How big of a problem is human trafficking in the United States? It's hard to say because state and local law enforcement records likely reflect less than 10 percent of trafficking victims in the region, according to new research with Amy Farrella Northeastern University professor who studies human trafficking.
Amy Farrell is Associate Director and Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Photo by Brooks Canaday/Northeastern University
Farrell and her colleagues encountered some glaring problems in the structure of crime reporting itself, the most immediate of which, Farrell says, is that state and local police often lack the specialized training needed to detect human trafficking. when they see her.
If they do, it can be difficult to convince a trafficking victim to cooperate with a police investigation when such a victim is primarily concerned with more immediate needs, Farrell says.
“Trafficked people aren't necessarily interested in pursuing a police investigation of their abductor when they need housing, medical care and work,” she says.
In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, law enforcement agencies reported more than 1,200 cases of human trafficking in the United States, according to crime statistics from The Federal office of Research which are publicly available. But the number is likely much, much lower than the actual number of human trafficking victims in the U.S. that year, says Farrell, who is associate director and associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University and whose most recent research was funded from National Institute of justice.
Farrell, along with Northeastern doctoral students Matthew Kafafian and Sarah Lockwood, and colleagues from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the University of Houston-Downtown, examined the crime reporting process in three different police jurisdictions across the country to see if law enforcement officials were properly trained to detect human trafficking and how they followed up on the incidents they detected.
“What we were exploring was: What does this look like from the perspective of local law enforcement?” says Farrell.
They found that even when an officer identifies a victim of human trafficking and that victim is willing and able to cooperate with the officer to move the case forward, the police district may not have the necessary tracking system in place to properly record the crime as trafficking people, Farrell says.
The FBI began collecting data on sex and labor trafficking in every state in 2013, but many state and local police districts didn't have the option to classify a crime as human trafficking in their central reporting databases until years later, says Farrell.
“If a state crime reporting system literally doesn't have a framework to check that classifies something as human trafficking, all of those crimes have to be classed as something else,” Farrell says. Sometimes, sex-trafficking cases are misclassified as prostitution, he says. This means that people who are victims of crime can be treated as offenders.
“This results in a large misclassification of trafficking cases and leads to an incredibly massive undercount,” says Farrell.
State and local authorities have come up with solutions, such as classifying sex trafficking under broader terms such as “investigation of an individual” or as general sex crimes. But those impregnation charges can become so bloated with various crimes that cases can “disappear into themselves,” Farrell says.
All of these factors lead to chronic underreporting of human trafficking, Farrell says. Based on statistical estimates of the actual number of trafficking cases in each jurisdiction she and her colleagues studied, law enforcement records captured less than 10 percent of trafficking victims, according to the report.
Farrell and her colleagues recommend continued training for law enforcement officials on how to identify victims of human trafficking and how to refer those victims to the services they need. This is especially true for victims of human trafficking, which can be harder to detect, Farrell says.
They also recommend increased cooperation and information sharing between law enforcement agencies because trafficking crimes can often cross police jurisdictions.
“These are difficult crimes,” says Farrell. “It's taken some time in law enforcement to develop some expertise here, and we're moving in a positive direction. But it's slow.”
For media inquiriescontact Mike Woeste at m.woeste@northeastern.edu or 617-373-5718.
