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...