Human Trafficking Awareness Month Highlights a Complex and Growing Crime Across the ArkLaTex

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, a time to focus on one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in Texas.

Kelley Crisp, a candidate for Bowie County District Attorney and a longtime prosecutor who currently serves as the county’s first assistant district attorney, said human trafficking is often misunderstood as something that happens elsewhere—not in communities like Bowie County.

“Trafficking thrives where it blends in,” Crisp said. “It doesn’t look dramatic at first. It looks like normal movement, normal travel, normal communication.”