Abstract
This chapter presents Prevention Now's design and use of predictive analytics as a method to identify risk factors for human trafficking and to intervene the upstream of exploitation. The method relies on a social-ecological framework for organizing risk factors and to guide analytical prevention efforts. Prevention Now is a non-profit anti-trafficking organization that is prioritizing a data-driven and multidisciplinary approach to trafficking prevention. This approach has three central aims: to develop trans-disciplinary partnerships, to build geographically-specific analytical models, and to translate model findings into targeted prevention. This chapter presents efforts undertaken by Prevention Now towards building collaborative partnerships across systems in a given geography, county, state, to inform data collection and prevention efforts. The chapter centers around Prevention Now's predictive analytics project involving four US states and its ability to leverage data collection and analysis in efforts to better understand the drivers of trafficking.
TopHuman Trafficking Through The Social-Ecological Lens: Focus On Prevention
Prevention of human trafficking can mean many things in the field of anti-human trafficking research, practice, and policy. Often human trafficking prevention is described via levels of prevention: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Generically, primary prevention works to stop an event, such as a disease, an infection, or a violence event, before it ever occurs; secondary prevention provides an immediate detection and response to an event or an intervention to interrupt an event; and tertiary prevention seeks to prevent or minimize the long-term impact of an event that has occurred (Alpert & Chin, 2017; Gibbons et al., 2020). In the context of human trafficking, primary prevention seeks to prevent trafficking from ever occurring, often by either interrupting the causal paths between trafficking risk factors and trafficking or by addressing and undoing the risk factors, also known as root causes, of trafficking (Alpert & Chin, 2017). Secondary prevention may occur in a number of ways, including intervening to minimize how many times an individual is trafficked, providing education to help trafficking identification, or offering help and resources to facilitate trafficking exit or to avoid re-victimization (Alpert & Chin, 2017). Tertiary prevention of trafficking includes policy and programming for those who have been trafficked to mitigate the harmful consequences of their trafficking experience (Alpert & Chin, 2017). Successful primary prevention of human trafficking ensures that no individual experiences exploitation and, as such, is the level of prevention focused mainly on in this chapter. In the anti-human trafficking field, many current efforts begin their primary prevention by an understanding of the risk factors of trafficking and illuminating the pathways that may lead from risk to subsequent trafficking.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Human Trafficking Data Needs Assessment (HTDNA): The assessment tool Prevention Now leverages to gain a better understanding of anti-trafficking and data collection efforts in a new geography.
Data Analytics: The process of converting raw information into outcomes.
Primary Prevention: The efforts developed to stop an event, which can include crime or injury, before it ever occurs.
Driver: The causal risk factor(s) that creates the conditions for human trafficking to occur.
Multi-Disciplinary Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force: ( MATTF): The federally funded, state specific team that bring together nonprofits, community members and law enforcement to develop a collaborative response to human trafficking.
Tertiary Prevention: The efforts developed to mitigate the negative impact of an event, which can include crime or injury, particularly the long-term outcomes once the event has occurred.
Secondary Prevention: The efforts developed to detect and stop or treat an event, which can include crime or injury, once it occurs and to prevent recurrence of the event.