"A Can of Worms: Challenges and opportunities in gathering modern slavery evidence

by Maya Esslemont

In recent years, the concept of ‘modern slavery’ has garnered significant academic, political and media interest. However political momentum, which peaked at the advent of the Modern Slavery Act’s passage in 2015, has now waned.1 Whilst there is some public data on modern slavery referrals, decisions and the characteristics of victims, practitioners still struggle to access reliable evidence on prevention, support, or identification. Inconsistent data access makes it difficult to assess the Government’s performance in addressing the drivers of exploitation or empowering survivors to recover. The influence of ‘data gaps’ cannot be understated. In the course of this research, professionals from a wide range of sectors reported that they have had to reconfigure or completely abandon projects due to a lack of available public data. Interviewees told us that planned work exploring survivors’ access to safe housing, the criminalisation of young victims, homelessness, and survivors’ health outcomes were amongst topics shelved due to a lack of evidence. Journalists told of having to drop reports on individual survivors’ stories, or emerging concerns held by practitioners, in the absence of national statistics.

Yet, where data is published, the output was often described as inaccurate, inconsistent, lacking in detail, or undermined by the bias of data producers’ chosen framing or ‘narratives’. In the absence of modern slavery statistics which meet the needs of practitioners, participants extolled the virtues of Parliamentary Questions (PQs) or Freedom of Information (FOI) requests as forms of evidence gathering (see 3. Requesting data). However, these methods come with challenges. The diminishing quality of data responses, coupled with the dwindling capacity and confidence of practitioners, deter many from asking for evidence in the first place. Through ‘A can of worms’: Challenges and opportunities in gathering modern slavery evidence, After Exploitation evaluates the needs of a diverse range of practitioners who use modern slavery evidence as part of their day-to-day work, alongside a five-person panel of experts with lived experience (the ‘PELE’). Recommendations for improving transparency and public data were shared by practitioners and the panel, and we have grouped data recommendations into six policy areas, explored in order of recommendation frequency: Entitlements and survivor outcomes (n=41); Immigration and enforcement (n=35); Policy monitoring and transparency (n=33), NRM recording (n=32), prevention (n=28) and criminal justice (n=21).

London: After Exploitation, 2024. 82p.