Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

Over the past few months, I have been working on reviewing arrest records from Champaign County for years spanning 2010 to 2020. As a Human Services lab intern, I put in 360 hours for my internship. A great deal of this has involved looking over arrest records. I was surprised, after completing my review, that I had counted over 40,000 records. I made approximately 6,000 manual entries into a spreadsheet, of cases that could have been charged differently, but that might indicate human trafficking. I was additionally shocked to find only one actual Human Trafficking charge. I saw a great deal of charges for Criminal Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Indecent Solicitation of a Child, Child Pornography, Domestic Violence (in conjunction with weapons and/or drug charges), and Solicitation of a Minor. In conjunction with prior research completed in other counties before I began working in the lab, these charges line up with data showing potential trafficking cases that were charged as lesser of...

The Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force Final Community Assessment is completed and available to read here . We plan to hold a listening session in December with CIHTTF members to offer feedback and provide space for revisions and edits. The Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin would like to thank all the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force members who took time to fill out this survey and provide a valuable evaluation for the future of the task force. We would especially like to thank Lucinda McArthur and Kevin Nowlan who provided feedback in the pretest versions of the final community assessment survey. The survey was administered in SurveyMonkey. The statistical analyses were performed in Stata12, the network analysis was constructed with NodeXL, the maps were formulated in Tableau 2023, and the frequency analysis and qualitative coding were constructed MAXQDA 2020. Respondent answers were anonymized and slightly altered for anonymity and punctuation/gramma...

I was recently asked by Dr. Dean to present research from the Human Trafficking Research Lab at the Illinois Sociological Association's annual conference held at Millikin University. This was my first time presenting research, and the experience came with challenges. There were things that were challenging about the presentation and things I enjoyed. I anticipate learning from this experience and finding ways to grow in my academic and professional development. At the end of my presentation, someone asked me what the most difficult and most rewarding parts of my lab research have been. I mentioned that sorting through over 40,000 arrest records certainly cannot be seen as glorious but has made me realize all of the effort that individuals engage in behind the scenes to fight human trafficking. It gave me an appreciation of those people. The benefit of doing this research is that I have gained a great deal of experience and have had the opportunity to learn from a professor who has ...

I recently asked Dr. Dean if we could give a training presentation to the nursing students at Millikin University. I was excited to find that we were able to schedule a meeting with Dr. Gail Fyke's second year nursing class. Our presentation happened at 8 a.m., and although we were informed by the nursing professor that students often have a hard time waking up to engage that early, the students were alert and full of questions! Securing trainings with healthcare professionals is important to me because research shows that 88% of individuals actively being trafficked will encounter a healthcare professional (Polaris, 2014). This means that the more healthcare professions are informed, the better. These helpers are in a position to assist a vulnerable population in giving them resources and offering kind, accepting, and trauma-informed care. I appreciated that students gave me their full attention and seemed interested in what I had to offer. It was a great experience, and I hope to...

Today we went to Springfield and presented to a full room about our Human Trafficking Research Lab work at the Illinois Department of Human Services, Office of Adult Services and Basic Supports, Bureau of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault & Human Trafficking. There were also people online in Chicago and throughout the state so it was a much larger group of people than I had anticipated. We shared with them the different types of research that we do in the lab using survey methods, network analysis, mapping software, and statistical analysis. It was great to showcase the research that we do and share our thoughts and impressions with policymakers and people who can actually change things in our state. I am trying to advocate for state level task force coordinator and possibly a hotline and the state entities are really focused on getting more assistance for victims/survivors. I hope our collaboration can continue!

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to host a Millikin University Human Trafficking Research Lab table at the A21 walk. This walk is intended to spread awareness of human trafficking. At the booth, we had research literature, keychains, totes, Fair Trade chocolates, and stress balls. Individuals who visited the table were given information on the research that we do here at Millikin. A heartbreaking and memorable moment occurred when a homeless woman walking through the park started crying and shared that her daughter is deceased because her trafficker killed her. This really made an impact on me and on why I do what I do. After hosting the table, we all left to walk the streets of downtown Springfield, Illinois, holding signs with various facts and statistics on human trafficking. The A21 walk put together a podcast on Spotify to listen to as we walked and held our signs. It was surrounding human trafficking and the difference one act can make to help spread awareness. It was a g...

After numerous rounds of revisions and almost a six month wait from acceptance to this FirstView, I am proud to see this article "Human Trafficking Dynamics and Prevention Efforts as an Outcome of Russia’s War on Ukraine" finally published in Nationalities Papers. I wrote this article in late 2022/2023 during the first full winter of the war among power disruptions and internet outages and it was difficult to write while dealing with the daily traumas of the war. I am thankful for all of the Ukrainians who took the time to talk to me about how the war has changed trafficking dynamics and responses. The article is based on years of fieldwork in Ukraine before and during the different stages of the war and it would not have been possible without Ukrainians who work everyday on the frontline of this war helping to combat human trafficking in their country! You can read the article here . 

We found out in late September that our Department of Justice OVC FY24 Enhanced Collaborative Model (ECM) Task Force to Combat Human Trafficking grant was not renewed which is disappointing. It means that I can no longer employ two students so I had to stop paying them (one will finish out her internship unpaid so at least she is getting course credit). It's definitely a weird scenario to go from having funding to pay my students and then in the middle of the semester (according to the federal fiscal year) not having funding. I will try to fundraise to continue to pay one of the students to work on a new project on policy narratives until my money runs out. As an academic, I am used to rejection but for some reason rejections with students always hit differently since we have to talk through them. It's a difficult conversation to have with students who depend on these grants. We haven't yet found out why we did not get it but we hope that the feedback that we receive will h...

This summer I was contacted by the Illinois Department of Human Services, Office of Adult Services and Basic Supports, Bureau of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking about our research and asked to join the Joint Human Trafficking Work Group. I attended a few meetings online and then at the end of September we had an in-person planning workshop in Springfield and Chicago. The purpose of the work group is to draft a Strategic Plan for Human Trafficking Victim Services & Funding. The group is is focused on creating a systematic approach to looking at how the state of Illinois responds to human trafficking and create systems that assign responsibility to agencies to develop protocols and training to better our responses to identified HT victims/survivors. They wanted to include all stakeholders such as law enforcement, service providers, state agencies, prosecutors and make recommendations through legislation and statutory change. It has been interesting to rev...

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been working on analyzing respondent data for a survey sent out to members of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Taskforce as part of the final assessment for the DOJ task force grant. As a Human Services/Psychology student at Millikin, I have analyzed and researched a fair amount of numerical data. It has been an enlightening process to learn how to analyze the data of answers to open-ended questions. At first, I felt challenged by this experience. Eventually, I came to feel grateful for the opportunity to learn something new which will help me as I continue on to graduate school. The survey included questions as to members' overall satisfaction with the task force and suggestions for improvement. The questions were all aimed at finding better ways to assist victims/survivors of human trafficking. While some members were not pleased and did not fully agree with one another on how to better serve this vulnerable population, there we...

We recently calculated and compiled a new Human Trafficking Research Lab Brief with findings from trainings conducted by the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF) members in 2022 and 2023. We have been tracking and mapping human trafficking trainings since 2019 and it was really interesting to see the progress over the last five years! Thanks to all of the CIHTTF members who conducted and reported their trainings, we could not report this data without you all! You can read the updated brief here . We plan on providing an overall analysis for the trainings from 2020-2024 in our final assessment for the CIHTTF grant so stay tuned for more information showcasing the impact of the CIHTTF. 

President Reynolds featured the Human Trafficking Research Lab as one of the four performance learning opportunities at Millikin University in his state of the university speech last May. This got lab members thinking about the uniqueness of the lab in the United States and the opportunities we provide for hands on research with a complex topic topic such as human trafficking. So the HTRL's newest research assistant Maggie Schrage's first job assignment was conducting an investigation on other research entities focused on human trafficking around the United States. Here is what she found: I was tasked with compiling data on other academic institutions conducting research on human trafficking. After many hours of researching and contacting universities across the United States, I located many legal clinics that help survivors of human trafficking with legal issues in the United States but there were fewer that focused on academic research. I found that the Human Trafficking Rese...