A University of South Florida report shows that Florida was among the states with the highest rates of human trafficking last year.
The USF Trafficking in Persons Risk to Resilience Lab was in charge of developing the report after it was selected as the state repository for anonymous human trafficking data under a law passed in 2023.
Shelly Wagers is the associate director of the lab, which is based on the USF St. Petersburg campus.
Wagers said even though the lab had been compiling data on human trafficking since it was established in 2019, the report released this month is the first of its kind.
This is because state agencies have been required to send their data to the lab under the 2023 law. This includes the Department of Children and Families, Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Health and Department of Law Enforcement.
“What was happening before is that we didn’t know if you were counting the same person duplicatively in different places,” she said. “Those entities would not just voluntarily share the data without the law.”
Wagers said the 30 state agencies and nonprofit organizations sending the lab data add “pieces to a puzzle.”
“By getting data from all these different entities, you can start to see how much trafficking is really happening,” she said.
In the first year after the law was passed, the lab collected data and set things up. Last year, the lab began to produce the report, as required by law.
USF must submit the report each year to the governor, the president of the state Senate and the speaker of the state House.
The law, however, is set to expire next year unless the Legislature acts.
“For us to continue producing a report like this for many years to come, it's important that USF is working to get that law renewed,” Wagers said.
State Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, is the Senate Appropriations sponsor of the lab.
He said he supported the 2023 legislation because he believes human trafficking has a devastating impact on the people who are trafficked, their families and the community.
Therefore, Rouson said he would like to see the reporting continue.
“I'd like to see it be recurring dollars, instead of just a one-time infusion of cash,” he said. “I'd like to see the Legislature support this for years to come.”
The lab received about $3 million in a 2024 federal spending package, along with an additional $750,000 to “facilitate the measuring and tracking of human trafficking incidents over time,” according to the funding request.
Wagers said that state lawmakers, the attorney general and anti-trafficking stakeholders in Florida were the intended audience when crafting this report.
“It's a nice, lengthy report, and it provides that picture of what is really happening in Florida related to human trafficking,” she said.
The report has summaries and recommendations to help counties and cities identify factors that create risk for residents.
“Counties can go, ‘Oh, I have a high risk. Here are some things I could do to create some resiliency and to reduce some of that risk,’ ” Wagers said.
She added the goal of the report is to help the state and counties create a more coordinated response built on the data and evidence.
The report also offers counties guidance on how to allocate resources effectively.
And this will be especially important in Florida, where there are elevated risks of human trafficking.
Wagers said the report found that this is because the state has easy mechanisms for moving people — such as ports of entry, airports and interstates.
Florida is also a high tourist state with a large migrant population, which Wagers said are some of the reasons both sex and labor trafficking are often reported.
“People come in and out of our state a lot,” she said. “So all of those things kind of lead Florida to have a higher risk than other states.”
She encouraged Florida residents to stay alert and be informed about the topic.
“We showed that there is quite a lot of trafficking happening in Florida, but there is also a lot of efforts happening to combat trafficking,” she said. “The first step to addressing any issue and reducing it is acknowledging that it is in your backyard.”
