Which federal programs or datasets (DOJ, FBI, NCMEC) publish consolidated annual counts of CSAM arrests and investigations, and how can researchers access them?
Executive summary
Three different institutional streams publish counts relevant to child sexual abuse material (CSAM): the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) publishes annual CyberTipline totals and related file counts, the Department of Justice (DOJ) aggregates task-force and program-level statistics (notably ICAC/Project Safe Childhood arrest tallies in reports and Congressional summaries), and the FBI issues case-level press releases and program descriptions but does not publish a single consolidated public annual arrest/investigation dataset; several operational databases (FBI’s CENP, NCMEC’s CVIP) exist but are not released as public arrest-count time series [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. NCMEC’s CyberTipline: the clearest annual volume metric and how to get it
NCMEC’s CyberTipline publishes annual aggregate counts of reports and the number of uploaded files (images/videos) associated with those reports — for example, NCMEC reported 62.9 million images, videos and other files in 2024 and has published multi-year CyberTipline totals on its data pages and transparency reports [1] [5] [6]. Researchers can access these figures directly from NCMEC’s CyberTipline data and transparency-report pages (missingkids.org) which provide annual summaries, downloadable reports, and program documentation; however, CyberTipline counts measure reports and suspected-file volumes rather than certified law-enforcement arrest totals [1] [6].
2. DOJ, ICAC and Project Safe Childhood: program-level arrest tallies and where they appear
DOJ’s public materials and Congressional summaries compile results from federal and state task forces: the ICAC program reports cumulative case reviews and arrests since inception (for example, over 844,600 complaints reviewed and over 89,400 arrests since 1998) and Project Safe Childhood (DOJ/PSC) materials and press releases summarize coordinated enforcement operations and their outcomes [2] [7]. These DOJ/ICAC/PSC figures appear in DOJ reports, CRS/ Congressional product summaries, and DOJ press statements; researchers should consult DOJ’s Missing and Exploited Children program pages, ICAC annual reports (where published), and Congressional research summaries to extract program-level arrest counts [2] [8] [7].
3. FBI reporting: case announcements, program descriptions, and limits on consolidated public data
The FBI publishes field-office press releases and program pages (VCAC, ECAP, CENP) that detail arrests and investigations tied to specific operations or initiatives (for instance, Operation Restore Justice and ECAP references), and it documents victim-notification and database programs (CENP) that support investigations [3] [4] [9]. The bureau does not appear to offer a single public annual dataset enumerating nationwide CSAM arrests and investigations comparable to NCMEC’s CyberTipline counts or ICAC’s cumulative arrest figures; instead, researchers must aggregate FBI press releases, VCAC program summaries, and DOJ task-force reports to approximate FBI contributions to annual totals [3] [9] [4].
4. Operational databases and blind spots researchers should expect
Several operational databases exist that collect granular CSAM case material and victim identifications — notably NCMEC’s CVIP/CRIS and the FBI’s Child Exploitation Notification Program — but these are primarily operational and victim-notification systems rather than public arrest-count datasets, and law enforcement submissions to CVIP are often manual and incomplete by design [5] [10] [4]. Consequently, there is no single authoritative public table that reconciles CyberTipline reports, ICAC task-force arrests, DOJ prosecutions, and FBI investigations; researchers must combine NCMEC public reports (for incident and file volumes), DOJ/ICAC program tallies (for long-run arrest aggregates), and FBI press releases/USAO announcements (for case-level confirmation), while acknowledging submission and reporting biases [1] [2] [3].
5. Practical access strategy and caveats for researchers
To assemble annual counts researchers should: download NCMEC CyberTipline totals and transparency reports from missingkids.org (for report and file volumes) [1] [6]; scrape DOJ and ICAC program reports and Congressional CRS summaries for program-level arrest totals and historical aggregates [2] [8]; and harvest FBI field-office press releases and VCAC program pages for operation-specific arrest numbers [3] [9]. All three sources are essential but measure different phenomena (reports/files vs. arrests vs. investigations/victim notifications), and public datasets contain gaps — operational case data like CVIP and CENP are not released as a reconciled public arrests dataset, which must be acknowledged in any analysis [5] [10] [4].