Human Trafficking: Improving our Awareness for a Better Future for Victims

Most Americans have heard of human trafficking, but few know how prevalent it is within the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, there was a roughly 60 percent increase in human trafficking offenses in the United States in the past decade. As offenses increased, the means of human trafficking changed, too, making it a far more complex crime for law enforcement authorities to tackle. For example, trafficking cases where traffickers coerced persons into forced labor, a less frequent means of human trafficking in past years, saw a 22 percent increase from 2020 to 2021.

Human trafficking involves transporting or coercing people through force, fraud, or deception to exploit them for profit. This crime can happen at an individual level – where a trafficker is not part of an organization and exploits one or more people. It can also be a pursuit of criminal organizations (domestic or transnational) similar to drug trafficking. Despite the success in prosecuting human trafficking cases in recent years at the Federal, state, and local level, it remains prevalent in communities around the country.

Raising awareness of human trafficking can be an effective tool as well. In today’s social media-driven world, the private sector, academia, non-profits, law enforcement, and state and local authorities can reach large audiences quickly and with little effort. For example, assets from the Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign provide resources to help these organizations to get the word out in a coordinated way. In large cities, law enforcement collaborates with the hospitals and non-profits that provide important housing and other services for victims.

There is no silver bullet to stop human trafficking. Raising awareness of the resources and services among the public is an effective and efficient way to fight this heinous crime. People can also write their local, state, and Federal elected officials, volunteer to support anti-trafficking efforts in communities, and learn how to spot indicators of human trafficking.  

Everyone can play a role in the fight against human trafficking. While National Human Trafficking Prevention Month helps increase awareness and educate citizens about how to spot this crime, this is something that year-round initiatives can focus on to combat and ultimately prevent this crime.