Characterizing sex trafficking in Pennsylvania for law enforcement

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that involves force, fraud, and coercion against individuals either into forced labor or to perform sexual acts, with sex slavery receiving significant attention over the past number of years. Human trafficking has been categorized as the third most profitable crime behind the drug and arms trades. Our small research team of mostly undergraduate students is developing methodologies for law enforcement to examine sex trafficking in Pennsylvania. The goal is to define methods and tools to mine open source information that are effective at providing actionable intelligence to actively contribute to the understanding, characterization and ultimately to combat sex trafficking in the region.