There are 40.3 million people worldwide that are victims of human trafficking according to the Polaris Project which is a national human trafficking resource. Agencies are required to submit human trafficking reports in their monthly UCR forms. There are two human trafficking offense classifications that are listed:
Offense A Human Trafficking, Commercial Sex Acts: 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. (Commercial sex acts may be exchanged for anything of value.)
Example: An adult prostitute was arrested with her Pimp and John.
Offense B Human Trafficking, Involuntary Servitude: 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.)
Example: A doctor was arrested for falsely promising a family in a foreign country a home, education, and work while their juvenile child resided in the United States. The juvenile was forced to do domestic work for the doctor’s family while being denied schooling and payment. The juvenile was often beaten and on one occasion was severely injured for not performing the duties.
(Source SRS User Manual pdf located under program links/UCR Documentation)
The Office of the Nevada Attorney General has some warning signs of human trafficking which are as followed:
o Appearing malnourished
o Showing signs of physical injuries and abuse
o Avoiding eye contact, social interaction, and authority figures/law enforcement
o Seeming to adhere to scripted or rehearsed responses in social interaction
o Lacking official identification documents
o Appearing destitute/lacking personal possessions
o Working excessively long hours
o Living at place of employment
o Checking into hotels/motels with older males, and referring to those males as boyfriend or “daddy,” which is often street slang for pimp
o Poor physical or dental health
o Tattoos/ branding on the neck and/or lower back
o Untreated sexually transmitted diseases
o Small children serving in a family restaurant
o Security measures that appear to keep people inside an establishment - barbed wire inside of a fence, bars covering the insides of windows
o Not allowing people to go into public alone, or speak for themselves
Recently Las Vegas first responders were trained on how to assist sex trafficking victims in the field (http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/37654264/valley-first-responders-focus-in-on-human-trafficking). Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery. According to the Nevada Attorney General there have been 2,229 victims of sex trafficking by the Las Vegas Metro Police Department since 1994 (last updated 12/18/2017). The Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888. Provided on the Nevada Attorney General’s website is victim service providers located across the state of Nevada. We may not see human trafficking but it is a serious issue that occurs in the state of Nevada and worldwide. Working on reducing human trafficking is a task that would improve communities across the world.