Harrison informed that her office was not involved in “frontline investigations” surrounding trafficking.

“So as rapporteur, we are not actually involved in the frontline investigation of any allegation, and in fact, those investigations are dealt with exclusively by the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Vice Squad, which is an arm of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF),” she explained.

“So while we have anecdotally heard it – you know just in the byways, for example, in this report and so on – we have no hard evidence that confirms that this is so,” she added.

In its 2021 Trafficking in Person Report, released late last week, the State Department said, “Some police allegedly facilitated or participated in sex trafficking”, as it kept Jamaica in its Tier 2 ranking which indicates that the Jamaican Government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.

The US State Department did not substantiate its controversial assertions made against the island’s law enforcers.

Gordon Harrison, in the meantime, described Jamaica’s Tier-2 ranking as positive, in light of the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“… I notice that Jamaica has managed to maintain its Tier-2 ranking, which, even though we are striving for Tier-1, it’s very comforting that even in the midst of a pandemic we were not downgraded. So that’s a positive thing as far as I am concerned,” she said in her preliminary commentary on the report.

Gordon Harrison, who is also the island’s Children Advocate, welcomed the observation made by the State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Person Report that children were used in forced criminal activity.

The report elaborated that, “Gang members may exploit children in forced begging or in forced criminal activity, including as lookouts, armed gunmen, or couriers of weapons and drugs; there were reports that criminal organisations exploited children in forced criminal activity in lotto-scamming.”

For her part, Gordon Harrison said that the observation made by the report resonated well with her.

“So the issue of forced criminality is one of the recommendations that the office of the National Rapporteur (on Trafficking in Persons) made in our annual report to Parliament (in 2020) that we need to consider our TIP (Trafficking in Persons) legislation to include forced criminality as a recognised form of human trafficking,” she shared.

Further, Gordon Harrison agreed that criminals have used children as “lookouts” on robbery sprees, for example.

“Sometimes that ‘lookout man’ is a child, or sometimes we have heard of children who go to school and police search them and they find a gun in their school bag. They use them (the children) to transport weapons, because they figure that children are not likely to be searched and so on,” she disclosed.

The State Department’s report has made several recommendations, and Gordon-Harrison pointed out that her office “will have to assess, analyse, and see how we can take steps to address some of the concerns that have been raised.”

While indicating that she is still going through the report, Gordon Harrison pointed out that one of the concerns by the State Department that stood out for her was the rate of convictions in Jamaica in relation to trafficking.

“One (concern) that sticks out, and that has to do with the number of convictons we have had, and for me, what’s even more interesting is the fact that there can be restitution that is ordered to be paid to the victims,” she said.

The State Department had complained about the “slow pace” at which trafficking cases moves through the Jamaican court.

This slowness, the department claimed, “hampered efforts to hold traffickers criminally accountable and deterred victims from serving as witnesses.”

During the 2020 reporting period, the State Department also highlighted one 2016 case where one convicted sex trafficker was ordered to pay restitution to the victim of $250,000 (US$1,670), in addition to his prison sentence.

“We didn’t see certainly a very meaningful sum as far as I am concerned accompanying the amount that was awarded (in that case),” commented Gordon-Harriosn in relation to the restitution offered to the victim in the 2016 case.

“I think it was about $250,000, which is about US$1,700, which given the impact research shows that human trafficking has on victims, you know it would be hoped that you would have more meaningful sums,” she suggested.