Serving Justice-Involved and Criminalized Survivors of Human Trafficking

Serving Justice-Involved and Criminalized Survivors of Human Trafficking

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST
Format: Live Webinar
Presenter: Caroline Pizano

Registration Fees

• NASW-NYS or NASW-NYC Members: $30.00
• NASW Other Chapter Members: $50.00
• Non-Members: $60.00
• NASW-NYS Student & Transitional Members: FREE

Workshop Description

In this Continuing Education course, social workers will learn about the scope and nature of the crime of human trafficking and the ways in which trafficking survivors encounter service providers in order to better understand how to identify and recognize survivors in their practice, with particular attention on forced criminality in situations of human trafficking. Social workers will be equipped with tools to understand forced criminality and the various ways in which survivors encounter the criminal justice system. In learning how and why survivors of trafficking are criminalized and become justice-involved, attendees will learn the role that bias, racism, and other forms of discrimination play in societal failures to identify survivors and protect them. Ultimately, attendees will learn the ways in which survivors can be denied appropriate services and the consequences that forced criminality has on survivors’ road to recovery. The course will end by providing attendees with resources, solutions, and avenues to better serve and protect this vulnerable population, as well as advocate for an end to their unjust detention and incarceration.

Learning Objectives

Following this course, participants will be able to:

• Analyze the scope and nature of the crime of human trafficking.
• Evaluate the various ways in which trafficking survivors encounter service providers and the criminal justice system.
• Examine issues in the identification and recognition of survivors and analyze the intersection between failure to identify and the criminalization of survivors.
• Identify indicators of trafficking and apply strategies to improve services for criminalized and justice-involved survivors.
• Develop advocacy strategies to protect survivors and promote policy changes that eliminate wrongful criminalization.

Approved for 2.0 CE credit hours for licensed social workers, licensed mental health counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, and licensed psychologists.

Important: Please register and/or join Zoom with the name you want to appear on your certificate.

Continuing Education Credit

NASW-NYS is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for the following professionals:

• Licensed Social Workers (Provider ID #0014)
• Licensed Mental Health Counselors (Provider ID #MHC-0053)
• Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider ID #MFT-0037)
• Licensed Psychologists (Provider ID #PSY-0088)

About the Presenter

Caroline Pizano (she/her) is an attorney and social worker (LMSW) with over ten years of experience working on sexual and gender-based violence and human trafficking. She currently represents survivors of these crimes in a variety of legal cases, including criminal record clearing cases in New York State court, and serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at St. John’s University where she teaches a course on human trafficking.