This planning grant award will contribute to the advancement of national welfare and interests by building a multifaceted research team comprised of academics and professionals to (1) assess how criminals use information technology to support their domestic sex trafficking supply networks, (2) explore how the criminal justice system has successfully used or struggled to use information technology to detect, disrupt, and dismantle illicit supply networks, and (3) create interventions to disrupt domestic sex trafficking supply networks based on the knowledge gained from examining the use of information technology by traffickers and criminal justice system professionals. Trafficker’s use of information technology makes illicit supply networks more difficult to disrupt, but this use of information technology creates digital footprints that can enable criminal justice professionals to identify traffickers and obtain evidence necessary for arrest and prosecution. Although many information technologies have been developed to support the criminal justice system’s efforts in detecting and disrupting illicit supply networks, these technologies often fail to achieve the intended impacts due to resource constraints within various agencies. This project creates a multifaceted research team of academics and professionals to examine the varying levels of effective use of information technology within the criminal justice system and to determine what policies, practices, or training can be instituted to solve this problem. This research will develop new training programs on domestic sex trafficking supply networks for criminal justice system professionals; disseminate new insights to target domestic sex trafficking supply networks; and encourage new policies or practices to detect or disrupt domestic sex trafficking supply networks, which will provide societal benefits to improve the human condition.
Through workshops and online collaborations, the project will bring together academics and professionals as part of a multifaceted research team to collaborate and develop a shared understanding of how criminals use information technology to develop supply networks and how information technology is used (or not used) for interdiction in domestic sex trafficking supply networks. Research team members that are criminal justice system professionals will offer their practical knowledge to inform current research. The academic research team members from engineering, business, and social science disciplines will provide expertise in supply networks, network analysis, human trafficking, and information technology to stimulate creative ideas regarding how to effectively disrupt resilient illicit supply networks. Since domestic sex trafficking supply networks are often connected to other types of illicit supply networks, such as labor trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering, this research effort will augment research examining the detection and disruption of other types of illicit supply networks. The research team’s collaboration efforts will provide a framework for future research on the disruption of domestic sex trafficking as members of this multifaceted research team disseminate insights to their own discipline through conferences, journal articles, reports, and panel discussions. Additionally, new training programs based on the research team’s findings will be developed and offered to criminal justice system professionals.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
