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Closing Pandora’s Box: A Single Strategy to Exponentially Destroy Human Trafficking

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Sarah was a normal American girl with the same aspirations as any other. She loved horses, her family, and her boyfriend. She dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but she never got the chance to work toward that goal—or any of her personal goals. Sarah had just been killed by a pimp. Her body was left in a park as a warning to his other victims. You see, "pimp" is just a less harsh term for a human trafficker, and Sarah was a victim of human trafficking.

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What you just read might sound harsh, but this is the reality of modern human trafficking in the USA, and it's not uncommon. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an 846% increase in suspected child trafficking cases over just five years, attributing this growth to the digitization of the human trafficking market—the ability for traffickers to advertise people online. Sarah was first contacted by her trafficker online, recruited online, and advertised online. Her trafficker communicated online with customers, booked hotel rooms online, took payments online, and transferred money to bank accounts online. Almost all of her trafficker's activity took place in digital spaces.

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The traditional approach to fighting human trafficking has been to assign the task solely to law enforcement. This "law-enforcement-first" strategy has resulted in roughly a 1%-10% disruption of human trafficking operations. While new training and the application of data and AI has proven to help law enforcement become more effective, even these innovative approaches have their limitations. As of the last effective law enforcement census in 2018, there are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the USA, with most focusing on state and local issues. There are simply not enough officers to support the traditional single-point disruption strategy.

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To illustrate the limitation of this approach, imagine a human trafficker as a runner attempting to complete a 100-meter dash, representing a trafficking operation. In the traditional model, we place one low hurdle at the very end of the track—law enforcement. The trafficker faces only this final hurdle, and given its low height (low probability of getting caught), the odds are overwhelmingly in the criminal's favor. Even if authorities devote more resources and raise this hurdle, the trafficker might still enjoy an 80% chance or greater of crossing the finish line. It is impossible to raise a single hurdle high enough to reliably stop these criminals; constraints on resources and civil liberties, as well as criminals' adaptive tactics, make that unfeasible.

However, if we add multiple hurdles along the track, each representing an intervention at a different transaction point, the cumulative effect can flip the odds against the trafficker. This forms the basis of the 10-points of disruption strategy: enlist private industry players who operate or influence each transaction point (financial institutions, technology companies, transportation services, etc.) to act as "hurdles" that increase friction and risk for illicit operations. By partnering with industry, we move beyond the failed model of last-minute intervention and instead create multiple opportunities to intercept or derail trafficking before it reaches completion.

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The Ten Points of Disruption

Human trafficking operations depend on traffickers successfully navigating these essential transaction points:

1. Market Opportunity – Would-be traffickers must first witness others making money from trafficking and realize the opportunity for themselves.

2. Recruitment – Traffickers acquire victims through fraud on social media, dating apps, and other online means.

3. Control – Traffickers control victims through physical and psychological domination marked by force, fraud, or coercion.

4. Advertisement – Traffickers must market victims to potential clients online.

5. Communication – Traffickers must communicate with customers.

6. Transport – Traffickers must move victims between physical locations.

7. Service – Traffickers deliver the illicit "product" to customers.

8. Payment – Traffickers collect money from clients.

9. Banking – Traffickers store and launder their profits.

10. Legal Compliance – Traffickers work to avoid detection from traditional law enforcement.

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Each of the above transaction points represents a vulnerability in the trafficking market that industry partners can exploit. When partners implement targeted detection and disruption measures alongside law enforcement, the trafficking operation faces multiple hurdles rather than the single law enforcement hurdle at the end.

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The Mathematics of Disruption: Compound Probabilities

A trafficking operation needs to clear all ten hurdles (transaction points) to succeed. The traditional law enforcement approach places one hurdle with 1-10% effectiveness at the end, giving traffickers a 90-99% chance of success. However, with multiple disruption points, the probability of successfully disrupting a trafficking operation compounds dramatically. We can use mathematics to turn the advantage away from the trafficker:

• Moderate effectiveness: If each of the ten points is 20% effective, there is an 89.3% chance of disrupting the trafficking operation (0.8^10).

• Likely variable effectiveness: If effectiveness varies between 10%-50% across the ten points, there is a 97.9% chance of disruption (0.7×0.6×0.5×0.8×0.75×0.55×0.65×0.9×0.85×0.6).

• Conservative variable effectiveness: Even with a modest 5%-20% effectiveness per hurdle, the probability of disruption still reaches 65.8% (0.85×0.85×0.87×0.88×0.90×0.90×0.92×0.93×0.94×0.95).

• Pessimistic variable effectiveness: If we only achieve effectiveness of 1%-5%, we still achieve a 20% disruption rate—more than double the effectiveness of the current approach (0.96×0.97×0.97×0.97×0.98×0.98×0.98×0.99×0.99×0.99).

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Each disruption point multiplies the barriers traffickers face, fundamentally altering their risk-reward calculation. Unlike traditional demand reduction strategies (prostitution stings, public shaming campaigns), this approach creates systemic market friction, which is proven to reduce demand in any market. Each intervention becomes more effective as others are implemented—creating a reinforcing cycle of disruption.

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Market Forces Against Trafficking

Illicit markets respond to externalities (adding hurdles) in the same way that legal markets do. Each disruption point introduces a negative externality that increases friction in trafficking operations. These externalities increase the gap between theoretical and actual demand (deadweight loss), leading to market contraction and a reduction in both supply and demand. With each successful disruption, the remaining operations face higher scrutiny and risk, which further accelerates market decline.

 

The key insight here is that disrupting human trafficking doesn't require waiting for law enforcement to act—industry players already control the critical transaction points needed to fight this crime, and the data and AI layers that make it cheap and easy to do so can be implemented today.

 

Want to learn more about the 10 points of disruption strategy and see the mathematics? Fill out the form below to get access to my comprehensive 23-page paper detailing the strategy.