  Transit monitoring is a preventative approach used to identify possible cases
of human trafficking prior to exploitation while an individual is in transit or
before one crosses a border. Transit monitoring is often conducted by
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who train staff to identify and intercept
suspicious activity. Love Justice International (LJI) is a well-established NGO
that has been conducting transit monitoring for years along the Nepal-India
border at multiple monitoring stations. In partnership with LJI, we developed a
system that uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to help LJI decision-makers
evaluate the performance of these stations at intercepting potential
human-trafficking victims given the amount of resources (e.g. staff, etc.)
available and make specific operational improvement recommendations. Our model
consists of 91 decision-making units (DMUs) from 7 stations over 13 quarters
and considers three inputs, four outputs, and 3 homogeneity criteria. Using
this model we identified efficient stations, compared rankings of station
performance, and recommended strategies to improve efficiency. To the best of
our knowledge, this is the first application of DEA in the anti-human
trafficking domain.
