In my past articles I have talked about things that are current, relevant, and relate to some current event happening right now. However, I am stepping away from current events today, and talking about something that we do not focus on. Our government, communities, and people in general do not see the importance of the human trafficking epidemic happening behind the scenes.
First let me tell you what human trafficking is. Human trafficking is modern day slavery, and the traffickers use force, lies, persuasion techniques, etc. to obtain control of the victims. Human trafficking can happen in two forms: Sex trafficking and labor trafficking.
Being a Behavioral Science major, I kept seeing new classes being added to my college, specifically human trafficking. The subject has come up numerous times this year involving my major, and I would have never imagined that this is as important, yet hidden as it is. It seems we do not talk about this subject often, and the statistics are fairly new, and still ongoing.
Since 2007 our national average of human trafficking incidents is 25,791 with 26,102 victims. Another misconception, is that this happens to immigrants or non- US Citizen’s, but since 2007 444 US citizens and 270 Foreign Nationals have been effected by human trafficking.
When you cut this statistics into each state you will be even more shocked. For instance
SINCE 2007 in Delaware:
Total Calls: 174
Total Cases: 31
Total Victims - Moderate: 19
Total Victims - High: 46
SINCE 2007 in Maryland:
Total Calls: 2,687
Total Cases: 640
Total Victims - Moderate: 516
Total Victims - High: 532
SINCE 2007 in Pennsylvania :
Total Calls: 2,759
Total Cases: 575
Total Victims - Moderate: 762
Total Victims - High: 614
If you want to find out what your states human trafficking statistics are visit https://traffickingresourcecenter.org/
What can we do? We cannot necessarily go out by ourselves, and stop this, but what we can do is reach out to victims. As well as raise awareness to the epidemic, and inform people of the misconceptions that surround, and create the stigma on human trafficking.
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