By Sally Kim
NEW YORK – Manhattan District Attorney Candidate Lucy Lang has released a comprehensive plan to end human trafficking in Manhattan, prioritizing the health, safety, and well-being of survivors, to expand efforts to prosecute sex and labor exploitation, and to protect non-citizen communities trafficked and exploited for their labor.
New York is a human trafficking hub for both transit and final destination. Lang’s approach is survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and aggressive in pursuing those responsible for trafficking.
“For far too long, human traffickers have terrorized our most vulnerable communities—exploiting people in Manhattan for profit… Enough is enough,” said Lang.
As the next Manhattan DA, she said she has plans to strengthen the Human Trafficking Response Unit, invest in programs that provide immediate help to trafficking survivors, expand the use of U-visas and T-visas to assist non-citizen survivors, and support survivors by expunging convictions that are related to their exploitation.
She said she will also expand trafficking prosecution efforts to include both sex and labor exploitation, support programs that provide immediate support to survivors, leverage the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, increase the prevention of the exchange of child sexual abuse materials, and advocate for the improvement of anti-trafficking laws to better serve survivors.
Lang has spent her entire career working with those impacted by the criminal justice system. As a former Assistant District Attorney, Lang created a college-in-prison program that was the first of its kind which brought Assistant District Attorneys into New York prisons to study criminal justice with incarcerated students.
The success of her program along with her desire for advocacy and criminal justice reform led Lang to become the Director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College.
Sally Kim is a senior at UCLA, majoring in Sociology. She is from the East Bay Area.
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