Pen. Code, § 236.2 · Chapter 8. False Imprisonment and Human Trafficking
Pen. Code, § 236.2
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Law enforcement agencies shall use due diligence to identify all victims of human trafficking, regardless of the citizenship of the person. When a peace officer comes into contact with a person who has been deprived of his or her personal liberty, a minor who has engaged in a commercial sex act, a person suspected of violating subdivision (a) or (b) of Section 647, or a victim of a crime of domestic violence or sexual assault, the peace officer shall consider whether the following indicators of human trafficking are present:
(a) Signs of trauma, fatigue, injury, or other evidence of poor care.
(b) The person is withdrawn, afraid to talk, or his or her communication is censored by another person.
(c) The person does not have freedom of movement.
(d) The person lives and works in one place.
(e) The person owes a debt to his or her employer.
(f) Security measures are used to control who has contact with the person.
(g) The person does not have control over his or her own government-issued identification or over his or her worker immigration documents.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended November 6, 2012, by initiative Proposition 35, Sec. 7.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=236.2.
- Text hash
- sha256 8cb582c170a08265f676a1ad83d7780369661b7fa23d6538e1bb7f50d19956bc
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- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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