Month: September 2017

Florida Town Booted Food Truck Offering Meals to Hurricane Survivors After Nearby Restaurant Complained

A few days after Hurricane Irma blasted through the town of Green Cove Springs, Florida, Jack Roundtree drove his Triple J’s BBQ truck downtown to give residents a hot lunch and hand out free bar-be-que to utility workers trying to get the power restored.

It didn’t take long for the cops to show up.

According to Clay Today, a news website for the community south of Jacksonville, the cops told Roundtree his food truck had to go. City manager’s orders. Roundtree didn’t have a permit to operate in Green Cove Springs, and not even the aftermath of a devastating hurricane was going to stop the city government from enforcing that law.

Local resident Bettie Tune witnessed the incident and later posted on Facebook about it.

Brandi Acres, a spokeswoman for the Green Cove Springs Police Department, confirmed to Reason that a food truck was sent away on the day after Irma struck, but Acres said she could not provide any additional details on the incident or confirm the name of the food truck. An employee at Triple J’s BBQ confirmed the incident occured but declined to answer any questions or comment.

Green Cove Springs Mayor Mitch Timberlake this morning says he did not consider Roundtree’s gesture “a Good Samaritan situation.” Had the operators of the food truck come to city officials and asked for permission, Timberlake says, officials would have been happy to direct the food truck to where utility workers were in need of food.

“That didn’t happen,” he said.

A local restaurant complained to city officials about the rogue food truck set up along U.S. Route 17 near downtown, Timberlake said. The city licenses food trucks only a few days per year for festivals or celebrations, like Memorial Day, the mayor says.

“He is a commercial food truck operator, and he knows the local ordinances for food truck operation and had a responsibility to reach to the city to get a permit for what he wanted to do,” Timberlake says. “We don’t prohibit food trucks. There are times and places where we welcome them.”

The aftermath of a devastating hurricane is not one of those times. Timberlake spoke of the “tremendous debris” in the wake of the storm, and 90 percent of the city was without power. More than 100 trees were down across the city and extensive property damage to homes along the St. James River, which flows past the city. Half of the city was still without power Wednesday when the Triple J’s food truck got the boot.

With all of those challenges, it was remarkable city officials and police could maintain their focus on rules protecting unsuspecting hurricane victims from a hot meal on wheels. And quite a feat for a restaurateur to look past the devastating damage to track down city officials (city hall was closed; they operating from an emergency management shelter) and rat out one lousy food truck.

Ari Bargil, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a national libertarian law firm, said the incident in Green Cove Springs illustrates the problems that food truck entrepreneurs can face in many localities around the country.

“This guy was trying to feed people who had few other options in the aftermath of a hurricane,” Bargil says. “This is a perfect example of how overblown regulations burden entrepreneurs.”

Bargil is the lead attorney on a lawsuit challenging food truck regulations in Baltimore, where city officials have banned food trucks from operating within 300 feet of an brick-and-mortar restaurant. The case will go to trial next week in Maryland state court.

Timberlake says he doesn’t see his city’s policies as discriminatory towards food trucks or protectionist towards restaurants. “The local citizenry wants to have a healthy restaurant business,” he says. “The people who come into town, put up a business, have a building, employ numbers of people from the town deserve to make sure that someone doesn’t come in and set-up next door to them without the overhead costs they endured and run a business.”

Towns are allowed to write their own rules, of course. If the local government wants to shut out one form of business in favor of another—well, that’s probably a mistake. But it’s hardly the only place to make it.

Still, how important are the rules for one food truck during an emergency? Negligible to hungry, tired people cleaning up and trying to get their power back. Still, Green Cove Springs showed a commitment to protectionism under duress that’s difficult to match.

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You Can Only Choose One: Cheap Oil Or A Weak Dollar

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When the price of oil rises to the point of pain, just remember the handy-dandy discount mechanism: a much stronger US dollar.

Glance at this chart of the trade-weighted U.S. dollar, and note the swing highs and lows in the price of oil per barrel around each peak and trough. You can look up historical inflation-adjusted prices of oil in USD on this handy chart: Crude Oil Prices – 70 Year Historical Chart (macrotrends.net)

The correlation isn't perfect, of course. Oil was relatively cheap between 1986 and 2003, due to a relative abundance of supply as Saudi Arabia and new fields ramped up production, with two periods of extreme price action: a brief spike higher in 1990 preceding the First Gulf War, and a collapse to $17 in the 1998 Asian Contagion financial crisis.

Geopolitical crises, wars and supply shocks will move oil prices regardless of the value of the USD. That said, it's clear that absent such shocks, there is a strong correlation between a stronger USD and lower oil prices (in USD of course) and a weaker dollar and higher oil prices.

The reason why is straightforward: if the dollar gains purchasing power against other currencies, it buys more oil for each dollar.

Conversely, when the USD weakens, its purchasing power declines and it takes more USD to buy an imported barrel of oil.

(Note that the price of domestically produced oil is largely set on the global marketplace. West Texas crude oil may be a few dollars less per barrel than Brent crude oil, but if the global price skyrockets, so does the price of US-produced crude.)

Since oil and gas are the essential resources of the industrial economy, the price paid by consumers and commercial users matter.

The one way the US can get an across-the-board global discount on oil is to push the purchasing power of the USD higher. That is an enormous benefit that few commentators ever mention. Instead, pundits talk about the benefits of a weaker dollar, which boil down to lower priced exports.

Which matters most to households and enterprises? A tiny blip higher in exports (a relatively modest slice of the U.S. economy) or lower energy prices at the pump?

If a recession were to pressure household budgets, the one sure way to lower household spending on oil/gasoline would be to strengthen the USD.

There are two basic mechanisms that strengthen the USD: raise interest rates, so global capital flows to USD-denominated debt to earn the higher yield, or a global financial crisis which causes global capital to seek the relative safe haven of the USD.

In a global crisis, liquidity and credit will dry up, and all those non-US debtors holding the $11 trillion in USD-denominated debt I mentioned on Friday will be scrambling for USD to service their debts. This will also increase demand for USD, pushing the USD higher.

The Federal Reserve insists that yields must remain near-zero or the economy will collapse. Americans paying 15% to 23% interest on their credit cards haven't seen any benefit from near-zero rates, nor have student-loan debtors. The real beneficiaries of low yields are financiers, banks and corporations which borrow immense sums for next to nothing. (Try finding a credit card with a 1% or 2% interest rate.)

At some point, the price of oil might start mattering to households and businesses. Note that the discoveries of oil are now a thin slice of annual consumption. As the cheap oil is depleted, what's left is the costlier-to-extract stuff.

Even more alarming, the global supply of oil might fall well below global demand, and stay there.

When the price of oil rises to the point of pain, just remember the handy-dandy discount mechanism: a much stronger US dollar.

*  *  *

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Senate Republicans Resort to Outright Bribery In Hopes of Overhauling Obamacare

With less than one full week to go before a key procedural deadline, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) have resorted to outright legislative bribery in hopes of winning enough votes to pass a bill that would overhaul Obamacare.

A new version of the legislation, which would convert Obamacare into a system of state-managed block grants, began circulating yesterday. The revision includes increased $500 million in extra funding for states that have already implemented an Obamacare waiver program—which would include Alaska. The legislation also includes additional Medicaid funding for low-density states, and for states deemed high poverty, which would boost funding for Alaska too. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was one of three GOP senators to vote against a previous Obamacare overhaul in July, is considered a key target for Graham and Cassidy.

These add-ons don’t quite amount to the wholesale exemption for Alaska that was rumored last week. But at this point, it’s hard to see them as anything but blatant legislative bribes. This is an attempt to win over Murkowski—not by making an argument for the legislation on the merits, but by topping up federal funding for her state in order to bring her on board.

Alaska isn’t the only state that would receive boosted funding under the new legislation. Hawaii would also benefit from the increased federal funding to high poverty states.

There’s also a somewhat curious addition in the form of an additional $750 million between 2023 and 2026 for states that were late to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The very last state to expand Medicaid was Louisiana—home of Sen. Bill Cassidy. One of the sponsors of the legislation, in other words, appears to be padding his own state’s budget. He’s practically bribing himself.

There’s nothing new about hiding bribes and handouts in major legislation. The version of Obamacare that passed in the Senate included hundreds of millions in funding boosts for states represented by holdout legislators, including Louisiana. Critics of Obamacare complained bitterly about these bribes. Now Graham and Cassidy are attempting to use similar tactics—arguably in even more blatant form—in order to overhaul Obamacare.

Graham and Cassidy aren’t trying to win the argument. Indeed, with a legislative timeline this rushed, there is barely time to have an argument. GOP senators, when asked, do not demonstrate a strong grasp of how the bill would work, and speaking about the bill, a White House official admitted to Politico last week, “we aren’t really sure what the impact will be.” Early analyses have found what appear to be inconsistencies and contradictions in the revised draft. This is not exactly a sign of thoughtfully crafted, well designed legislation.

Even with the newly added bribes, however, it’s unclear whether Graham and Cassidy can find the necessary votes for passage. The reconciliation rules that would allow Senate Republicans to pass the bill with a simple majority expire at the end of the month, so there isn’t a lot of time. In theory, Republicans could write new reconciliation instructions allowing them to take up health care again, but that’s a step they haven’t taken yet, and it could complicate the tax reform push.

If anything, at this point, support for the legislation seems to be dwindling. Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he could not support the plan because it could not be debated and passed under regular order—which isn’t going to happen between now and September 30. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been the most outspoken Republican opponent of the plan, and he signaled this morning that the revision still doesn’t satisfy him.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), who many had assumed was a yes, said this weekend that the legislation did not yet have his vote—and may not have Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) vote either. In addition, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted against the last GOP plan in July, has consistently said she is also leaning no. It is “very difficult for me to envision a scenario” where she would vote yes, she said.

For the plan to pass, Senate Republicans can only lose two votes. It probably doesn’t help that new polling shows that the plan, like previous versions of GOP health care legislation, is incredibly unpopular.

This has been the primary difficulty from the very beginning. Assuming unified Democratic opposition, Senate Republicans need 50 votes to pass an Obamacare overhaul. But each iteration of the GOP’s health care legislation has had the support of somewhere between 45 and 49 Republican senators. Even with today’s bribe-packed update, it’s not clear that this has changed.

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To Commemorate Constitution Day, Princeton Professor Says ‘F%*# Free Speech’: New at Reason

The academy, the director of the African Studies program at Princeton contends, has never considered speech a central value.

Lindsay Marchello writes:

Every year, Princeton University holds a Constitution Day to honor one of the most important documents in human history. This year’s was was a little different, with lectures on search and seizure policies in the Snowden era, and another on slavery and the Constitution. And then there was a lecture called “F%*# Free Speech: An Anthropologist’s Take on Campus Speech Debate.”

Professor Carolyn Rouse, the chair of the Department of Anthropology and director of the program in African Studies asserted, “the way which free speech is being celebrated in the media makes little to no sense anthropologically,” according to Campus Reform.

Free speech absolutism doesn’t exist because people self-censor themselves in ways society deems appropriate, Rouse told her audience. Culture is the prime determiner of what speech is permissible and what speech is rejected, she said.

“Language is partial,” Rouse argued. “It relies on context for comprehensibility, and can have implications that go far beyond simply hurting somebody’s feelings. Put simply, speech is costly. So, contrary to the ACLU’s statement on their website regarding the role of free speech on college campuses, the academy has never promoted free speech as its central value.”

View this article.

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Russia Blames US For Death Of Top General In Syria

Shortly after Russia disclosed on Sunday that a top Russian military commander, Lieutenant General Valery Asapov – who was serving as one of Russia’s “military advisers” in Syria – was fatally wounded by an exploding shell in a mortar attack by ISIS terrorists, on Monday the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the “two-faced policy” of the United States was to blame for the death of the Russian General in Syria.

“The death of the Russian commander is the price, the bloody price, for two-faced American policy in Syria,” Ryabkov told reporters, according to RIA.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Asapov had been killed by Islamic State shelling near Deir al-Zor; his death was revealed around the time Moscow disclosed what it said was photographic evidence showing US special operations located at Islamic State positions in Syria. 

Russia has complained about what it has suggested are “suspiciously friendly ties” between U.S.-backed militias, U.S. special forces, and Islamic State in the area, accusing Washington of trying to slow the advance of the Syrian army.

As a reminder, on Sunday the Russian Ministry of Defense published aerial images which they say show US Army special forces equipment located north of the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor, where IS militants are deployed. The US troops do not face any “resistance from the ISIS militants,” while their positions have no screening patrol, which could indicate that they “feel absolutely safe” in the area, the ministry said. The US Central Command however denied the accusations in a written statement to RT.

“The allegations are false. For operational security, we do not comment on ongoing operations or the current positions of Coalition personnel and our partner forces,” the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve said.

Ryabkov also questioned Washington’s intention to fight Islamic State in Syria.

“The American side declares that it is interested in the elimination of IS … but some of its actions show it is doing the opposite and that some political and geopolitical goals are more important for Washington,” Ryabkov said according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the growing escalation between Russia and the US over Deir Ezzor, earlier on Monday, American-backed Syrian militias again accused Russian warplanes of striking their positions in the oil-rich province, near a natural gas field they seized from Islamic State last week. Russia denied that.

Despite the growing escalations, the Russian and US militaries maintain “intensive” contacts at different levels, Ryabkov said.

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FANG Stocks Plunge Most In 3 Months, AAPL Nears Correction

Tech stocks are getting hammered this morning, extending losses from Friday, led by NFLX.

This is FANG's biggest drop in almost four months as they catch down to the Buy-The-F**king-H-Bomb-Test-Dip lows…

AAPL is also down once again – having erased all the gains since earnings.

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Doesn’t Mexico Have Building Codes?

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

During the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake in Los Angeles, my mother was working in downtown Los Angeles in one of the buildings then known as the Arco Towers. 

The building was of early 1970s vintage, but thanks to expensive technology introduced to help high-rises withstand earthquakes, the Arco Towers merely swayed from side to side, rather than collapse in response to the quake. That earthquake was a medium-sized earthquake (to use casual terminology), but the building is designed to withstand far larger tremors. Eight people died in the wake of the quake.

Two years earlier, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake struck with devastating results. While the earthquake was considerably stronger, the casualty totals were far beyond what we would expect were a similar quake to hit Los Angeles. While the number is still in dispute today, more than 30,000 people may have died in the quake, thanks largely to collapsed buildings. 

Fortunately, the death toll in Tuesday's Mexico-City quake looks to be much, much smaller than was the case in 1985. So far, casualty counts number in the low hundreds. 

The Wall Street Journal today attributes this to improvements in building codes: 

Mexico City’s building codes improved dramatically in the years following the city’s 1985 earthquake, a magnitude 8.1 temblor that killed more than 6,000 and toppled nearly 2,300 buildings, including hospitals, schools, hotels and entire high-rise apartment blocks.

 

After 1985, “the building codes changed a lot,” said Ricardo Warman, an architect who both builds and renovates houses in the Condesa and Roma neighborhoods of central Mexico City, among the hardest hit on Tuesday. “That is why most of the buildings that fell are from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.”

But why was Mexico still building earthquake-prone construction in the 1970s? By the mid-80s, California had already been at work addressing the earthquake issue for years. 

Why didn't Mexican cities pass better building code laws before then? 

Well, it turns out that they did have building codes before then, but merely passing laws doesn't actually solve problems. Prior to this week's quake — while commenting on Hurricane Harvey — Bret Stephens at the New York Times recalled: 

Why do richer countries fare so much better than poorer ones when it comes to natural disasters? It isn’t just better regulation. I grew up in Mexico City, which adopted stringent building codes following a devastating earthquake in 1957. That didn’t save the city in the 1985 earthquake, when we learned that those codes had been flouted for years by lax or corrupt building inspectors, and thousands of people were buried under the rubble of shoddy construction. Regulation is only as good, or bad, as its enforcement. 

So, for nearly 30 years leading up to the 1985 quake, new, improved building codes had been in place; but it seems that — as one Mexico City engineer described it — enforcement was "very lax."

But why did they ignore them? Was it part of just an amorphous tolerance for doing a lousy job? As Walter Block recently noted, we can't just blame corruption: 

They can have all the regulations and “safety standards” they want in poverty-stricken nations such as [Bangladesh]. Either these bureaucratic rules will be ignored, or, if they are rigidly upheld and enforced, then virtually no new houses will be built, and almost all extant houses will have to be torn down. Why? Since this country is so poor, it cannot possibly live “up” to these modern, western, regulations and “safety standards.”

In most cases, people don't ignore building codes because they're sociopaths who don't care about the safety of their customers.

Thanks to the existence of greed, of course, there's always the temptation to skimp on safety in order to pad profits, and just hope things work out. But in wealthy nations, there are numerous incentives beyond government regulation to not do this: (1) insurance companies may refuse to insure structures that are of questionable safety, and (2) there are well-developed legal systems that facilitate lawsuits against negligent builders. 

But perhaps most importantly: consumers of housing and office space in wealth countries can more often afford to pay for units in buildings where expensive retrofits and safety features have been added. In poor countries, by contrast, consumers are far less likely to be able to afford buildings constructed to specifications that would be considered run-of-the-mill in wealthier areas. Given that producers can only set prices at levels their customers can afford to pay, builders will build accordingly. 

The end result is that in wealthy areas, paying close attention to code regulations may shave some profitability off a building project. But in a poor country — as Block correctly suggests — rigid enforcement is more likely to totally erase profitability, and prevent new construction from being built at all. On other words, the opportunity cost of building a modern, earthquake-proof building in a poor country is much higher. 

So what's the solution? 

As Stephens points out: "Every child knows that houses of brick are safer than houses of wood or straw — and therefore cost more to build." Mexicans — of course — are already well aware that the ideal solution is to produce high quality housing for everyone. The problem is that sort of thing is expensive. 

Unfortunately, the answer to this conundrum is the same as with building to withstand hurricanes and other natural disasters:  bulding wealth is the only true long term solution. 

City councils can pass building code laws all day long, but as long as residents lacks the incomes necessary to afford housing, offices, and factory space that's built to withstand earthquakes, there will always be an especially large incentive to cut corners on construction. Innocent people will suffer as a result.

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Brent Crude Spikes To Highest Since July 2015

North Korean war-talk has extended early gains for Brent Crude (driven by anxiety over the post-Kurd-referendum fallout), pushing prices to their highest since July 2015.

 

To the highest since July 2015…

As Bloomberg reports, Kurdish oil supplies may be in jeopardy as Turkey, Iran and the Iraqi central government in Baghdad sought to isolate the semi-autonomous Kurds as balloting began on Monday. Meanwhile, OPEC and its partners implemented more than 100 percent of their agreed cuts last month, OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said Friday in Vienna, providing more fuel to the oil rally.

“It’s pretty clear the Kurds are going to vote for independence and we will have yet another geopolitical hot spot in the Middle East that threatens a significant amount of oil supply,” John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund, said by telephone.

 

At the same time, “the cooperation and the strong effort by OPEC is registering with the market.”

Brent crude oil futures curve has moved into backwardation in recent weeks, indicator of supply tightness…

And the Brent-WTI spread reaches its highest since August 2015…

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Angry NFL Fans Lash Out, Burn Jerseys Over Protests: “You Can Take Your NFL And Shove It”

With all of the grandstanding and emotional reactions from the NFL over the weekend, the sport’s smartest executives seemingly proved that they have no idea they’re fighting a battle that simply can’t be won. 

While it is clear as day to anyone who can disassociate themselves from the emotional response to being verbally attacked by a tweetstorm (as truly ‘terrifying’ as such a thing can be), the NFL doesn’t seem to understand that while almost every American can agree that football is a great sport, roughly 50% of them will vehemently disagree with whatever political stance any given player or league exec decides to publicly announce.  And, since the NFL’s future depends on selling overpriced ad spots to massive corporations looking for a consistent number of eyeballs, alienating any group of viewers, for whatever reason, is just bad for business.

But don’t take our word for it…here’s just a couple of examples for what the fans had to say over the weekend.

“It’s a disgrace. It’s disgusting. They’re getting paid to do a job…to play ball and do whatever the fans want them to do.”

 

“They’re paying these guys to do a job.  They’re not supposed to be involved in politics.”

 

Meanwhile, this Ravens fan simply burned his jersey to the tune of the national anthem…

…while this Kansas City Chiefs fan (or ‘former’ fan as it were) was a little more vocal on exactly why he made the decision to burn all of his NFL gear. 

“You can take your Kansas City Chiefs and you can take your NFL and you can shove it.”

 

“Now, think about that and think about the millions a year that you people are making to play a game while we got soldiers overseas that get paid minimum wage to put their lives on the line for that flag.”

 

“Protest does not belong in our NFL sports.  It’s a game.”

But these videos were hardly unique as fans all around the country torched their NFL gear…

Finally, the owner of the Palmetto Alehouse in South Carolina took things to a whole new level after declaring that his restaurant would not air another NFL game until “all players pay respect to our flag and our country!!!”

“NFL will never be played at Palmetto Alehouse until all players pay respect to our flag and our country!!!” said the business owner to FOX Carolina, calling the players both entitled and arrogant individuals who use their position for advancement.

 

McCraw, an ex-military member, says he found the actions of NFL players protesting the national anthem by kneeling, disrespectful. He said he feels that athletes and people who’ve attained celebrity status should not be telling people what or what not to do because they don’t share the same struggles as people who live normal lives.

 

“I do not support anyone that thinks that our country or our flag is not worth standing for,” he explained.

 

“Our president is our president, but I don’t stand in unity with everything he says,” said the restaurant owner. “This is a country of one people and we need to stand for our flag.”

 

“There are issues in this country that need to be addressed, but disrespecting our flag and our country is not the way to do it,” said McCraw.

 

And as far as how the restaurant owner’s decision will affect business, McCraw says he’s not losing any sleep over it.

 

“It’s no concern for me,” said McCraw. “I’m an ex-military guy. My whole concept is about being local and supporting the community. It is not about supporting a concept that is disrespectful to our flag or our country, and I don’t think the people that come to my bar will feel that this is disrespectful to them.”

FOX Carolina 21

 

So, to all the NFL execs who can’t help but politicize their league, good luck with all those “make-good” advertisements that will come out of your own pockets when your viewership hits an inevitable dip over the coming weeks.

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Human-Trafficking Arrests Are Very Rare in Most States

Human trafficking arrests are almost nonexistent in most states, according the FBI’s newly released U.S. crime statistics for 2016.

Part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) project, the new data on sex and labor trafficking shows that arrests for either offense are rare and that many suspected incidents of trafficking did not ultimately yield results.

For instance, Florida reported 105 investigations into human-trafficking offenses in 2016 but zero human trafficking arrests last year. Nevada worked on 140 human-trafficking investigations but made only 40 arrests on trafficking charges. Louisiana looked into 123 potential cases of human trafficking but only arrested 16 people for it.

Note that this does not mean “human trafficking” suspects in these cases avoided all charges. They may have still been prosecuted for prostitution or something else—many old-fashioned vice stings start off as “human trafficking investigations” these days. But this report only includes arrests recorded by state and local law enforcement on human trafficking charges, which allows us to look beyond police propaganda about what they’re doing and see what it is they’re actually doing.

Overall, the data do little to support the idea that the U.S. is experiencing unprecedented levels of labor and sex trafficking or that we are in the midst of some sort of “modern slavery” epidemic. This is probably why you don’t see UCR trafficking statistics quoted in congressional reports, “awareness” materials, or law enforcement statements to the media on the topic. Instead, you’ll see National Human Trafficking Hotline numbers—It’s gotten hundreds of thousands of calls since its launch! The number of “cases reported” is skyrocketing each year!—without anyone mentioning that “cases” here means any call, text, or message to the hotline that isn’t an immediate hang-up (many “cases” are simple requests for more information, and even those with “tips” about trafficking are entirely unconfirmed). Meanwhile, the year-over-year increase in calls directly coincides to a spike in new state laws that require the hotline number to be posted all over the place.

This year, 26 states submitted data on their human trafficking investigations and arrests for 2016. Between them, there were 56 juveniles and 916 adults arrested on human-trafficking charges.

For comparison, 9,374 people were arrested for murder last year in the U.S., 18,606 were arrested for rape, 304,626 were arrested for aggravated assault, 7,767 were arrested for arson, 101,301 were arrested for fraud, and 2,905 for illegal gambling. More than 30,300 people were arrested for “prostitution and commercialized vice” (a category that is separate from illegal gambling or drugs). And 40,292 people were arrested for sex offenses that were not prostitution or rape.

In total, UCR data shows 89,220 suspected sex-offenders were arrested last year, of which 881—about 1 percent—were suspected of sex trafficking.

While two states—Minnesota and Texas—made more than 100 human-trafficking arrests apiece, most states reported just a few, if any at all. (It’s also important to remember that these are arrest numbers, not the number of cases that went on to prosecution and/or yielded an actual conviction.)

In Alaska, three adult men were arrested for alleged sex trafficking last year. Indiana, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island each reported two adult arrests on sex-trafficking charges; Arkansas, California, Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota each had one. None of these states reported any labor trafficking arrests.

Meanwhile, Arizona and Connecticut each reported zero sex-trafficking arrests, with 34 in Arizona and 14 in Connecticut arrested on labor-trafficking charges.

Even some states routinely positioned as bastions of vice served up relatively few human-trafficking arrests:

  • Nevada reported 32 adults and one minor arrested on sex-trafficking charges last year, plus seven labor-trafficking arrests.
  • Washington state made no sex-trafficking arrests and arrested four minors on labor-trafficking charges.
  • In Louisiana, 7 adults were arrested for alleged sex trafficking and 9 for labor trafficking.

The outliers last year were Texas, which arrested 40 children and 471 adults on sex-trafficking charges and 14 adults on labor-trafficking charges, and Minnesota, which made no labor-trafficking arrests but arrested 206 people for sex trafficking.

Overall, 29 minors arrested on human-trafficking charges last year were white, 23 were black, and four were American Indian. For adults, 626 suspects were white, 251 were black, 27 were Asian, 11 were American Indian, and one was Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. A total of 12 minors and 193 adults arrested were identified as (white or black) Hispanic.

Human-trafficking-specific data were only added to the UCR a few years ago, and few states turned in data at first, limiting the year-to-year comparisons we can make. But where comparisons are possible, we see a relatively stable or even downward trend in arrests:

Indiana by Year 2014 2015 2016
Sex trafficking—adults arrested 74 0 2
Sex trafficking—minors arrested 8 2 0
Labor trafficking—adults arrested 4 0 0
Labor trafficking—minors arrested 19 2 0
Missouri by Year 2014 2015 2016
Sex trafficking—adults arrested 9 7 9
Sex trafficking—minors arrested 3 0 1
Labor trafficking—adults arrested 9 0 2
Labor trafficking—minors arrested 0 0 0
Texas by Year 2014 2015 2016
Sex trafficking—adults arrested 666 481 471
Sex trafficking—minors arrested 35 57 40
Labor trafficking—adults arrested 25 24 14
Labor trafficking—minors arrested 37 3 0
Ohio by Year 2014 2015 2016
Sex trafficking—adults arrested 5 0 0
Sex trafficking—minors arrested 0 0 0
Labor trafficking—adults arrested 0 0 0
Labor trafficking—minors arrested 0 0 0

For UCR purposes, human trafficking for sex is defined as “inducing a person by force, fraud, or coercion to participate in commercial sex acts” or facilitating the prostitution of someone under age 18 with or without force, fraud, or coercion. Human trafficking for labor is defined as “obtaining of a person(s) through recruitment, harboring, transportation, or provision, and subjecting such persons by force, fraud, or coercion into involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery (not to include commercial sex acts).”

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