WASHINGTON, DC—On July 30, 2024, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released the special report, Human Trafficking and Drug Offenses 2013-2022, on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov. For this special report, UCR Program staff examined drug offenses in connection to human trafficking incidents compared to the number of human trafficking incidents per year.

The UCR Program started collecting data on human trafficking in January 2013. The data are collected through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the Summary Reporting System (SRS). Because of the hierarchy reporting method used in SRS, only NIBRS data were used in this analysis. NIBRS allows additional offenses to be reported that are connected to an incident, creating more detail-rich data.

Participation in the FBI’s UCR Program is voluntary for state, county, city, territorial, university/college, and tribal law enforcement agencies, but federal law enforcement agencies are mandated to participate. From 2013 to 2022, an average of 86 percent of agencies participated in the UCR Program, and the average population covered by the UCR Program was 94 percent.

More than 8,700 reported incidents involved human trafficking from 2013 to 2022. Since 2013, the number of reported human trafficking incidents, offenses, and victims has increased. The number of incidents is nearly a linear increase each year, which is expected as participation in NIBRS increases.

Although the FBI does not have a specific drug trafficking offense, it does have offenses for drug abuse violations. Therefore, drug offenses in connection to human trafficking incidents were compared to the number of human trafficking incidents per year. This comparison revealed the South region had a rate of over 57 drug offenses per 100 human trafficking incidents, which was the highest rate of the four regions. The South region is the largest region in both agency count and population. The West region had a rate of nearly 22 drug offenses per 100 human trafficking incidents, which was the second highest rate.

The data also revealed drug/narcotic violations ranked fourth in additional offenses associated with human trafficking. The three most common additional offenses—promoting/assisting prostitution, rape, and pornography/obscene material—were expected as 84 percent of human trafficking incidents were reported as commercial sex acts.

The data cannot determine if drug trafficking often occurs in conjunction with human trafficking, nor can it be determined that human trafficking is the cause of drug trafficking or vice versa. However, it can be determined that as reports of human trafficking increase, reported victims, offenders, and drug offenses also increase.