Fewer federal human trafficking cases in state in ’20, more payments ordered

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – A new report shows the prosecution of human trafficking related cases fell in Kentucky last year from 2019 but was above 2018 numbers.

This week, the Human Trafficking Institute is rolling out the 2020 State Reports, which provide an overview of 2020 federal human trafficking prosecutions in all 50 states, four U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.

For the first time, the 2020 State Reports compile data from every federal criminal human trafficking prosecution in each state since 2000, the year the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was passed into law.

In Kentucky (2020-Kentucky-State-Summary), two new criminal human trafficking cases were filed in federal courts in 2020. Four defendants were convicted, 87 percent of active defendants were charged with sex trafficking, and 13 percent were charged with forced labor.

No new cases were filed in 2018 (2018-Human-Trafficking-Report-KY).

Federal courts ordered two out of four convicted defendants to pay restitution to their victim(s), an increase from 2019 (Kentucky-2019-State-Summary), when one out of two convicted defendants were ordered to pay restitution.

Reports for all 50 states, four U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia can be found here.

This data is pulled from the 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, an annual publication of the Human Trafficking Institute that provides comprehensive data from every federal criminal human trafficking prosecution that U.S. courts handle and trends in civil cases each year.

The Report’s findings are not a prevalence estimate of trafficking in the United States, but instead, serve as an objective summary of how the federal system holds traffickers accountable for their exploitative conduct.

The full 2020 Report can be downloaded here