Combating Human Trafficking Using Natural Language Processing
Trafficking people into and within the USA is a nefarious, pervasive problem. Many forms of trafficking leave some trace in the infosphere. To detect them, wide-scale information extraction and distillation is helpful. In addition, efforts by law enforcement and other government agencies to combat trafficking provide a wealth of statistics about apprehensions, success rates, etc., which can be mined to find patterns and correlations with external events. Our work provides initial analysis and reporting to assist government efforts and to locate areas in which more elaborate research is likely to be worth increased investment.