Planning for freedom - how statistics can help us eradicate modern slavery

PA 35/18 Experts in modern slavery from the University of Nottingham are using a new way of calculating the precise number of slaves in a city, region or country, helping the fight for freedom. Working with the Home Office, Professor Kevin Bales CMG and Professor Sir Bernard Silverman from the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham have successfully used a technique known as the Multiple Systems Estimate (MSE) to calculate a reliable estimate of the true number of slaves in a specific location. Slavery is illegal in every country, which makes finding modern slaves very difficult. This exploitative crime, which affects over 40.3 million people globally, can take the form of forced marriage, forced labour, forced sexual exploitation and child soldiers. A well-hidden problem - Where slavery laws are well enforced, slaves are especially well hidden, making it hard to know how to best find and free them. Not knowing how many slaves exist means governments don't know how much money should be allocated to fight the crime. Because of its complex nature, modern slavery cannot be measured in the usual way we measure most crime, which involves surveying a sample of the general population to determine how many of them have been victims of different crimes.