Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

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 the states

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 from

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 the

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 Douglas

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 to the li

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

Every time we complete an assessment for the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force for the Department of Justice grant we present it to the task force members at one of the task force general membership bi-monthly meetings. Then we also send the assessment to them to read over and hold a listening session where they can provide more feedback. While we finished the assessment and presented it at the November meeting, due to the holidays and a busy January with human trafficking awareness month events we pushed this listening session back to February. The goal of the assessment is to produce the reports and then create feedback loops with task force members where they feel empowered to offer changes and additions based on their experience working with human trafficking. We had almost 20 members attend the listening session and gathered useful recommendations of things to add to the assessment before we send it on the Department of Justice as a requirement of the grant. 

Over winter break I worked to analyze data from a survey for the Human Trafficking Research Lab's consulting work with Prevent Child Abuse Illinois. They asked us to take a survey they performed themselves and analyze the findings. It was most definitely a lot of work, but just like anything else I’ve done for the research lab, I found this work to be very rewarding. Basically I took the survey data and analyzed it in SPSS a statistical software program and put it into cross tabulations which calculated frequencies and percentages for all the data points. Then I wrote up the findings explaining what the data was telling us. I also coded the qualitative responses looking for overarching themes in the data and calculated those responses including interesting quotes and findings from the data. Surprisingly, the respondents were not very familiar with many aspects of child abuse. I didn’t necessarily expect any of the respondents to be experts on the issue, but there was a good chunk o

Our sixth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month panel discussion on legal approaches made the local news on January 31st! Thanks to WAND for the in-depth coverage and discussion of how human trafficking manifests in Central Illinois. Also the Human Trafficking Research Lab was featured and it is wonderful to see my student-faculty collaborative research on the news. You can watch the clip  here .

We held our Sixth Annual Panel Discussion for Human Trafficking Awareness Month again this January 2023 at Millikin University! We were lucky again to partner with Set Free-Macon County and had a great mix of local advocates and students at the panel discussion. This year we focused on legal approaches to human trafficking focusing on federal and state level prosecutions and the manifestations of this crime in Central Illinois. We has some great lawyers on the panel including: Gregory K. Harris, United States Attorney for the Central District of Illinois, Dan Wright, Sangamon County States Attorney, and Katrina Quillen, Supervising Attorney, Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services. We focused on the different challenges with human trafficking law that can help or hinder holding traffickers accountable for this crime in the United States legal system and improvements for representing human trafficking victims in immigration law. We also had a giant cake celebrating five years

The Millikin University Human Trafficking Research Lab and The Set Free Movement - Macon County were at the Decatur City Council meeting on January 17th to read the proclamation for Human Trafficking Awareness Month! This proclamation calls on all Decatur citizens, businesses, civil society organizations, communities of faith, families, and individuals, to work together to actively combat human trafficking in our community. Human trafficking is an often overlooked issue which many people assume would not affect them or their community. However, we know that human trafficking is a tragedy that affects all communities. The Proclamation describes human trafficking as a modern form of slavery which affects many individuals and demographics, some even in our own community. Human trafficking is a crime which often goes unnoticed in our community, as survivors are often silenced or reluctant to speak out for themselves for a variety of reasons. The Human Trafficking Proclamation, though, reaf

My Human Trafficking Research Lab students and I had the opportunity to train Staley Credit Union employees at their biannual company-wide training day. We focused on the intersections of human trafficking and the financial services industry. We did an introduction to human trafficking, dispelled some of the myths on human trafficking, and talk about how it manifests in the cases we see in Central Illinois. Then we did my In Their Shoes Activity which turned out well and broke up the 1.5 hour training.  The In Their Shoes Activity  uses real stories of human trafficking survivors and takes participants along the trafficking journey. I have been using it to teach about human trafficking since I saw the domestic violence version of it in graduate school and adapted it to human trafficking to use as a teaching tool. This time we introduced a timer at the shelter station where participants had to wait for this card similar to the way survivors might have to wait for a bed in the shelter.

As I am gearing up for another busy Human Trafficking Awareness Month this January, I am also reflecting and celebrating five years of the Human Trafficking Research Lab (HTRL) at Millikin University! It is hard to believe that it has been five years since I established the HTRL in 2018 and how much we have grown and accomplished over the last five years. With that in mind I wanted to take a look back at how far we come and how I got the idea to start the lab. It all started in October 2017 when I attended the first A21 Walk for Freedom in Springfield. At the walk I connected with local human trafficking advocates in Central Illinois and was appointed to the newly formed Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF).  My first CIHTTF meeting. In Fall 2017, I also taught my Human Trafficking class at Millikin University for the first time. The class filled the first day of registration and I began to see just how popular this topic was with undergraduate students. I thought tha