Victims of Crime

Human Trafficking Research

A team of researchers within the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center work on a variety of national and international research projects on human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Current projects are listed below. To contact an expert on human trafficking, please email humantraffickinginfo@urban.org.

Evaluability Assessments of International Anti-Trafficking Programs

The Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center was awarded a cooperative agreement from the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) to conduct evaluability assessments of four internationally funded anti-trafficking in persons programs. Assessments are being conducted of 2 programs in Africa and 2 programs in Asia-Pacific. The purpose of the assessments is to determine if each of the four programs can be evaluated and to develop technical assistance to each site to become evaluable.

Identifying Challenges to Improve the Investigation and Prosecution of State and Local Human Trafficking Cases

The Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center in collaboration with Northeastern University has received an award from the National Institute of Justice to conduct a study of challenges in the investigation and prosecution of state and local human trafficking cases.  The study will include a multi-method approach involving interviews with prosecutors, judges, local law enforcement, and victim service providers as well as case record reviews of closed cases of human trafficking and other related crimes in a sample of jurisdictions across the United States.

Human Trafficking Reporting System

Researchers at the Urban Institute in collaboration with Northeastern University were awarded a grant by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to design and implement a national Human Trafficking Reporting System (HTRS).  This system provides a secure and sustainable mechanism for collecting federal, state and local data regarding victims and offenders involved in human trafficking.  The data collected is intended to both help meet statistical reporting requirements specified by Congress and provide task forces with a standardized data management system, which is critical in assessing the success of human trafficking prevention and intervention strategies. The HTRS was designed, piloted and rolled out in January 2008 and is currently collecting data throughout the United States. BJS authored the first report on the data, Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2007-08, which can be found here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cshti08.pdf

Measuring Human Trafficking Victimization

This project, in partnership with Northeastern University and Abt Associates, is to conduct a systematic review of existing estimates of victims of severe forms of human trafficking in the United States and to suggest improved estimates of the prevalence of human trafficking based on the existing and arguably incomplete research.

A Report on Federally Prosecuted CSEC Cases Since the Passage of the TVPA

The Urban Institute (UI) and its community partner, the Polaris Project, received an award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to conduct a twelve-month study on the commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth (CSEC). The research took the form of a national longitudinal analysis of federal prosecutions since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000.  In addition to statistical analyses of CSEC cases filed by U.S. Attorneys since 2000, the research included a literature review, interviews with prosecutors, and a focus group of victim service providers. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: (1) Have we enforced existing laws related to CSEC? (2) What are the key features of successful CSEC cases?  What factors predict convictions in cases?  What factors predict sentence length?  (3) Have we increased penalties associated with sexual crimes against children?  (4) What, if any, are the effects of legislation aimed at combating CSEC on service providers who work with these victims? An OJJDP bulletin summarizing the main findings of the study may be found here: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/228631.pdf . The final report can be found here:http://www.urban.org/publications/411813.html