Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

The Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin invited to be a member of the Human Trafficking Working Group sponsored by the Illinois Human Services Department in 2024. This group was tasked with working on legislation SB2323 Illinois Statewide Trauma-Informed Response to Human Trafficking Act. We lobbied and filled out witness slips for the house and senate bills and the Governor will sign this bill into law in summer 2025. We were proud to serve on the statewide working group that wrote this legislation and our research is featured in this WAND News story ! Great news for survivors seeking justice in Illinois!

As I finish my Criminal Justice practicum in the Human Trafficking Research Lab, I have come to realize that human trafficking labs have a big impact on crime research and development. I realized from analyzing in Champaign County the data is that it can be complicated to identify possible trafficking cases however there where cases from 2017 of different forms of exploitation and solicitation. I also had to make possible conclusions of certain cases of possible trafficking, where these cases had a child unlawfully restrained and sexual abuse in these cases. This demonstrated that children are possible being restrained for exploitation which could be considered human trafficking. I am thankful for the opportunity to do research in the lab this semester. Devin Top

This semester in the Human Trafficking Research Lab has been busy. Earlier in the year, I attended a panel discussion on human trafficking and how police tackle the challenges and developments that they come across. I was representing the lab and informing people about the work that we do at Millikin. There were several police officers present as well as FBI agents who answered questions from Dr. Dean and students who came to watch. They talked about the implications of the new policies put into place by the Trump administration, and spoke on their experiences with fighting human trafficking.  Throughout the semester, we met in the human trafficking lab to discuss our work that we have done with data collection. We also learned from Dr. Dean about students who came before us, and the work that they did with the lab. The meetings were productive, and they taught me more about who supports the work we do. We met once every two weeks, and the meetings were small in size so that we cou...

I was at Cambridge University for the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe las week and was able to visit a the Fitzwilliam Museum and their special exhibit Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, and Abolition. The exhibit was really well done and I learned about slavery from the context of the United Kingdom especially in their colonies in the Caribbean and Africa. I also learned about abolitionist Olaudah Equiano who seemed similar to Fedrick Douglas from the American context as a formally enslaved person who write and spoke about their experiences. The exhibit also talked about the museum's connections to slavery which I felt was very appropriate in coming to terms with their colonial past.  I plan to use some of what I learned in my fall Human Trafficking class and am thankful for the opportunity to learn new things about the international abolition movement.