Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

This last semester was an interesting one, and that extended to my lab work. I found myself in a spot this last semester where it was really difficult to get even the most remedial of tasks done. However, I’d still push myself to get what was needed of me finished as I had given my word that it would get done. I found myself getting closer and closer to complete burnout from schoolwork, research lab work, and my personal life. Thankfully, our research lab has become a close-knit group and Dr. Dean allowed me to take the time I needed to feel better.  My primary task throughout the semester was putting together a lab manual. This was an interesting task as it was hard to think about what I wish I had known before joining the research lab. Truthfully, a lot of what I know now and what I knew before joining the lab have kind of merged together so it was hard to differentiate between new and old knowledge. I also maintained my role as being the main minutes taker during meetings which ...

This fall semester working on human trafficking arrest data compilation and analysis was a rollercoaster of successes and minor setbacks. For most of the semester, I was tasked with analyzing data that I had previously compiled from county arrest data. I was specifically looking for any further information regarding the arrestees. I hoped to find news articles or arrest websites with descriptions of the facts of each case. This was to attempt to find out more information to categorize an arrest as human trafficking. However, finding this data has proved to be extremely difficult. Many of the cases result in empty searches, with news articles discussing particular arrests only ever directly quoting the charges that have already been recorded. For a small number of cases, I did find information clarifying the facts of the arrest, however there is still little to no public information on the human trafficking issues intersecting may of the arrests. Some of the searches have resulted in po...

My work in the research lab lately has been centered around our adjudication in Central Illinois presentation. After narrowing down arrest records to find cases which could have been human trafficking but were charged as a lesser statute, I am now looking into each individual case, trying to find information to determine if it could be a case of human trafficking. Though I believe this work is extremely important, that is not to say that it is easy. In fact, the mental toll it takes to look into these crimes (which are most often sex crimes against children) can be quite severe. No matter your job, it is always important to take care of your mental health, but that is especially true in this line of work. Though this project could very easily overwhelm me, I have found a few tricks to keep my sanity. First, I put on a show or background music while I am working so if I need a break, even for just a moment, I have something else to focus on. Though usually my background shows include th...

Since our grant is ending this year, the students and I brainstormed a few fundraising ideas to be able to support paid research assistantships in the Human Trafficking Research Lab for future students. We thought tote bags would be a great way to achieve this and so the students and I designed an eye catching bag that would educate people wherever it went. If you donate more $30 to the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin we will send you one of these tote bags that will support future undergraduate research in the lab and help you raise awareness to human trafficking everywhere you go!  The bags are 100% cotton and printed locally from Oakwood Screen Printing based right here in Decatur, Illinois.  If you would like to donate to the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin University you can make a donation in three different ways: 1) Make a credit card/debit card/EFT gift online at www.millikin.edu/give . Choose the “Millikin Fund” icon box and write “Human Traffick...

We wanted to show the impact of everything we have accomplished since the Human Trafficking Research Lab was established in 2018 in an effort to help us with donations for the lab. So the students and I set out to try and summarize all of the work we have done on various projects that can reveal the impact our work had had on Central Illinois. We started by highlighting our projects and outcomes. Then I wanted to try and quantify some of the work and created information so that people cold donate to support our undergraduate research. It was pretty amazing to see that over 27,000 people have visited our website to check out our work!

This week I presented the research design for our NSF project at the Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The conference is a yearly conference in honor of Dr. Dmytro Shtohryn (1923 – 2019) who established the Ukrainian Studied program at the University of Illinois. The title of the presentation was "Designing Human Trafficking Prevention Approaches in Ukraine" and it was based on the research supported by the National Science Foundation D-ISN/RAPID: Data Collection for Human Trafficking Recruitment and Responses in Forced Migration and Operations Engineering grant (CMMI-2330311). Our research seeks to investigate human trafficking in real time between exploitation and identification evolving due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is a fruitful crisis case for analysis because of the prevalent use of technology during the migration process which means that we as researchers can track human traffickin...

Every once in a while I get emails from professionals working in the anti-trafficking field wanting to come to the Human Trafficking Research Lab to learn about our research and visit Millikin. This week we had the honor of welcoming the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Community Outreach team from the Springfield Office to the lab. They saw us on TV for our human trafficking awareness month panel discussion and wanted to learn more about our research and outreach work in Central Illinois. It is always great to share our research with people and we had an interesting conversation. I also learned how to steer my students in their direction for careers in the future. My students were really excited about the FBI swag!

My students and I hit the road again this week to attend the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force meeting at the Center for Prevention of Abuse (CFPA) in Peoria and tour their shelter for survivors. This is a picture of us with Julisa Sierra the first student to work on the lab (Millikin class of 2019), who is a human trafficking case officer at CFPA and works to assist trafficking survivors within our community. Pretty great to see my former students out there doing amazing things in our community! We were able to tour the shelter at the Center for Prevention of Abuse and learn more about their work and facilities. The shelter also had a Ukrainian flag donated by a local artist to support Ukraine! The 1.5 hour drive across Central Illinois was really flat with lots of windmills.

The Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force met this week in-person in Champaign this week. There was a professional development portion of the meeting in the morning and then the meeting was in the afternoon. We heard updates from sub-committees and then read over Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience  from the Global Fund to Combat Modern Slavery. I was particularly interested in the framework and assessment which measures and provides an outline for increasing lived experience leadership across the spectrum of engagement in the anti-trafficking movement. I am planning on having a panel discussion with survivors in January 2024 for human trafficking awareness month and so it was great to learn how to engage survivors of human trafficking. The meeting brought people from all around Illinois and it was nice to see a strong showing from my colleagues on the Centra Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force too!

In May 2023 before taking students to the Baltic States a colleague and I put together a data collection project proposal for the National Science Foundation  D-ISN/RAPID  entitled "Data Collection for Human Trafficking Recruitment and Responses in Forced Migration" focusing on Ukraine . We found out this week that the grant was recommended and funded! The grant is a rapid grant which means we will spend the next year collecting, compiling, and analyzing time-sensitive data (online and interviews) along the entire trafficking cycle – from recruitment, transfer, exploitation, and exit in Ukraine. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provides an example of crises where war, displacement, and economic crisis fuel inequalities and increase vulnerabilities to human trafficking with ripple effects around the world. The case of Ukraine is a fruitful crisis case for data compilation because of the prevalent use of technology during the migration process which means ...

Over the summer I worked in the lab and did my internship at a local law firm. I started examining the pulled cases on LexisNexis an online legal research platform. We were hoping that this platofrm would give us more information on the cases than is available online. Unfortunately, I only found few specific examples of the cases I have pulled from our dataset. For any cases that I did find a related case through Lexis, there was limited information without any specific details regarding the details of the crime charged. The only information I found was a restatement of the charges brought against the defendants.  In addition, the cases are all at the appellate level. There are no entry-level cases featured on the site. This means that the only cases that render any results are those in which the decision of the jury or judge was appealed, and the case was subsequently heard by a higher court. For the few cases that did reach higher courts, none of the cases added any details to he...

On Wednesday, August 16, 2023, Dr. Dean and I joined the Byers and Company radio show on WSOY, a partner of Now Decatur to discuss recent work in the Human Trafficking Research Lab and recent news stories involving the topic of human trafficking.  Dr. Dean was able to lead an informative discussion on the definition of human trafficking and the many different varieties of actions that fall under the trafficking umbrella. The host, Brian Byers, took an active approach to hosting the conversation, with a very inquisitive manner throughout the discussion. Throughout his hosting, he consistently questioned the validity of recent news headlines regarding the popular film Sound of Freedom, a human trafficking film. Dr. Dean and I were able to add some important qualifications to the validity of the film and added context to the “Hollywood” factor of the film. We attempted to critique the stereotypical depiction of a small section of human trafficking instances portrayed in the film and d...

Over the past year, the majority of the work that I have done for the lab is centered around our adjudication project. I have been combing through the arrest record data for the counties of central Illinois in an attempt to locate cases of human trafficking which may have been charged as a lesser statute. Because the charge of human trafficking requires proving fraud, force, and coercion, it is an extremely difficult charge to prove. As such, prosecutors will sometimes choose to charge the defendant with a lesser statute to ensure a conviction. While scrolling the arrest records, I have been looking for sex crimes, charges of kidnapping, or domestic violence. I have learned a great deal about the nature of crimes in central Illinois (more than one might like to know). For example, the amount of domestic violence cases in our area is astounding and tragic. Additionally, there is a much greater quantity of sex crimes than I had previously expected, specifically crimes against children. T...

The Human Trafficking Research Lab (HTRL) at Millikin University conducted a Community Assessment of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF) in November 2021 in accordance with the guidelines of the Enhanced Collaborative Model Task Force to Combat Human Trafficking grant from the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs at the United States (US) Department of Justice. Then at the site visit in December 2021 we were asked by the grant monitors to update our assessment with more data on vulnerabilities in our region. Therefore, the goal for this Vulnerability Assessment is to identify areas within Central Illinois where vulnerabilities for trafficking and exploitation can occur.   The CIHTTF will use this assessment to continue to develop outreach strategies and priorities for the task force. The HTRL used a mix of quantitative data and qualitative interviews/correspondence with victim and survivor services organizations, law enforcement, and t...

The Human Trafficking Research Lab began tracking human trafficking trainings in Central Illinois in 2019 and we wrote this research brief to update a previous brief from 2020. The pandemic had a large impact on these trainings and this research brief aims to examine how the pandemic impacted human trafficking training in Central Illinois. In 2020, the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force completed 52 different trainings. This was a 43% decrease from 2019 when 91 trainings were conducted.  We also saw a increase in virtual trainings in 2020 when 75% (39) of the trainings were virtual and only 25% (13) were in-person. A total of 1,134 individuals from a variety of different organizations were trained for a cumulative number of 80.25 hours. In 2021, the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force completed 60 different trainings, an increased of 15% from 2020. Of these trainings 58% (35) were virtual and 41% (25) were in person, indicating a decrease in virtual trainings f...

The last month with the Human Trafficking Research Lab have been a busy one. I’ve been sitting in on a lot of meetings and taking notes and have been working on finalizing an updated research brief which we will present at the next Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF) meeting in May.  One particular meeting I want to talk about was last month when Dr. Dean and I presented our adjudication data to the Illinois Bar Association. So, firstly I want to talk about just how cool it was to be in a Zoom meeting with a bunch of people who work in the field I hope to get into. It was pretty neat to get to meet various lawyers and law professors. Now the actual presentation is a completely different story. To everyone who was in the meeting, the presentation seemingly went off without a hitch. For me, my screen went completely black right before I was to present so I had to wing it. Firstly, I was muted and couldn’t click on the screen to unmute myself, but luckily remembered...

As a part of the data collection process for the lab’s analysis of the adjudication of human trafficking in Illinois, I have recently analyzed arrest records for Douglas County, with a specified focus on cases pertinent or possibly relating to human trafficking. When focusing on cases, I had a clear list of relevant arrest types, primarily focusing on domestic violence arrests, sexual violence arrests, and sex crimes in general.  When analyzing Douglas County’s data, it was intriguing to see the particular aspects of data that Douglas County requires when reporting arrests.  Specifically, the race of arrestees was not recorded for the entirety of the records analyzed. This is interesting, as race and gender are particular aspects of the arrest data that we attempt to analyze. Thus, Douglas County’s records are much less thorough than many other counties in Illinois, as the majority require the reporting of the race of the arrestees. In addition to this interesting finding, the...

I was asked to be on a roundtable on publishing your first book sponsored by the Women's Caucus at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference to talk about my book Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia . It was a really fun panel to be on with some big names in my field of gender and politics including Nazita Lajevardi, Christina Wolbrecht, and Julia Hellwege and there were many stories told and laughs all around at books coming out during the pandemic. I enjoyed reliving the trials and tribulations of publishing a book at an under-resourced teaching institution and talking about what I am trying to do differently the second time around. It was also useful to find out about more about book conferences and hiring copy editors which I would like to do the second time around with outside funding.  In the future, I hope to return to Ukraine so I can donate the remaining copies of my book that have been sitting in my office since 2020. I plan to donate copies...

My Human Trafficking Research Lab student Rhys and I were invited to present our research on adjudication in Central Illinois to judges and lawyers all over Illinois at the Human and Civil Rights Council of the Illinois State Bar Association this week. The talk was online and we spoke to about 2o people. It's great that so many people are learning about the lab and our work throughout Illinois since we are the only research lab on human trafficking in the state. It was also nice for Rhys to speak to lawyers and judges because he hopes to go to law school after graduation so he was able to receive feedback and field questions from legal experts in his field about charging trafficking related offenses. 

I was invited to speak with the Golden K Kiwanis Club of Decatur about the Human Trafficking Research Lab, our student faculty collaborative research, and trafficking due to Russia's war in Ukraine. Their focus is on children and I discussed the different types of trafficking vulnerabilities that we see in child trafficking cases, how US human trafficking law has special caveats for child trafficking, and then the different types of trafficking that are found in Ukraine. It was a lot to cover in 20 mins but the audience asked some interesting questions and I was able to meet a few retired Millikin professors. The speaker each week gets a reserved parking spot and certificate which was nice and a kind member gave me this keychain which supports trafficking survivor services in our community.

My week of talks continues and on Thursday one of my colleagues who taught in Ukraine Fall 2021 organized a virtual conference at Millikin University on "Restorative Justice in Action: What Comes After Victory in Ukraine?" co-sponsored by Kyiv Polytechnic Institute located in Kyiv, Ukraine  The conference featured several practitioners, teachers and scholars of restorative justice, conflict resolution and mediation programs to discuss potential post-war restorative justice strategies that might be used in Ukraine. It was great to practice my Ukrainian and talk about human trafficking dynamics as a result of Russia's war in Ukraine. I also brought my card making supplies, Ukrainian candy, and a giant handmade Ukrainian flag. It was great to learn more about restorative justice in Ukraine!

I raced back from Kansas and drove over to the University of Illinois to attend a lecture by human trafficking survivor and advocate Cyntoia Brown Long. Back in 2018 the first panel discussion we organized for Human Trafficking Awareness Month at Millikin showed part of the documentary about her life sentence in prison for killing the man that bought her for sex when she was 16 years old.  We wrote postcards to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to grant her clemency and her 67 year sentence was commuted on August 7, 2019. It was so wonderful to meet her in real life and see her freed from prison.  She even signed my book which she co-wrote with Millikin English alum Bethany Mauger!

This week I gave a talk at the Lawrence Public Library as part of the Perspectives on Ukraine series, a partnership between the University of Kansas Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREES) and Lawrence Public Library. I take the job of researching Ukraine and telling Ukrainian stories very seriously and it was an honor to kick off the series with my talk and stand with Ukrainians against Russian aggression. I bought Ukrainian chocolates (since it was Valentine's Day) and we made Valentine's Day cards to send to Ukrainian survivors of gender-based violence to show our support. My talk addressed how Russia’s war has exacerbated human trafficking in Ukraine, including child begging, forced labor and sex trafficking. She discussed how wartime conditions have created vulnerabilities for women and children using data from interviews with anti-trafficking advocates and participant observation at centers for displaced persons in Ukraine and refugee reception ce...