Episode 225 | Just Estimating the Prevalence of Human Trafficking

Rebecca Pfeffer is a research criminologist in the Victimization and Resilience Research Program in RTI International’s Division of Applied Justice Research. Her research interests include better understanding and addressing the victimization of vulnerable populations, ranging from survivors of human trafficking to people with disabilities. Additionally, her work focuses on the law enforcement response to human trafficking and the collaborative efforts of law enforcement and victim service providers. Her work, ranging from program evaluations to exploratory research, often relies upon mixed methodologies. Dr. Pfeffer is an expert on human trafficking and has participated in expert working groups on trafficking research with the Office of Violence Against Women, the McCain Foundation, the Cook County Anti-Trafficking Task Force, and the Human Trafficking Research and Data Advisory Roundtable, among others. Before joining RTI in 2020, Dr. Pfeffer was a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Social Work at the University of Houston–Downtown from 2013 to 2020.  

Kelle Barrick, a senior research criminologist in the Division for Applied Justice Research, has 20 years of experience in criminal justice and criminological research. Dr. Barrick’s current efforts include estimating the prevalence of sex and labor trafficking; identifying successful strategies for the identification, investigation, and prosecution of labor trafficking cases; increasing our understanding of opportunities to disrupt sex trafficking recruitment and network operations; and conducting a formative evaluation of a law enforcement-based victim services program. She is an expert on human trafficking and has participated in expert working groups on trafficking research by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, among others. Dr. Barrick also has extensive experience with program evaluation in a broad variety of areas, including prisoner reentry, criminal justice reform, crime and violence reduction, community corrections, crime laboratory efficiency, homeland security, and responses to domestic violence. In 2009, Dr. Barrick received the American Society of Criminology’s Outstanding Article Award for a paper on the impact of felony labeling on recidivism.