Abstract
In the United Kingdom, human trafficking and, more recently, modern slavery has been pushed up the political and policy agenda. At the same time, partnership working has been promoted at international and national levels in order to encourage a more holistic response to trafficking. This article examines the nature of the evidence collected to monitor and evaluate the activities and outcomes of organisations involved in a number of human trafficking partnerships in England and Wales. Underpinning this analysis is the ‘4 Ps’ approach to tackling human trafficking: Prevention, Protection, Prosecution and Partnership. Based on interviews with a variety of actors working in different partner bodies, limitations of evidence in relation to both monitoring activities as well as evaluating outcomes emerged. These relate to inadequate data collection, lack of robust methods of data collection, untested assumptions, the complexity of gathering evidence which reflect human welfare oriented goals, and the sharing of evidence between partner organisations. A key finding is that current data and methods of data collection are inadequate for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of anti-trafficking initiatives and partnerships. Another key finding is the way in which partnerships challenged received outcomes and expanded their focus beyond victims of trafficking or criminal justice goals. Finally, I explore whether criminal justice outcomes can be leveraged to foster deterrence, by interrogating what evidence might be needed.
Highlights
Human trafficking has been pushed up the political agenda in the United Kingdom (UK) as a result of new legislation, including the Modern Slavery Act of March 2015, and the appointment of an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner with a remit ‘to encourage good practice in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of modern slavery offences and the identification of victims’.1 the designation of modern slavery as a threat by the National Crime Agency (NCA) has demonstrated the importance attached to tackling human trafficking and other forms of enslavement as serious organised crimes.[2]The Modern Slavery Act which covers England and Wales has had a number of profound consequences
This article examines the nature of the evidence collected to monitor and evaluate the activities and outcomes of organisations involved in a number of human trafficking partnerships in England and Wales
Partnership working was deemed effective based on the evidence of more victims being recorded by the police which led to more investigations of human trafficking
Summary
Human trafficking has been pushed up the political agenda in the United Kingdom (UK) as a result of new legislation, including the Modern Slavery Act of March 2015, and the appointment of an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner with a remit ‘to encourage good practice in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of modern slavery offences and the identification of victims’.1 the designation of modern slavery as a threat by the National Crime Agency (NCA) has demonstrated the importance attached to tackling human trafficking and other forms of enslavement as serious organised crimes.[2]. Awareness-raising amongst the public and training of staff, in particular front-line professionals, has been promoted by international and national policy.[12] It appears to be NGOs in the UK who have developed the expertise to offer awareness-raising or training packages.[13] an awareness-raising NGO may be a critical organisation in an antitrafficking partnership as it can provide the capability to enhance understanding of human trafficking, of indicators of trafficking and, where appropriate, points of referral This leads to the question about what evidence is collected to determine what activities took place (monitoring data), and the outcomes achieved (evaluation data). The question is, is this the case? Is there evidence in the short term that training facilitates victim identification or might this be a long-term outcome which makes it more difficult to evidence a relationship between training and victim identification?
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