Policing is undergoing rapid transformation. As societies face new and more complex challenges, police workloads increasingly focus on managing risks of harm to vulnerable people. At the same time, public debate voicing concerns about police priorities is rising, driven by questions about what the police do and about legitimacy in the face of discriminatory practices. Dramatic increases in complex cases coupled with cuts to public services have resulted in the police frequently acting as 'the service of first resort', at the frontline of responding to urgent social problems such as mental illness, homelessness and exploitation. The presence of such vulnerabilities draw the police into responses alongside other service providers (such as health, social care and housing) often with little clarity of roles, boundaries or shared purpose. Simultaneously, the transformation of data and its use are beginning to reshape how public services operate. They raise new questions about how to work in ethical ways with data to understand and respond to vulnerability. These shifts in police-work are mirrored around the world and pose significant challenges to how policing is undertaken and how the police interact with other public services, as well as how policing affects vulnerable people who come into contact with services. The Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre aims to understand how vulnerabilities shape demand for policing and how partner organisations can prevent future harm and vulnerability through integrated public service partnerships. Rooted in rich local data collection and deep dives into specific problems, the Centre will build a knowledge base with applications and implications across the UK and beyond. It will have significant reach through collaborative work with a range of regional, national and international partners, shaping policy and practice through networks, practitioner exchanges and comparative research, and through training the next generation of scholars to take forward new approaches to vulnerabilities research and co-production with service providers, service receivers and the public. The Centre will be an international focal point for research, policy, practice and public debate. Jointly led by York and Leeds, with expertise from Durham, Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, UCL, Monash and Temple universities and the Police Foundation, and working with a network of 38 partners, it will explore fundamental questions regarding the role police and their partners should play in modern society. While focusing policing effort on the most vulnerable holds promise for a fairer society, targeting specific groups raises questions about who counts as vulnerable and has the potential to stigmatise and increase intervention in the lives of marginalised citizens. At a critical time of change for policing, the Centre will ensure that research, including evidence drawing on public opinion and the voices of vulnerable people, is at the heart of these debates. The Centre will undertake three interconnected strands of research. The first focuses on how vulnerability develops in urban areas, drawing together diverse public sector datasets (police, health, social services and education) to understand interactions between agencies and the potential to prevent vulnerabilities. The second explores how police and partners can best collaborate in response to specific vulnerabilities, including exploitation by County Lines drug networks, online child sexual exploitation, domestic abuse, modern slavery, mental illness and homelessness. The third will combine research into public opinion with a programme to embed research evidence into policy, practice and public debate, creating a new understanding of vulnerability and transforming capability to prevent harm and future vulnerabilities through integrated partnership working, reshaping the future of policing as a public service.

Human trafficking is widely described as one of the world's biggest, fastest growing and most lucrative organised crimes. For all the bold rhetoric, there is woefully little scientific evidence on human trafficking's scale, nature, distribution, organisation and evolution. The number of victims officially identified in the UK grows year-on-year but these cases are just the tip of the iceberg as many victims go unreported or undetected. A recent estimate suggested the UK had around 7,000 to 10,000 trafficking victims in one year. Human trafficking is not only a complex social issue but also a very emotive one: it often involves the sale of vulnerable people and extreme exploitation of their bodies and labour. It causes serious harms, undermining the safety, security and welfare of individual victims, communities and nations. Many millions of pounds are spent each year trying to combat trafficking. Without a strong evidence base, there is a very real risk that myths, stereotypes, assumptions and hidden agendas step in to fill the gaps. Ill-informed measures can be very costly, ineffective and even actively detrimental. It is therefore vital to invest in high-quality research to improve understanding and inform policy and practice. Our ultimate vision is to improve how data are used to analyse and intervene in transnational human trafficking. Our research will support a far more targeted and nuanced approach to counter-trafficking. It focuses on three key dimensions to the complex systems involved in trafficking: social structures, geographical space and time. We will systematically examine the structure of the social networks in which traffickers and victims are embedded, identifying key roles and vulnerabilities. We will determine where major steps in the trafficking process occur, mapping hotspots (places where crime concentrates), profiling key locations and examining supply and demand, risk and resilience and geographical flows. We will analyse patterns and trends in trafficking and their evolution over time. Throughout the research, we will explore the implications of our results for better detecting, deterring and disrupting trafficking, increasing resilience and reducing harms. Our project will be the largest and most comprehensive assessment of transnational human trafficking affecting the UK. It will include adult and child victims trafficked for diverse purposes, including exploitation in the sex trade, the home and numerous other licit and illicit labour markets. Data access is a notorious barrier to trafficking research but we have remarkable access to important national datasets: the UK's central system for victim identification; the Modern Slavery Helpline; and a unique research dataset on trafficking networks. We will also draw widely on publicly available datasets (e.g. Census data) to inform our analyses. We will use methods that vastly advance understanding of human trafficking but have rarely been possible in this field due to shortages of data and skills. Our work is truly interdisciplinary, drawing on geography, crime science, criminology, data science, epidemiology, sociology, computer science and mathematics. Our research will generate vital insights into transnational human trafficking on an unprecedented scale. We have an outstanding team that combines leading academics, non-governmental organisations, law enforcement and government. Our collaborative approach positions us well to translate excellent scientific research into genuine change. As well traditional academic outputs, we will run interactive workshops in the UK and abroad, develop a software solution, training and toolkits, produce policy briefings and deliver an innovative and tightly targeted campaign to counter trafficking. We will also run events and produce outputs designed to stimulate more high-quality research and research-informed interventions not just around human trafficking but other transnational organised crimes.

There are approximately 30 million slaves alive today. Around the world, including in the UK, these disposable people are held against their will, trapped in a situation of control such as a person might control a thing, and forced to work for no pay. This number is more than at any point in history and more people than were transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere during the entirety of the Atlantic slave trade. It is a number greater than the population of Australia and almost seven times greater than the population of Ireland. It includes around 1.1 million enslaved people in Europe. Over the past 15 years, a growing movement against this new global slavery has achieved many successes, including new legislation, a small number of prosecutions, changes to company supply-chains, and increased public awareness. But it is repeating mistakes of the past. Around the world, it starts from scratch rather than learning from earlier antislavery successes and failures. Focused on urgent liberations and prosecutions, antislavery workers operate within short time frames and rarely draw on the long history of antislavery successes, failures, experiments and strategies. At the same time, the public reads about shocking cases of women enslaved for 30 years in London, children enslaved in rural cannabis factories, and the large number of slaves who mine the conflict minerals used to make our mobile phones and laptops. For many of us, this presence of slavery confounds our understanding of history: wasn't slavery brought to an end? Weren't the slaves emancipated? This confusion extends beyond the public to politicians, policy makers, human rights groups, and educators. Official responses to slavery cases often reflect this confusion, expressing more emotional outrage than clear thinking. However, responding to recently-expressed interest by antislavery groups and policy makers, including the recent appeal by Luis C. DeBaca (Ambassador in the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons) for scholars to translate the lessons of abolitionism for contemporary use, our project seeks to provide this movement with a usable past of antislavery examples and methods. We will bring to the present the important lessons from antislavery movements and policies of the past, and help translate those lessons into effective tools for policy makers, civil society, and citizens. As we identify, theorise and embed antislavery as a protest memory for contemporary abolitionism in this way, we will also emphasise that what earlier antislavery generations achieved was harder than what we face today, we don't have to repeat the mistakes of past movements, the voices of survivors are the best signposts to where we should be going next, and the lessons of past antislavery movements offer a way to 'care for the future'. Throughout the project and across all its strands, we offer in the face of a mammoth task-ending the enslavement of 30 million people-a reminder of past antislavery achievements. For example, on the eve of the American Revolution, few Americans could envision a world in which slavery did not exist. Yet 100 years later, slavery did become illegal in the United States. This was an achievement that stemmed from the collective, varied and ever-evolving protest of countless slaves and abolitionists. Today we have a chance to end slavery, and to do so within our own lifetimes. This will be a watershed for humanity, a moment when we finally reject *the* great lie of history, that some people are sub-human, and embrace instead that great abolitionist truth-the truth that earlier abolitionists tried to teach us-that labour must not be forced and that people are not for sale.

There are approximately 30 million slaves alive today. Around the world, including in the UK, these disposable people are held against their will, trapped in a situation of control such as a person might control a thing, and forced to work for no pay. This number is more than at any point in history and more people than were transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere during the entirety of the Atlantic slave trade. It is a number greater than the population of Australia and almost seven times greater than the population of Ireland. It includes around 1.1 million enslaved people in Europe. Over the past 15 years, a growing movement against this new global slavery has achieved many successes, including new legislation, a small number of prosecutions, changes to company supply-chains, and increased public awareness. But it is repeating mistakes of the past. Around the world, it starts from scratch rather than learning from earlier antislavery successes and failures. Focused on urgent liberations and prosecutions, antislavery workers operate within short time frames and rarely draw on the long history of antislavery successes, failures, experiments and strategies. At the same time, the public reads about shocking cases of women enslaved for 30 years in London, children enslaved in rural cannabis factories, and the large number of slaves who mine the conflict minerals used to make our mobile phones and laptops. For many of us, this presence of slavery confounds our understanding of history: wasn't slavery brought to an end? Weren't the slaves emancipated? This confusion extends beyond the public to politicians, policy makers, human rights groups, and educators. Official responses to slavery cases often reflect this confusion, expressing more emotional outrage than clear thinking. However, responding to recently-expressed interest by antislavery groups and policy makers, including the recent appeal by Luis C. DeBaca (Ambassador in the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons) for scholars to translate the lessons of abolitionism for contemporary use, our project seeks to provide this movement with a usable past of antislavery examples and methods. We will bring to the present the important lessons from antislavery movements and policies of the past, and help translate those lessons into effective tools for policy makers, civil society, and citizens. As we identify, theorise and embed antislavery as a protest memory for contemporary abolitionism in this way, we will also emphasise that what earlier antislavery generations achieved was harder than what we face today, we don't have to repeat the mistakes of past movements, the voices of survivors are the best signposts to where we should be going next, and the lessons of past antislavery movements offer a way to 'care for the future'. Throughout the project and across all its strands, we offer in the face of a mammoth task-ending the enslavement of 30 million people-a reminder of past antislavery achievements. For example, on the eve of the American Revolution, few Americans could envision a world in which slavery did not exist. Yet 100 years later, slavery did become illegal in the United States. This was an achievement that stemmed from the collective, varied and ever-evolving protest of countless slaves and abolitionists. Today we have a chance to end slavery, and to do so within our own lifetimes. This will be a watershed for humanity, a moment when we finally reject *the* great lie of history, that some people are sub-human, and embrace instead that great abolitionist truth-the truth that earlier abolitionists tried to teach us-that labour must not be forced and that people are not for sale.

The landscape of where modern slavery and sexual exploitation takes place has changed over the past decade with the onset of digital technologies dominating the organisation of the commercial sex industry. Adult Service Websites, where most sexual services are advertised, negotiated and facilitated in the UK, have been identified as a space where offenders and traffickers can manipulate, entrap, coerce and force individuals into selling sexual services. Whilst the majority of commercial sex interactions are amongst consenting adults and legal, the role of ASWs in facilitating offending behaviour is complicated and least regulated. There are many agencies trying to understand this relationship, with national intelligence services understanding routes to trafficking and the police working to identify victims and target offenders. In addition there are first responders who deliver interventions to victims to assist with treating their crimes seriously and helping individuals move away from exploiters. This project, will for the first time, bring together a range of organisations who are working to prevent modern slavery in ASWs, in an effort to understand, share new knowledge and learning, and work towards strategies and actions plans that can reduce crimes of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. The core partners in the project are the National Crime Agency, National Police Chief's Council, and the NGO Unseen. Together we will investigate how ASWs can be at the forefront of preventing modern slavery, what those who use ASWs to sell and buy sex think about the platforms, legislation to govern them and strategies to prevent harm. The design of the project includes survivors who will inform the research process, data analysis and knowledge transfer activities. Capacity building activities are built into the design by implementing a training programme for survivors around research skills, upskilling, employability skills and access to higher education. We plan to develop training for third party businesses around sexual exploitation as well as engage the ASW operators in developing transparent and robust mechanisms to prevent their websites harbouring exploitation. Our work will feed directly into government discussions, APPGs and other forums to bring this contemporary data to the places where modern slavery, sex work and policing are discussed at strategic and operational levels.