Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has announced a partnership she hopes will lessen human trafficking during the FIFA World Cup in Kansas City. Large events such as the World Cup are known to have an increased rate of human trafficking and Missouri is working to get ahead of this trend.
Safe House Project is a non-profit organization that aims to end human trafficking. The group has developed an app called Simply Report which gives people the ability to report to law enforcement any activity they feel is concerning.
Safe House Project CEO Kristi Wells said the Simply Report app uses artificial intelligence to parse the information people report.
“Everybody has a gut instinct, and there are times where we see something where we just aren’t confident, but we are concerned. And so the beautiful thing about using simply report is that they can share the suspicions and the things they’re seeing and they don’t have to know everything to report,” Wells said.
The app has been available for a year and there has already been considerable success in supporting victims of human trafficking.
“Within three months we saw a 371-percent increase in the number of victims identified and served by our organization and after 10 months we had a 1200-percent,” Wells said.
The Missouri Department of Public Safety says the state has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the country, with about 4 victims per 100,000 people.
Missouri was the 5th state to partner with Safe House Project and Director of Anti-Trafficking Operations, Diana Haines said this issue is important to the Attorney General.
“Catherine Hanaway is committed to protecting victims and preventing exploitation,” Haines said. “The attorney general will always work to get every tool available into the hands of law enforcement to catch traffickers and hold them accountable.”
There is no intention to get rid of Simply Safe after the World Cup.
“We will continue to use and promote Simply Report following the games, continuing to put the victims first," Haines said.
