Original artwork - Matters of Conscience series
Human trafficking is the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion. It is estimated that 21 million persons a year are trafficked, of which 68% are trapped in forced labor, 26% are children, and 55% are women and girls. In 2016, human trafficking in the United States rose 36% from the previous year with an overwhelming majority of identified cases involving the sex trade. While the Department of Justice has a strategy for combating human trafficking and the FBI has had recent success in breaking up trafficking rings, a more potent and more enduring resolution of this social issue can and should begin with our own actions. Both the Polaris Project and the Department of Homeland Security have specified a set of indicators and hotlines that can be called if one suspects trafficking has occurred. The primary imagery in this artwork was appropriated from Frederic Leighton’s artwork entitled Sisters (1862).