A Community-Wide Strategy to Fight Against Human Sex Trafficking

USIAHT’s flagship demand reduction program, TraffickingFree ZoneTM, is a community-based initiative to reduce the number of buyers, whose continuous financial investments create an illicit market for traffickers to exploit young victims. The TraffickingFree Zone program is implemented in collaboration with community members and leaders, law enforcement, businesses, schools, healthcare organizations, churches and the media, all while using technology to reach buyers and victims on a massive scale. The program helps communities come together to arrest and prosecute sex buyers instead of the victims who are being sold, educates people on sex trafficking, and uses technology and research to reduce demand.

Community-by-community the TFZ program is implemented with the focus on arresting and prosecuting sex buyers instead of the victims who are being sold, educating people on sex trafficking, connecting the community with victim and buyer services, as well as implementing numerous other demand reduction techniques. Using the principles outlined in the TFZ program, communities can expect to see a significant decline in demand.

Enact Policy Changes

Add an organization-wide value or code against sex trafficking and sex buying by using a provided statement, adding to an existing statement, or writing a new statement which suits your company’s needs.

Although slavery is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, human sex trafficking still exists today, globally and throughout the United States.  There were an estimated 4.8 million victims of sex trafficking, feeding a $150 billion industry worldwide in 2016. The United States of America is one of the largest global consumers of human trafficking goods and services. U.S. citizens purchase sex in their home communities and around the world in greater numbers than any other nation.

The hidden nature of child sex trafficking makes it nearly impossible to know how many U.S. victims there may be. Sex trafficking victims (those who are compelled through force, fraud, or coercion) are all genders, are children and adults, and are U.S. citizens as well as migrants and people who were brought here from abroad. While only 3,000 to 4,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year, some estimate that as many as 100,000 children in the U.S. are sex trafficking victims:

• Of 10,615 victims reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2017, roughly one-third were minors[1] and a separate study of sex trafficking arrests found that 75% of cases had minor victims[2].
• 60% to 70% of trafficking victims come from child social services or the foster care system[3].
• At least 1 in 7 runaway children are trafficked— one study of adult women in prostitution found that 56 percent were initially runaway youth.
• Children who have experienced trauma are the most vulnerable to becoming trafficked, and their families’ financial and social circumstances often mean they have the fewest resources to get help.

[1] National Human Trafficking Hotline Report, 2017. www.humantraffickinghotline.org
[2] Roe-Sepowitz, D., Gallagher, J., Hogan, K., Ward, T., Denecour, N., and Bracy, K. A six-year analysis of sex traffickers of minors. 2017. Arizona State University Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research.
[3] According to an FBI Investigation in 2013

Community Modules

The Trafficking Free Zone (TFZ) Program is a long term modular approach within a partner community and/or county, based upon proven demand-reduction practices from around the United States. The success of the TFZ program is credited to establishing a holistic approach; a multi-sector collaboration involving community leadership, law enforcement, businesses, medical facilities, schools and community-based organizations.