Once again, the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women’s executive director, Khara Jobola- Carolus, has collaborated with the head of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research at Arizona State University, Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, to claim that sex trafficking is a major problem in Hawaii.

Their recent 12-page report, entitled “Sex Trafficking in Hawaii: the Story of Survivors,” says it will discuss interviews with 22 women once engaged in sex work. There are interviews with 15 current and former prostitutes — but the other seven interviews are with individuals who were their “parents, close family members, or guardians.” These are two distinct groups, yet the article presents all as being “victims of sex trafficking.”

The reader encounters a sobering laundry list of problems haunting the personal histories of these current and former sex workers. At the time of the interview, however, many had been in sex work for years (13 years on average according to the report), so we must conclude that the interviews were conducted with a largely adult population recounting their past.

Consistent with much research on criminalized women, the report details a history of physical and sexual abuse, drug use, parental incarceration, and, significantly, a history of running away from such settings. School failure and involvement with child protective services was common. These marginalized women, virtually all of whom had lived on the streets as young people, clearly experienced racism, poverty and substance use. The people described in the report as “traffickers” were the “boyfriends” or “drug dealers” of the sex workers. Rarely were they strangers.

Hawaii has long had a large number of runaway youth, many of them girls. Until recently, there has been little in the way of services for them. Now, a number of promising efforts have been undertaken, notably Girls Court and Project Kealahou. These projects are the results of state agencies’ efforts: the Judiciary in the case of Girls Court, and the Department of Health in the case of Project Kealahou.

The state also has changed the way it treats runaway youth. The Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF) has reduced the number of runaway youth held there by shifting its policies for admission. Finally, a shelter for homeless youth has been opened on the grounds of HYCF, also allowing for these youth to receive services without being detained or incarcerated.

Strangely, these initiatives are not mentioned in this report. Instead, its recommendations are for a “statewide training program,” a “centralized data collection effort,” and the formation of a “legislatively funded position of a statewide coordinator on the trafficking.”

Such initiatives seem untethered from either the data in the report, or from the significant strides Hawaii has made in the area of services to runaway youth, particularly girls. The purpose, instead, seems to create and fund an elaborate system to stoke fear of “trafficking” in the islands.

Meda Chesney-Lind is professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and president of the American Society of Criminology; Nandita Sharma is an associate professor of sociology at UH-Manoa.