CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Human trafficking affects more than 20 million people worldwide, but it is hard to get people to report suspected cases. Often they don’t recognize the signs of trafficking, and many fear for their own safety.
Lisa Mercer, a University of Illinois graphic design professor who specializes in interactive design to create tools for social change, developed a cellphone app that enables users to report suspected cases of human trafficking anonymously. Mercer founded Operation Compass, a nonprofit organization that provides the app, and teaches people how to recognize the signs of human trafficking. She is working to expand her pilot program – Operation Compass North Texas – to Illinois.
Polaris, a national organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, estimates there are nearly 21 million cases of human trafficking worldwide. They include forced labor, child labor and forced prostitution. There is no official estimate of the number of human trafficking victims in the U.S., but the organization estimates the number reaches into the hundreds of thousands.
Mercer earned a master’s degree in design research at the University of North Texas. The nearby Dallas-Fort Worth area has one of the largest number of human trafficking victims in the country. Mercer considered creating an app for victims of human trafficking to get help. But many of them don’t identify themselves as victims, she said, so she looked at ways to help others report suspected cases.
Polaris has received more than 31,000 cases reported to its hotline in the last eight years. However, only a few hundred of these were reported by truck drivers, even though truck stops are places with high incidences of human trafficking, Mercer said. “It made me wonder why,” she said.
She talked with truck drivers about how they use technology, how they identified human trafficking and why they did or did not report it. She learned that they often could not distinguish between forced sex trafficking and prostitution that was a voluntary activity.
Safety also was a major concern. A solicitation was often a cover for theft of a truck’s cargo. If a truck driver called the police, he was often accused by the suspected victim of a crime himself. And drivers were reluctant to make reports that listed their names and addresses, out of concern for the safety of their families, Mercer said.
“I met so many drivers who wanted to be part of the solution,” she said. “If we could give them a way to create reports safely within their own rig and if they could do it anonymously, they would be more likely to do it.”
The Operation Compass app allows a user to report information about the suspected victim, the type of trafficking and the location. Mercer created a partnership with Mosaic Family Services, a Dallas organization that helps victims of human trafficking and domestic violence. Mosaic receives all the reports made through Operation Compass, and Mercer’s organization also has a working relationship with the Dallas Police Department.
Mercer launched the pilot for Operation Compass in December 2015. She recruited truck drivers to use the app through Twitter and Facebook and in person at a large annual trucking show in Dallas.
Operation Compass also provides education by working with service providers to teach community members about the signs of human trafficking and how to report it. Many of the audiences are members of trade industries, such as hospitality, electricians and plumbers – those who might be in a position to see someone who is a victim of trafficking.
The app has been downloaded to 1,751 phones and launched nearly 3,400 times. Mosaic has received about 20 reports through the app – more than a dozen in the pilot program’s first year. Although that may seem like a low number, Mercer said it is actually quite successful, given how infrequently suspected human trafficking is reported.
“I don’t think it’s often a conscious decision of, ‘I don’t want to get involved.’ I think it’s people not even recognizing what’s in front of them,” she said. “It can happen in any location, to any group. It can go unidentified in the suburbs because people don’t perceive it happening there.”
Since joining the faculty of the U. of I. School of Art and Design, Mercer is looking at making connections with service providers in central Illinois. She’s planning to update the app so it will recognize the geographic location of a user and connect the report with a service provider in that area.
Mercer also sees a need for service providers to be able to share information with each other. Victims usually need services from more than one provider, and existing databases make it hard to share case information, she said. She’s working on a prototype database that would make sharing information easier and also help police in better identifying locations with a high number of suspected incidences of trafficking.