Tonight at 7:00pm EST: Applying a human-centred approach to improve our understanding of human trafficking in Alberta, Canada
Cortney Rinker
ABSTRACT: Human trafficking is considered a hidden crime for several reasons, including the fear Victims face from their traffickers, Victims’ distrust of authorities, and that Victims are kept hidden by their traffickers and from seeking help. In 2021, an Alberta based non-profit organization embarked on a project to make the unseen, seen. To find a way to aggregate meaningful data on Victims/Survivors of human trafficking beyond police-reported crime data, the only official statistics of human trafficking which significantly underestimate the reality. With a two-year government grant the project embarked on the unique challenge to enable cross-agency data sharing to better understand the prevalence and context of human trafficking in Alberta. We conducted semi-structured interviews with community serving agencies, law enforcement, and Survivors of human trafficking. The presentation will show how an anthropological approach was used to understand the current state of human trafficking data collection practices, the barriers to change, and the needs of stakeholders to improve cross-agency collaboration. The approach included the voice of Survivors and utilized an understanding of the stakeholder community’s cultural dynamics to design a feasible solution. As a result, a data portal prototype was built, aggregating organizational human trafficking data for the first time.