How many CyberTipline referrals did NCMEC mark as leading to arrests in its internal law‑enforcement feedback forms for 2023 and 2024?

1. What the public reports do show about volume and referrals

Public CyberTipline publications document the massive scale of reporting: NCMEC’s 2023 materials record roughly 36.2 million CyberTipline reports and tens of millions of associated files, and NCMEC’s 2024 summary reports show a drop to 20.5 million reports in 2024 with 20.3 million reports submitted by electronic service providers that year ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Those public figures also describe the CyberTipline’s role as a clearinghouse that refers matters to law enforcement domestically and internationally, and they break out trends such as increases in online enticement and emergent use of generative AI, but those summaries are oriented to volume, trends, and platform reporting behavior rather than granular law‑enforcement case outcomes ^{[5] [2]}.

2. The transparency report and “law‑enforcement feedback forms” — what is and isn’t visible

NCMEC’s OJJDP transparency report and other CyberTipline datasets describe NCMEC’s processes for referring reports to law enforcement and include high‑level enforcement metrics for certain years, but the specific phrasing in the question—“internal law‑enforcement feedback forms” and how many referrals were “marked as leading to arrests”—is not obviously quantified in the provided 2023 and 2024 public documents available here ^{[4] [5]}. The transparency report (CY‑2023) exists in the supplied materials and documents many operational details of CyberTipline workflows and partner engagement, yet the excerpts and index-level descriptions included in these sources do not provide the particular numeric field the question requests ^[4].

3. Why that figure may be missing from public summaries

NCMEC’s public outputs emphasize report volumes, file counts, trends by report type, and referral pathways to law enforcement rather than closed‑case or arrest counts tied directly to each CyberTipline referral; this focus aligns with NCMEC’s dual roles as a referral hub and analytic resource for platforms and investigators, and it may reflect privacy, operational, and jurisdictional limits on public disclosure of detailed law‑enforcement outcomes ^{[5] [1]}. The 2024 blog and related datasets flag changes in reporting practices (for example, platform reporting volumes and the effect of the REPORT Act) that complicate year‑to‑year comparisons of outcomes, which further reduces the likelihood that a clean, comparable “arrests resulting from referrals” number would be published in these summary products ^{[2] [6]}.

4. What follow‑up steps would yield the exact numbers

To obtain the precise counts requested—how many CyberTipline referrals were explicitly marked by law enforcement as leading to arrests in NCMEC’s internal feedback forms for 2023 and 2024—one would need access to NCMEC’s internal law‑enforcement feedback dataset or a public report that specifically tabulates that feedback field; the supplied OJJDP transparency report and CyberTipline data pages do not include that precise field in the excerpts provided here ^{[4] [5]}. Possible options include requesting the specific dataset from NCMEC or OJJDP, reviewing a more complete version of the CY‑2023 transparency report for appendices that might contain feedback tallies, or filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or state‑level public records request where applicable to obtain law‑enforcement feedback records if they are subject to disclosure ^[4].

5. Bottom line and journalistic caveat

Based solely on the materials supplied, an authoritative numeric answer to “How many CyberTipline referrals did NCMEC mark as leading to arrests in its internal law‑enforcement feedback forms for 2023 and 2024?” cannot be produced because those specific arrest‑outcome tallies are not present in the provided reports; the public documents instead report overall CyberTipline volumes, referral practices, and trend data ^{[1] [2] [4]}. If the exact figures are required, the next step is to obtain NCMEC’s internal law‑enforcement feedback dataset or a disclosure from NCMEC/OJJDP that explicitly tabulates “arrests” tied to CyberTipline referrals for those years ^[4].