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    • Evaluation of Safe Harbor Laws and Their Impact on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, United States, 2015-2018

    Metadata Updated: November 14, 2025

    The Institute of Medicine and National Research Council in 2013 called for a paradigm shift within the justice system, toward treating minors involved in commercial sex as victims instead of criminals. Their call ultimately led to a proliferation at the state level of safe harbor laws--laws designed to remove the punitive sanctions for young victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The goal of this study was to begin measuring the impact of safe harbor laws. The methodology blends quantitative and qualitative analyses in a three-phase design. Phase 1, a legal review, concentrates on the evolution of safe harbor laws in the United States. It presents an overview of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC), details the philosophy and conceptualization of safe harbor laws, and presents findings regarding state-level efforts to adopt safe harbor laws. Phase 2 uses elements of the legal review to conduct a quantitative assessment of safe harbor laws employing a quasi-experimental, longitudinal design to compare counties that have and have not implemented safe harbor laws over an 11-year period (2005-15). Phase 3 involves an in-depth qualitative assessment of two states: one that implemented safe harbor laws and demonstrated positive outcomes, and one that implemented safe harbor laws without demonstrating positive outcomes.

    Access & Use Information

    Restricted: This dataset can only be accessed or used under certain conditions. License: us-pd

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date February 13, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date November 14, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from DOJ JSON

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date February 13, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date November 14, 2025
    Publisher Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
    Maintainer
    Identifier 4287
    Data First Published 2022-04-28T14:01:51
    Language eng
    Data Last Modified 2022-04-28T14:06:28
    Rights These data are restricted due to the increased risk of violation of confidentiality of respondent and subject data.
    Public Access Level restricted public
    Bureau Code 011:21
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 89bcc311-1fa5-4253-b5a2-19ddb2328d11
    Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
    Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
    License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
    Program Code 011:000
    Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 8e8e56bd4d1b5cb5c4edeea3daf09989127c811b2c1e8c979b28209b81b24df7
    Source Schema Version 1.1

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