What is human trafficking?

Human trafficking has been named one of the world’s fastest growing criminal industries. It affects every country in the world, and every state in the nation. Mississippi has been called a "hub" for trafficking due to the intersection of I-55 and I-20 in central Mississippi, linking some of the largest cities in the southeast United States.

Sex trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the 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.

A commercial act has occurs when sexual services are exchanged for something of value - be that money, a phone, rent, drugs, clothes, or gifts. If the person involved in the commercial sex act is under 18, or if that person is over 18 and has been induced by force, fraud, or coercion, then sex trafficking has occurred.

Trafficking does not require movement across country borders or even state lines. Individuals can be trafficked by family members without ever leaving their homes. Some individuals even have some freedom of movement to come and go from the place where they are trafficked. 

Labor trafficking is 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.