A recent study by the Global Slavery Index estimates that there are over 1 million victims of human trafficking in the USA, nearly triple the estimate from the same research study published six years ago. The increase is attributed more to refined methodology and better data than to a rise in the prevalence of the crime itself.
The 2023 Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates that “on any given day in 2021, there were 1.1 million people living in modern slavery in the US, a prevalence of 3.3 people in modern slavery for every thousand people in the country. This places the US among countries with the lowest prevalence of modern slavery in the region (21 out of 25) and globally (122 out of 160), but represents the highest estimated total number of people in modern slavery in the Americas, accounting for over one-fifth of people in modern slavery across the region.”
As reported by Hope For Justice, the following items are also revealed in the report.
- Human trafficking data collection in the US is challenging due to several factors, including the hidden nature of the crime, the lack of a unified national reporting system, and discrepancies in definitions and reporting standards across different jurisdictions and organizations. The National Human Trafficking Hotline received 10,360 reports of suspected human trafficking cases in 2021.
- The U.S. government’s response to the issue of human trafficking received praise from the report authors, with a score of 67 out of 100. This reflects robust measures to identify and support survivors and action to eliminate modern slavery from supply chains, including through the introduction of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act in 2021.
- The most vulnerable to human trafficking are identified as migrants and minority groups, irregular migration and organized crime along the US-Mexico border, poverty, and the use of state-imposed forced labor within the prison system. Sex trafficking survivors are often runaway youth.
Hope for Justice, an organization fighting human trafficking, is expanding its work across the US. They are developing an expanded, holistic model called the RISE Program in North Carolina and plan to establish additional regional centers over the next three to five years. Their aim is to create resilient communities where survivors of human trafficking can thrive.
(This post was primarily generated by ChatGPT. It was grammar-checked using Grammarly, edited, expanded, and validated by a real human. The featured image for this post was generated by Midjourney using the prompt: “A crime against humanity, human trafficking, trapped, afraid, alone, dark, an abstract illustration in the style of Marcel Duchamp” )
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