Listing the 15 top US cities for human trafficking in 2018 was our duty and obligation, not only as help and possible guidance for potential victims, but also our way of overthrowing of prejudice.
According to UNODC (United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime), human trafficking is described as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons. Trafficking includes humiliating, closing, abusing, fraud and harming of a possible victim. That is the reason why many organizations named this criminal act as modern slavery.
Every year thousands of people become victims of human trafficking all around the world. However, in spite of common beliefs, no country is excused from that, including those considered as the most developed. Believing that human trafficking is a problem only in poor the third-world countries is one of the myths among many of them, as site Mashable said. Yes, human trafficking is happening right now and just in front of our eyes!
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Honestly, if we take in mind top cities for human trafficking 2017 that are listed in our list top 15 cities with highest human trafficking in the world, there are cities which are actually located in developing countries mostly. However, if we look at the US, the numbers show that this problem has not avoided the US either, as well as the most developed cities in the US. Our concern that the issue is growing is proved by numerous cases of human trafficking across the country. When we listed the worst states for human trafficking 2017 in our article 12 Top States for Human Trafficking in 2018, we bore in mind top states for human trafficking 2017 and predicted the most affected states for this year.
While researching this topic and reading reports from the past couple of years we also analyzed the highest human trafficking states 2016. What we found is not only that human trafficking increased in 2016, but that one of the states named as the worst is California. Being a state with multiple international borders, but also a state famous for its culturally diverse cities, California is among the most popular states for immigrants, which are, unfortunately, vulnerable group. Researching top human trafficking cities in California, we found that this is one of the states with the highest number of cities with human trafficking in the country. Four cities from California are pretty high on our list of top US cities for human trafficking, as well.
It is obvious that with this list we can only predict potential grow of a number of victims in named cities in 2018, and that’s why, for our calculations, we considered human trafficking statistics from the last few years. The most reliable and countable results gave us Polaris organization. They have precisely expressed lists of the number of calls from human trafficking victims as well as cases that are investigated and processed in the US cities. Also, they went one step ahead and made two additional lists based on the same parameters, however, this time the city rankings are made according to the “numbers per capita.” After all, cities with the higher number of citizens obviously have higher results. So, we considered a total of four lists. Finally, we made our list by overlapping them. The exact position of a city on our list is calculated according to the places that city occupies in these lists. We are sure that we made the closest prediction when it comes to the 15 top US cities for human trafficking 2018. Bear in mind all we said above and stay safe!
15. Orlando, Florida
Although Orlando has a low number of calls and cases in 2017, it is among cities with the highest numbers of victims per capita. As a matter of fact, newspapers shared the news that human trafficking is on the rise in this state, especially among young adult and older teenagers, recalling on numerous cases of kidnapped teenagers last year. Together with human trafficking comes drug abuse, which is actually closely linked to exploitation.
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