Methodology

Each year, HTI conducts an exhaustive process of identifying and reviewing every active human trafficking case in the federal courts, utilizing various databases, and cross-checking methods including PACER, WestLaw, the United States Attorney’s Officers, the Department of Justice, and numerous media outlets. The accumulated data is then reviewed, analyzed, cross-checked for accuracy, and organized into digestible findings, key trends, and other useful subsets of data and published in the annual Federal Human Trafficking Report.

The methodology is essential to understand why our data includes certain information and is not a prevalence estimate.