RICHMOND, VA.—The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) Human Trafficking Awareness for Hotels online training is now available for Virginia hotel employees. House Bill 258 (Hotels; human trafficking training), as adopted by Chapter 751, is an act that directs the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), under the direction of the Criminal Justice Services Board, to develop an online course to train hotel proprietors and their employees, as defined in § 35.1-15.1 of the Code of Virginia, to recognize and report instances of suspected human trafficking.
The act provides that the online course shall be provided at no cost to hotel proprietors and their employees. The act requires that every hotel proprietor require its employees to complete such human trafficking training course developed by the Department or an alternative online or in-person training course approved by the Department within six months of being employed by a hotel and thereafter at least once every two years, for as long as the employee is employed by the hotel. The act has an effective date of January 1, 2023, but the Virginia Department of Health will begin enforcing these requirements starting July 1.
This course must be taken by individual employees and not presented in a group setting. Courses can be accessed on desktop computers, smartphones, or tablets.
DCJS has and will continue to approve existing training resources. Click here for the Approved Curriculum Directory from DCJS (scroll to the bottom of the page to access the link to the directory). This is a pdf list with all the approved existing training courses and the website links (if available).
Other free existing courses on identifying and reporting human trafficking through existing groups include: ECPAT-USA and Polaris.
Click here for more information on training and the background for its requirement.
