Stating the Problem
Grubb and Bennett (2012) stated “since the 1990s, human trafficking or ‘trafficking in persons’ has been brought to the forefront of criminal justice issues, sparking international anti-trafficking effort among human rights proponents, governments entities and law enforcement agencies throughout the world.” Human trafficking is still a problem and the current anti-trafficking efforts are just not enough in bringing down the criminals partaking in this. So what more is there that we can do to stop this? Cameras play a big role in just about the average person in today’s society. Smartphones cameras, traffic stop cameras. ATM cameras, and home security cameras are just few of the everyday cameras we come into contact on the daily. There is also high tech systems that are able to use facial recognition to track people. So with this type of technology in this day and age how are todays heroes, law enforcement, utilizing different systems and software’s to narrow down the whereabouts of victims and suspects involved?
Justifying an Interdisciplinary Approach
Human trafficking, has been a problem, and a hard one at that because it faces a threat to all social classes and no laws have currently made a drastic effect. With the advances in technology in the last decade it helps us in solving this problem. The discipline of computer science helps us help solve this issue through technology which is crucial. Organizational leadership is another discipline to help solve the problem because law enforcement can get the training they need to use the software and high tech surveillance systems. Mainly, they need to know how to use those systems as it pertains to this problem of human trafficking. With the integration of the disciplines, computer science and organizational leadership, true success can come out of lowering the illegal activity of human trafficking and finding victims beforetime runs out.
Identification of Relevant Disciplines
Many disciplines could have been used for Human trafficking, including but not limiting sociology and law for reasons that may seem obvious. For research on this specific focus question the disciplines of computer science and Organizational leadership applied better. According to Repko , “by adequacy interdisciplinarians mean knowing enough about the discipline to have a basic understanding of how it approaches, as well as illuminates and characterizes, the problem” (Repko, 2012, p. 102).
Computer science is essentially a type of software that is made to program a sequence of codes that then tells the hardware itself what to do. Computer science’s main principle, or one of them, is to tell a computer what needs to be done. Developers in the computer science realm create algorithms that help solve the problem. Which will allow the computer to read and execute the task. With this, developers can create more advanced surveillance technology and video processing. The computer science discipline doesn’t have much foundational theories that be applied to this. Most of the computer science research is experimental and falls under the STEM category.
Organizational leadership, which most consisted of quantitative studies for this paper, is making sure those who are the textbook definition of a leader are one. Ensuring that efficiency is at its max within. Guzman (2015) explained, leaders focus on their surroundings, encourage, and participate in activities within the group. This leadership style could help law enforcement in diminishing human trafficking.
Conflicts
Conflicts will occur when two different disciplines have a different perspective on a problem. As Repko states, “it is essential to identify conflicts because it stands in the way of creating common ground and, thus, of achieving integration” (Repko, 2012, p.294). In the Computer science case, the assumption is a persons face will be visible entirely by the cameras used within the recognition technology. All the research examined was done in a controlled environment for this research paper. In real life, faces may be partially covered or the lighting can significantly change the results of how successful it can be. This does contradict Lin’s article, because it has been stated how their successful experiment can be done In the real world. The conflicts between the computer science and organizational leadership discipline is how the facial recognition software can lead to privacy issues.
Four techniques in reference to common ground are explained by Newell (2006). They are redefinition, extension, organization and transformation. Using those techniques, when explained about the problem of the system itself not working due to uncontrollable things such as lighting, include the improvements of such as improving the quality of the facial recognition system. If lead in the right direction, software as well as the product itself can be made better so that things such a lighting do not affect its intent. People have stated that it’s an invasion of privacy to have facial recognition, to find common ground, one would say your face is not private. When one willing is out in public, it is no longer private.
Interdisciplinary Outcome
Initially, it all began with the focus question, “So with this type of technology in this day and age how are todays heroes, law enforcement, utilizing different systems and software’s to narrow down the whereabouts of victims and suspects involved?” An answer to that question, there was an integration of the computer science and organization leadership insights. It was discovered during the research process that tracking surveillance was used before and some are currently still being tested but just not good enough to be taken into the real world yet. The integration of the insights of the two disciplines means the possibility of creating a better developed system and software and thus having leaders train those to use them to help identify and track suspects as well as victims of human trafficking.
More research is still needed to improve the algorithms that create the software of facial recognition. This would improve the accuracy and reliability of the software which would help aid in tracking of human traffickers and victims. With the integration of both disciplines explained in this research paper, systems could be a solution to the problem of human trafficking.
