The Human Trafficking Fusion Center

There are over 40 million people trafficked for sex and labor across the world each year. In the U.S. it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked every day.

While those numbers are staggering, the dearth of trafficking focused prosecutions is even more troubling. Over the last 5 years, despite increased federal attention and financing, the number of federal trafficking prosecutions reported annually by State Department have decreased by over 13% from 241 in 2016 to only 210 prosecutions in 2020. The majority of initiated cases that claim to fight human trafficking are instead VICE-focused prostitution stings that disproportionately affect women of color, LGBTQ community members, and people in vulnerable mental health, addiction, and socio-economic circumstances.

To minimize these adverse encounters, departments must permanently cease “easy” VICE stings, which far too frequently target exploited people, and instead use a data-driven, networked approach to target traffickers and abusers. They must be equipped to efficiently work with cross-sector partners to better identify and support potential victims. And finally, they must be able to show reluctant policymakers that this change is growing around the country. These problems require innovative and collaborative agencies, and strong leadership.

There is currently no tool providing curated human-trafficking specific case data, no service assisting with the criminal intelligence necessary to identify trafficking enterprises, and most departments cannot afford sophisticated data visualization software even if that data did exist. 

Our solution is end-to-end, incorporating data from multiple partnerships, our own domain and technical expert-lead data collection and intelligence analysis, and supporting investigations that ultimately lead to arrests of traffickers and exploiters.

After three-years of field research and direct collaboration with hundreds of groups, Collective Liberty has curated nearly 10 million human trafficking specific data points and built an ecosystem of partnerships to facilitate the fight against human trafficking. Our work has proven to dramatically decrease, and ultimately end, the arrest of potential victims (including shifts in major departments like the NYPD), and major increases in the arrest of traffickers, while improving cross-sector collaboration and resource sharing.

A beta test version has been in place since early 2019 and a formal version launched in October of 2020 with test users and feedback, with version 2.0 is in final testing stages. Our collaborative networks, curated data, and intelligence analysis support has supported in-person trainings of over 8,000 investigators in over 200 agencies across the United States, closure of over 1,200 commercial front brothels, and ensuring over 400 victims were connected to culturally appropriate services instead of arrested. A number of our partner agencies de facto decriminalizing people in the sex trade, including NYPD, Harris County TX DA, and hundreds of other smaller departments. 

As a national systems change organization, our work operates on a continuum, with various agencies in differing degrees of change toward the overall goal of trauma-informed, victim centered human trafficking investigations that target exploiters while supporting victims.