Tackling sexual trafficking through police-academic collaboration

Commercial sexual exploitation is increasingly mediated through digital platforms such as Adult Service Websites. This presents a key challenge of police and other practitioners as those exploited by bad actors can be camouflaged among non-trafficked sex workers, rendering detection a complex and opaque process. 

To support practitioners in this context, Dr L’Hoiry and colleagues have developed the Sexual Trafficking Identification Matrix in collaboration with a range of law enforcement and other partners. The STIM supports practitioners to robustly and consistently risk assessment profiles hosted on Adult Service Websites to make evidence-based judgements of whether such profiles are more or less likely to be instances of trafficking. 

Key to the STIM’s value is the ongoing development of this tool, as part of which the academic team regularly engage with partitioners to iteratively develop the STIM and ensure it reflects developments in the modus operandi of bad actors as well and the changing landscape of non-traffic sex work.