A report released by the FBI Tuesday shows a worrisome statistic for human trafficking in the South .
Half of all human trafficking incidents over the past decade have been reported in the southern region, including Georgia, according to Jenna Sellitto, a public affairs specialist for the FBI. The FBI’s report, which was released on World Day against Trafficking in Persons, shows 8,700 human trafficking incidents were reported nationally between 2013 and 2022.
“Our whole point in bringing awareness to this is that human trafficking happens everywhere,” Sellitto said. “It’s not a city problem, it’s not a suburb problem, it’s an everywhere problem.”
But Sellitto said this doesn’t mean there’s more human trafficking in the South.
“The South seems to have the largest number of police agencies reporting on the topic,“ Sellitto said.
She said there seems to be more of an investigative focus on human trafficking.
“There’s a lot of partnerships, and operations and task forces involved in bringing awareness and combating the issue,” Sellitto said.
A total of 4,517 human trafficking reports — about 51% of all reports — were reported in the South. The West was the region with the next-highest number of reports with 2,056, according to the FBI.
Human trafficking reports have increased steadily in the past decade, with 2,378 reports logged in 2022, the latest available data. But the FBI said this is expected as more law enforcement agencies participate in the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a way to log crime information nationwide.
The FBI said the majority of human trafficking offenses each year involved commercial sex acts, which the FBI defines as “inducing a person by force, fraud, or coercion to participate in commercial sex acts, or in which the person induced to perform such act(s) has not attained 18 years of age.”
In 2022, 81% of the human trafficking offenses involved commercial sex acts and 19% of them involved involuntary servitude offenses, according to the report.
The FBI defines involuntary servitude as “obtaining of a person(s) through recruitment, harboring, transportation, or provision, and subjecting such persons by force, fraud, or coercion into involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (not to include commercial sex acts).”
The FBI report states that over 10,000 victims of human trafficking were reported to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report program in the past decade, with the most common age range of victims being 13-16 and 17-19 years old.
Sellitto said a majority of human trafficking isn’t like what is shown on TV, where victims are kidnapped or taken away against their will. It’s typically more psychological, and involves coercion and manipulation.
“These teens are being, they’re being groomed, typically online,” she said. “They befriend someone or they start what they believe is a romantic relationship with somebody, and then they manipulate them to start working in sex work for money, drugs, etc and that’s how this is going down.”
The report stated approximately 80% of reported human trafficking victims were female. Nearly 58% of those reported victims were white and almost 25% were Black.
Sellitto said the FBI sees human trafficking victims from both within the United States and other nations.
Drugs and Human Trafficking
The report showed a possible correlation between drug offenses and human trafficking incidents in the South.
The report cites a DEA article from 2021 which states, “We see trafficking of illegal drugs and human trafficking often happen together.”
The FBI report then states, “As such, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program hypothesizes human trafficking is associated with drug/narcotic violations.”
“Although the FBI does not have a specific drug trafficking offense, it does have offenses for drug abuse violations,” an FBI release said, “Therefore, drug offenses in connection to human trafficking incidents were compared to the number of human trafficking incidents per year.”
The release states this comparison showed the South region had the highest rate of the four regions at a rate of over 57 drug offenses per 100 human trafficking incidents. However, according to the release, “the South region is the largest region in both agency count and population.”
“A common tactic for offenders of human trafficking is to use drugs/narcotics to coerce and subdue their victims, which could lead to drug trafficking,” the FBI said in the report.
But the report also stated the data can’t “determine if drug trafficking often occurs in conjunction with human trafficking, nor can it be determined that human trafficking is the cause of drug trafficking or vice versa.”
Sellitto said in Fiscal Year 2024, there are 91 FBI-led child exploitation/human trafficking task forces around the country. As of last week the FBI had more than 1,600 pending human trafficking investigations, according to Sellitto.
Warning signs and what you can do
Sellitto said there warning signs of possible human trafficking to look out for: kids who frequently miss school, go missing a lotm show signs of abuse and receive unexplained gifts are things to look out for, among other factors.
Those who’d like to report incidents of human trafficking can contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888 or call the FBI toll-free number at 1-800-CALLFBI (1-800-225-5324).
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