The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began accepting data on human trafficking (HT) from states in January 2013. HT includes offenses related to commercial sex acts (sex trafficking) and involuntary servitude (forced labor). HT data available through the Crime Data Explorer (CDE) includes offenses and arrests recorded by state and local agencies that currently have the ability to report this crime to the national Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
The CDE is the digital front door for UCR data. The interactive online tool enables law enforcement and the public to more easily use and understand the massive amounts of UCR data currently collected. With it, users can view charts and graphs (not yet available for HT) that break down data in a variety of ways.
Crime data for the nation 2013-2020 are derived from Summary Reporting System (SRS) and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) reports voluntarily submitted to the FBI. The CDE home page provides a breakout by state and dataset.
The FBI UCR-HT program transitioned from a summary-based system (SRS) of offense counts to an incident-based system (NIBRS) to capture all offenses within an incident—up to ten crime occurrences. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) reported crime data, including data on HT, to the NIBRS for calendar year 2021.
The HT 2013-2020 data download (File type: Zip; Last modified: September 6, 2021; File size: 83.3 KB) dataset (4417 rows, 19 columns) provides totals by state and offense (commercial sex acts and involuntary servitude). Columns include:
DATA_YEAR – The year in which the incident occurred.
ORI – ORIGINATING AGENCY IDENTIFIER (ORI) - This identifies the agency in which the offense occurred.
PUB_AGENCY_NAME – Agency name as it appears in FBI UCR Publications.
PUB_AGENCY_UNIT – The specific unit name for which a Publication Agency report UCR data as.
AGENCY_TYPE_NAME – Type of agency that reports UCR data (city/county/federal agency, etc).
STATE_ABBR – This is the state abbreviation.
STATE_NAME – Full name of the state.
DIVISION_NAME – The geographic division in which the agency is located.
COUNTY_NAME – The name of the county within the state.
REGION_NAME – Geographic region in which the agency is located.
POPULATION_GROUP_CODE – Group 0 is possessions; 1-7 are cities; 8-9 are counties.
POPULATION_GROUP_DESC – The name of the population groups.
OFFENSE_SUBCAT_ID – A numeric code assigned to the Offense_Subcat_Name.
ACTUAL_COUNT – Total number of Human Trafficking offenses reported to the UCR Program.
UNFOUNDED_COUNT – Total number of false or baseless complaints reported to the UCR Program from law enforcement agencies.
CLEARED_COUNT – Total number of Human Trafficking offenses that were cleared or closed.
JUVENILE_CLEARED_COUNT – Total number of Human Trafficking offenses that involved a juvenile offender that were cleared or closed.
OFFENSE_SUBCAT_NAME - Commercial Sex Acts – Human trafficking commercial sex acts is defined 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. Involuntary Servitude –Human trafficking involuntary servitude is defined as the 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).
Historical HT publications (2013-2019) are on the UCR Publications page (Topical Crime Reports | Human Trafficking).