The Economics of a “Human Trafficking” Sting: The Non Profit Spreadsheet

Alex Andrews
2 days ago
5 min read

During Human Trafficking Awareness Month, the public is encouraged to support efforts that “help survivors.”

Yet, few realize how much funding flows to institutions that expand policing rather than strengthen community care.

After exploring the law enforcement and court costs of trafficking stings, this week we turn to the nonprofit landscape that profits from the rescue narrative. We examine the “rescue economy” - the network of programs and organizations that absorb funding generated by stings while survivor-led and harm-reduction organizations struggle to stay afloat.

By now, we’ve followed the money through the first two stages of a sting. In Week 1, we examined the law enforcement costs - the overtime, equipment, surveillance, and PR expenses that start the meter running. In Week 2, we traced the criminal justice tab - the prosecutors, public defenders, court staff, probation departments, diversion programs, and layers of fines and fees that accumulate after the arrest.

This week, we turn to the next stop on the money trail: the nonprofit rescue economy - the network of organizations that orbit, reinforce, and financially benefit from these stings. After police take their victory lap and courts grind through their caseload, another group steps in to “serve victims.” In many cities, these programs receive far more funding than survivor-led groups, more visibility than harm-reduction efforts, and more political insulation than peer-based support services.

The result is a parallel system that presents itself as care but functions, in practice, like an extension of policing - maintaining the same carceral logic, absorbing public dollars, and often sidelining the very people it claims to help.

The “Anti-Trafficking Industrial Complex” - A Multimillion-Dollar Pipeline

The United States spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on anti-trafficking initiatives, and most of that money flows to faith-based shelters, court-affiliated diversion programs, residential rehabilitation centers, abstinence-only or “morality”-based programs, and large anti-trafficking nonprofits with political influence.

These organizations position themselves as the natural recipients of “victims” identified in stings - even when no victims are found, even when adults arrested for prostitution insist they are working consensually, and even when the people arrested are further harmed by carceral intervention. The result is a system in which funding continues to flow regardless of actual impact, reinforcing institutions rather than addressing the needs of survivors or sex workers.

The Referral Pipeline That Keeps the Money Moving

A sting is not just a policing event - it is a referral generator. Once someone is labeled a “victim” by police - sometimes based solely on age, immigration status, or appearance - they are funneled into a nonprofit program that receives funding for each intake, each bed filled, or each participant enrolled. The incentives behind this system are unmistakably aligned: police gain credit for “rescues,” which helps justify their budgets; courts gain diversion participants, generating revenue through mandatory fees; and nonprofits gain clients, which strengthens their case for grants and continued funding. The only people who do not benefit from this arrangement are the very individuals the system claims to protect: actual survivors and consensual sex workers.

What These Programs Don’t Provide

Many nonprofit and faith-based programs funded through stings fail to offer what survivors actually need: low-barrier housing, trauma-informed mental health care, long-term economic support, nonjudgmental and voluntary services, peer-led mentorship from people with lived experience, or exit opportunities that are not tied to court compliance. Instead, these programs often provide mandatory religious programming, shame-based counseling, abstinence-only “life skills” training, strict curfews or punitive rules, enforced separation from partners or children, and ongoing surveillance or reporting back to courts.

For survivors of violence or exploitation, being placed in a program where autonomy is restricted and compliance is coerced can feel like re-traumatization - not care.

Funding Disparities: Who Gets Money vs. Who Does the Work

At the heart of the rescue economy lies a stark economic contradiction. Court-adjacent “rehabilitation” programs frequently receive six- or seven-figure funding, large anti-trafficking nonprofits attract major grants through emotionally charged narratives, and faith-based shelters benefit from federal dollars through VOCA, VAWA, OVC, and other block grants. Meanwhile, survivor-led organizations - including SWOP Behind Bars - often operate on less than one to five percent of that funding. Harm-reduction programs remain chronically under-resourced, and peer-support networks struggle to keep phone lines open. In this upside-down landscape, the groups closest to the problem - and closest to the solution - remain the farthest from funding.

Rescue as Revenue: How the System Sustains Itself

Once a community has invested in carceral “anti-trafficking” approaches, funding tends to follow the systems already in place. Cities become incentivized to arrest more people to sustain diversion programs; nonprofits are incentivized to label situations as trafficking even when they are not; politicians use stings to demonstrate action without addressing root causes; and media outlets amplify dramatic rescue narratives that help reinforce these funding streams. The entire ecosystem is built around the idea that arrests equal victims, even though the numbers consistently show that the vast majority of those arrested are consensual adult sex workers, not trafficking victims. This is why survivor-led organizations are so often told there’s “not enough funding” - the money is already spoken for.

What We Could Fund Instead

If even a fraction of the money spent on policing and nonprofit rescue programs were redirected to community-led solutions, cities could provide rental assistance, trauma therapy, health care, peer-led safety planning, case management, legal advocacy, drop-in centers, emergency cash assistance, reentry support for formerly incarcerated people, and safe, stable housing. These are the interventions survivors consistently say they need. These are the interventions that reduce violence. These are the interventions that actually work. And none of them require armed officers or arrest quotas.

Why This Matters

The “rescue economy” survives on the public’s belief that stings save lives, but the reality is far different. These operations generate funding for institutions, not for the people most affected. Court-mandated programs serve bureaucracy, not healing. Faith-based shelters serve ideology, not autonomy. Carceral nonprofits serve the state, not survivors. If our goal is truly safety and healing, we must redirect resources away from the institutions that profit from criminalization and toward the people whose lives, stability, and futures are on the line. Only then can we build systems rooted in care, not control.

Check in on Wednesday as we dive into three case studies of Non Profits touted as a Human Trafficking Rescue Programs and you won't be a bit surprised at what we found...and worse...what we didn't find.