This video by Natasha B. Haunsperger, developed around her Naval Postgraduate School Master’s thesis, “Foreign-Born Human Trafficking—A Dark Spectre Haunting America: An Examination of the Sex and Labor Trafficking Landscape,” discusses the issue of human trafficking. Haunsperger proposes including trafficking crimes into states’ existing mandatory reporting frameworks, which would improve law enforcement efforts to create comprehensive data collection and sharing platforms necessary for evidence-based policy development and evaluation of anti-human trafficking strategies.
About the Presenter
Natasha Haunsperger worked with the United Nations International Police Task Force (IPTF) charged with reintegrating war zones back into Croatia proper. Natasha joined the Portland Police Bureau in 2006, shortly after she had immigrated to Oregon from Croatia. Her previous experiences with war refugees and conflict resolution ultimately led her to proactively focus and engage with the large multicultural/ethnic communities in the Portland area. After several years working in the Portland Police Criminal Intelligence Unit, Officer Haunsperger was assigned to the Chief’s Office to establish the Office of Community Engagement, focusing on community mapping and grass-roots justice advocacy. In her current assignment as a Community Engagement Lead, Officer Haunsperger is currently working on developing a holistic and innovative strategic plan and organizational roadmap for engaging with communities in the process of justice reforms.
Natasha earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Russian Literature from Portland State University, and her Masters of Arts in Security Studies from the Homeland Security and Defense (CHDS) Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Officer Haunsperger also serves as a Commissioner on the Oregon Governor’s Commission for Women. In addition, she engages as an advocate with groups focused on issues of gender, socio-economic justice, and civil and human rights for justice-impacted women, with a particular focus on uplifting the voices of women in the areas of domestic and international security, conflict resolution, and peace-building processes.
Her areas of research and policy development are focused on foreign-born labor trafficking, threat assessment, intelligence data collection; labor trafficking as an unconventional national security threat; and public trust building as a critical infrastructure concept.
