A Comparison of the Reporting Rates of Sex and Labor Trafficking between Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Law Enforcement Agencies

Human trafficking has recently been pushed into the criminal justice limelight, prompting important discussions on its research, enforcement, and prevention. However, existing literature surrounding the prevalence of sex and labor trafficking are contradictory. For example, the ILO estimated that of 24.9 million people being forced into human trafficking, about 63% were victims of labor trafficking while 19% were victims of sex trafficking (ILO 2017). In contrast, federally funded human trafficking task forces identified only 11% of human trafficking incidents as being labor trafficking compared to 82% of incidents being sex trafficking (Banks, Kyckelhahn 2011). Therefore, to address the asymmetry in reporting and to better understand the organizations that combat human trafficking, this study asked the question: how do labor and sex trafficking reporting rates differ between NGOs and law enforcement agencies in the United States? Conducting secondary analysis from three sources: 1) The Global Dataset from the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC); 2) The Uniformed Crime Report (UCR); 3) Polaris’s hotline statistics by state; the researcher found that NGOs reported significantly more cases of human trafficking (15,823) compared to law enforcement agencies (3,833). Further, NGOs reported more cases of labor trafficking (1,285) compared to law enforcement agencies (775). Finally, NGOs reported more cases of sex trafficking (14,538) compared to law enforcement agencies (3,058). In addition, there is a significant association between the type of human trafficking reported and the agency they were reported to. Therefore, of all the cases reported to law enforcement, there is a smaller gap between the number of labor trafficking and sex trafficking reported compared to NGOs. For example, of the 3,833 cases of human trafficking reported by law enforcement, 20.22% were labor trafficking cases while 79.78% of them were sex trafficking cases. In contrast, of the 15,823 cases of human trafficking reported by NGOs, only 8.12% were labor trafficking cases while 91.88% were sex trafficking cases. Therefore, of the sex trafficking cases reported to NGOs and law enforcement agencies, NGOs reported significantly more sex trafficking cases. In addition, of the labor trafficking cases reported to NGOs and law enforcement agencies, law enforcement agencies reported significantly more labor trafficking cases. Finally, this study extended research on the geographic parameters of human trafficking in the United States to identify the national distribution of this type of crime by compiling the UCR dataset and Polaris’s hotline statistics by state and organizing the data by Census regions and divisions. The researcher found that human trafficking reported by both NGOs and law enforcement agencies were dispersed throughout the country. Overall, while this research addressed what the different reporting rates of sex and labor trafficking were between law enforcement agencies and NGOs in the United States, it did not address why these differences existed. Specifically, further qualitative research investigating the reporting practices of these organizations through interviews can yield insight into law enforcement agencies and NGO’s differing beliefs and standard operating procedures for identifying victims of sex and labor trafficking.

Author

• Morrison, Rachel

Language

• en

Keyword

• Human Trafficking
• Labor Trafficking
• Law Enforcement
• Regions
• Nongovernmental Organizations
• Sex Trafficking

Date created

• 2020

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Criminology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Duque, Richard

Committee Member(s)

• Weitzer, Ronald
• Duque, Richard

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/9z903070c