Human Trafficking Adjudication in Central Illinois Review of Arrest Records

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 offenses. This tells me that it would be beneficial if policy could be enacted for additional funding / requirements for the training of police officers across the state (and the nation). The importance of this seemingly daunting task is that the information will be reported to the U.S. Department of Justice, and that I am doing my small part behind the scenes to help victims/survivors of human trafficking.

-​Diana Terneus