What law-enforcement agencies publish outcome data (arrests/prosecutions) for cases originated from NCMEC CyberTipline referrals?
Executive summary
A definitive, public roster of law-enforcement agencies that systematically publish case outcomes (arrests, prosecutions, convictions) tied specifically to NCMEC CyberTipline referrals does not exist in the available reporting: NCMEC itself says it “does not always have access to next steps or outcomes” after it makes reports available to law enforcement [1]. NCMEC refers more than a million reports to U.S. agencies including Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces and federal, state and local law enforcement [2] [3], but most agencies provide little or no structured feedback to NCMEC about case status [4].
1. What the CyberTipline publishes — quantity, not downstream outcomes
NCMEC’s public CyberTipline data emphasizes the volume and routing of reports—for example, that more than 1.1 million reports were referred to U.S. law enforcement and that the CyberTipline received tens of millions of reports overall—while not tracking prosecution outcomes in its public datasets [2] [3] [5]. NCMEC documents how it classifies referrals (reports with sufficient information for investigative consideration) and which jurisdictions receive referrals, but its public reporting stops short of a comprehensive outcomes feed that ties a referral to an arrest or conviction [2] [6].
2. Law enforcement recipients named — ICAC, federal, state and local agencies
The agencies that receive CyberTipline referrals are identified in NCMEC materials and statutory references: referrals are made available to Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces and other federal, state and local law-enforcement bodies, and when state jurisdiction is unknown reports are made available to federal agencies [2] [3]. Federal law also contemplates cooperation among providers, NCMEC and designated law enforcement, and creates mechanisms for international referral and preservation of evidence (18 U.S.C. §2258A) [7] [8].
3. The feedback gap — law enforcement rarely supplies structured outcomes to NCMEC
NCMEC has built internal feedback fields for law enforcement to report case status (e.g., Arrest, Conviction, Ongoing Investigation) but acknowledges that “most agencies provide little or no feedback” and that it sometimes learns of outcomes only through news reports and media inquiries rather than from the investigating agencies themselves [4]. That admission signals both that law-enforcement agencies are the primary source for outcomes and that, in practice, few agencies feed those outcomes back into a centralized, publicly accessible system [4].
4. Why a public, linked outcomes feed is rare — technical, legal and operational limits
Multiple sources explain structural reasons for the absence of centralized outcomes: (a) referral quality varies—NCMEC designates some reports as “informational” and others as “referrals” depending on whether providers supply sufficient investigative detail—so not every referral yields an actionable case [6]; (b) provider and NCMEC processes preserve data and route it to appropriate jurisdictions but do not compel downstream public reporting of arrests or prosecutions [7] [3]; and (c) NCMEC’s own statements and congressional responses indicate the organization lacks guaranteed access to investigative outcomes after referral [1] [4].
5. What can be said with confidence and what remains unknown
It is verifiable that CyberTipline referrals are routed broadly (ICAC task forces, federal/state/local law enforcement) and that NCMEC does not reliably receive or publish follow-up outcomes [2] [3] [1] [4]. What cannot be confirmed from the provided reporting is a list of individual law-enforcement agencies that consistently publish, on their own public dashboards or reports, the outcomes of cases that specifically originated from CyberTipline referrals; the sources neither enumerate such agencies nor point to a centralized outcome database [1] [4]. Any assertion that specific agencies do or do not publish such linked outcome data would exceed what the cited materials support.
6. Practical next steps for researchers seeking outcomes
Because the available documentation locates outcomes primarily within law-enforcement control rather than NCMEC’s public reporting, the pragmatic path to case-level outcomes is to query recipient agencies (ICAC task forces, relevant state or federal offices) or use media- and court-record searches to trace investigations that public accounts identify as originating from CyberTipline referrals; NCMEC acknowledges it sometimes learns outcomes through news coverage, underscoring that investigators and court records are the likeliest primary sources for verified outcomes [4] [2].