How Alabamians snapping pictures of their hotel rooms could help stop sex trafficking

A brand new app could help save thousands of lives and solve one of Alabama’s hidden problems. The new tool, called TraffickCam, allows travelers to submit pictures of hotel rooms around the world. These images are then matched against a national database used by police and can be extremely helpful in finding victims of sex trafficking.

“You just enter your hotel room, and your room number. You take four pictures, and you submit them to the website,” Washington University Researcher and TraffickCam developer Abby Stylianou told Fox 2 News St. Louis. “And then those become part of the pipeline that law enforcement can use to track down where the victims are being trafficked.”

“Right now there are pictures posted every day. Hundreds of pictures, in every city around the United States, posted online, that show victims of trafficking, in hotel rooms posed on beds,” she said.

Thanks to incredible public support, 1.5 million photographs have already been added to databases, aiding law enforcement efforts across the country. The revolutionary product was created by a collaboration between Washington University, St. Louis researchers and the Exchange Initiative, a non-profit formed by Nix Conference and Meeting Management.

“It’s great that everyday citizens can do everyday things by taking a picture help stop sex trafficking,” Nix Conference Principal Molly Hackett said.

The app will be very useful for Alabamians, many of whom know little about the amount of sex trafficking that runs through their state.

The stretch of I-20 between Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama, which is used by over 10 million people each year, has the unenviable title of being the Sex Trafficking Superhighway, “America’s number one road for human sex trafficking.”

And business along I-20 is booming. Sex trafficking is the world’s fastest growing illegal activity. It is a $13 billion per year business in the United States alone, and 75% of the victims are being trafficked as sex slaves.

Shockingly, in 2013, four times the amount of people were sold as slaves in America than the year before the Civil War.

Just last week, authorities arrested 25-year-old Alexander Jackson, who has been charged with Human Trafficking in the 2nd Degree. According to officials, the operation began because of tips received from concerned local businesses. Lt. Clay Hammac noted that business owners were concerned about prostitution activity in the Inverness area.

“We’re very fortunate in the State of Alabama,” Lt. Clay Hammac told WIAT. “Our lawmakers are very aggressive when it comes to not the crime so much of prostitution, but those that are facilitating the crime of prostitution, those that sometimes are forcing young ladies into this life for a profit.”

With continued effort and public input, the app is likely to save countless lives. The TraffickCam app is free and available for iPhone, iPads, and Android devices.

(h/t Fox 2 News St. Louis)