Human Trafficking Defined

Human Trafficking is a crime that involves exploiting a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its subsequent reauthorizations define human trafficking as:

1. Sex trafficking - the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(A) (12)); or
2. Labor trafficking - the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11B))

This definition of human trafficking is from the U.S. federal “whole-of-government” law called The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (or TVPA) of 2000. The TVPA was the first “whole-of-government response to combating human trafficking, and created the 3P framework (Prevention, Prosecution, Protection & Assistance) to human trafficking. Almost all states also have human trafficking laws, but the definition of human trafficking may vary in each state.