[Congressional Bills 112th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 2982 Introduced in House (IH)]

112th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 2982

  To amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to 
include human trafficking as a part 1 violent crime for purposes of the 
        Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 21, 2011

 Mr. Carter (for himself, Mrs. Schmidt, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Smith of New 
   Jersey, Mr. DeFazio, Ms. Norton, Ms. Speier, Mr. Blumenauer, Mr. 
 Gutierrez, Mr. Aderholt, Ms. Richardson, Mr. Long, Mr. Bilirakis, Mr. 
  Moran, Mr. Poe of Texas, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, and Mr. 
    Pitts) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                       Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to 
include human trafficking as a part 1 violent crime for purposes of the 
        Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Human Trafficking Reporting Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery.
            (2) According to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 
        2000 ``severe forms of trafficking in persons'' means--
                    (A) sex trafficking 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; or
                    (B) 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.
            (3) There is an acute need for better data collection of 
        incidents of human trafficking across the United States in 
        order to effectively combat severe forms of trafficking in 
        persons.
            (4) The State Department's 2011 Trafficking in Persons 
        report found that--
                    (A) the United States is a ``source, transit and 
                destination country for men, women, and children, 
                subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, domestic 
                servitude and sex trafficking,''; and
                    (B) the United States needs to ``improve data 
                collection on human trafficking cases at the federal, 
                state and local levels''.
            (5) The International Organization for Migration has 
        reported that in order to effectively combat human trafficking 
        there must be reliable and standardized data, however, the 
        following barriers for data collection exist:
                    (A) The illicit and underground nature of human 
                trafficking.
                    (B) The reluctance of victims to share information 
                with authorities.
                    (C) Insufficient human trafficking data collection 
                and research efforts by governments world-wide.
            (6) A 2009 report to the Department of Health and Human 
        Services entitled Human Trafficking Into and Within the United 
        States: A Review of the Literature found that ``the data and 
        methodologies for estimating the prevalence of human 
        trafficking globally and nationally are not well developed, and 
        therefore estimates have varied widely and changed 
        significantly over time''.
            (7) The Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles national 
        crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
            (8) Under current law, State and local governments 
        receiving Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grants are 
        required to share data on part 1 violent crimes with the 
        Federal Bureau of Investigation for inclusion in the Uniform 
        Crime Reporting Program.
            (9) The addition of severe forms of trafficking in persons 
        to the definition of part 1 violent crimes will ensure that 
        statistics on this heinous crime will be compiled and available 
        through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime 
        Report.

SEC. 3. HUMAN TRAFFICKING TO BE INCLUDED IN PART 1 VIOLENT CRIMES FOR 
              PURPOSES OF BYRNE GRANTS.

    Section 505 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 
1968 (42 U.S.C. 3755) is amended by adding at the end the following new 
subsection:
    ``(i) Part 1 Violent Crimes To Include Human Trafficking.--For 
purposes of this section, the term `part 1 violent crimes' shall 
include severe forms of trafficking in persons, as defined in section 
103(8) of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.''.
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